My nap dream - poignant, on point, reflective

And relatable... I think

I haven’t yet told the story of a dream I have had since this whole debacle began over 2 years ago (I think) so I am going to change that now.

I have very vivid dreams. I dream in color and I project. I often see myself going through scenarios and stories from a third person point of view. Pretty cool. It would be even cooler if I could help myself in the dream because sometimes I get into trouble. What would be even cooler is if I could know what my subconscious was trying to tell me.

This dream was so real. I just woke up from an afternoon nap - I haven’t been napping lately but I had a surf session this morning in high winds and also drank a beer so a nap was in store. My surf session included exactly 2 waves. It’s been a while since I surfed and it was so windy that the waves weren’t waving. But anyway… onto the dream.

I was in a large chain bookstore on one of main roads to get into St. John’s, Newfoundland, called Kenmount Road. It actually did exist when I lived there. It was called… damn. One sec. Maps. Hahaha I found it and because, technology, I can even grab a photo! It still exists and it is called Chapters. It is so funny that we can see places that we are no where near.

I was there with my friend who had decided to agree to drive into the parking lot and let me out so that I could buy a new book that was out about how to survive dictatorships, or something along those lines. He dropped me off and I ran inside and by the way, in the dream, it was now: we were after 2 years of being locked up and I was traumatized about going into stores and still feeling ‘watched’ and judged by masky mcmask patrols and temperature ‘gun’ soldiers.

I found the book. It was soft cover book that was quite floppy and square in dimension which made it quite annoying to hold. It was white and had black writing, like script, on the cover. I can’t ‘see’ what it was called or what was written. I lost the memory details of exactly where I found the book in the dream store, but I believe it was at the back of the store where I always used to head to. It had the travel books.

I found myself at the checkout and this is where it gets incredible. So incredible, I had to write it down and share it. There were 2 check out people: a girl and a boy and I went to the one on the left who was a girl. Probably because I am left-handed. They were separated by about 1.5 meters but not because of the laws of ‘viral attraction’ but because the counter was really long. There was no cash register: just a little card machine and a lot of black laminate counter space. I placed my book into the hands of the girl and gave her my card to pay. I paid. I lost some details here as well which makes this part of the dream even more potent because I can’t answer questions about it.

All of a sudden, in some strange loss of detail confusion, a bunch of things seemed to happen at once. My card had returned to my hand, I had the book as well, and people were accumulating at the queue (up to that point it was only me at the queue), and there, on the counter in front of me, were the lenses of my glasses. No frames. Just the lenses. They weren’t the ‘real’ lenses from my glasses because they were too small to be, but they were the ‘actual’ lenses in the dream glasses. I was very confused. I did pick up the lenses and have a very strong visual of seeing them (they were one on top of the other - stacked) in my right hand. Which is weird because I am left-handed! As I held them I looked up from my hand and I asked the girl where my frames were - which seemed like an entirely ridiculous question to ask someone else. Why the hell would someone else know where my frames were? But I also had no idea! So I asked again and didn’t get a reply. I began to get distressed. I bent over to look at my feet for the frames, and in my purse, and everywhere they could physically possibly be. But, they couldn’t physically possibly have been separated from the lenses without my knowing in the first place so I began to get more upset, partially because it felt like I wouldn’t have glasses anymore but mostly because, what the hell?!

BUT, the thing that was most upsetting to me in this dream incident was that people were starting to accumulate at the counter to make their purchases and they were able to see that I was there, upset and, if they had been listening, what I was upset about. To someone who cannot see without their glasses, to lose your frames or glasses or lenses is a very jarring thing! Oh by the way, I had been wearing my glasses before this happened in the dream!

So the dream turned into this: I went to buy a book. In person, facing the anxiety of going into a store for the first time to buy a book about the history of dictatorships. It went well, until, my lenses became ‘emancipated’ from my frames. I reacted how one would. No one noticed me. I was in a strange situation and needed help to locate my frames so I could see again and it was like no one could see me, hear me or cared.

It felt like a physical (and oddly visceral) scenario of how I feel most days in the COVID alternate universe that surrounds us all, and it struck me how real it was and how close to the truth, as well. Not one person, not even the check-out girl showed any acknowledgement of my easily understandable problem. And therefore, not one person tried to help me with it. I felt, (I hate this word but it describes how I felt perfectly), gaslit. Like I was the crazy one for having a problem cast onto me that disallowed me to see. I haven’t yet analyzed what the sight part of the dream might mean but my subconscious must have picked glasses for a reason. I think the obviousness of my dependency on them is one factor but I wonder if my old subby isn’t trying to tell me something else. (Please read to the end for Mathew Crawford’s brilliant interpretation of my subconscious! No seriously!)

I woke up as I was walking out of the store feeling completely nuts and was quite shaken by the real-ness of the dream. I was also quite amazed at the poignancy. The world seems to made up of people who have no idea that they actually have no free will within the construct of the infrastructure of our current society. You cannot drive a car without having to buy their fuel at their set price. You cannot go to school and learn what you might actually want to learn. You cannot get research grants for what you might actually want to study. You can’t even grow your own food on your own property in some places. Hell, soon, you won’t own anything, and you’ll be happy.

I feel like I am watching it all happen - all the while absolutely sure that I am not the one who is nuts, as I was made to feel in my dream. I get emails all of the time from amazing, intelligent, well-adjusted people from all walks of life, including psychologists, who ask me if they are losing their mind for being the only person in their circle, be it work or family, who is not injected due to simply having made a personal choice not to be. I tell them, no, you are not losing your mind. You are facing the greatest intra-species incongruence of reality that we have ever faced. The people of humanity are quite literally, seeing two versions of ‘reality’ right now, which is a really weird thing because reality is simply an illusion as well. I found myself asking my genius friend the other day if I had not escaped the event horizon of some simulation black hole thus escaping the simulation itself. It really feels that way to me sometimes: as if I am watching the simulation from the outside now instead of being incredibly frustrated living it from the inside. But, these thoughts aren’t the main point of this story.

This was part of an email message I received form an MD just today.

Here’s the thing… I was the only un-inoculated doc at my hospital for the past year-plus, ended up losing that job (but found another, thank goodness), and I have spent a crapload of time the past couple of years second-guessing myself.

Am I crazy?
Am I paranoid?
Am I just plain stupid?  All of the other docs are clamoring to get this into their deltoids, why am I the only one who thinks it is a lame idea?

I wanted to share because I know many people (not enough) are feeling terribly incongruent these days, even within the ‘congruent’ circles, and I want to let you know that are OK, from my point of view anyway. You are also not alone. Tell me your stories. I love to hear them. You can write them here or send me an email. We are truly living through something incredible right now and you are not nuts. You would be nuts, in my opinion, if you were not seeing how insane our world has become.

I mean, in what frikkin’ universe is it now normal to be saying Kl-anus-Schwab’s name more times a day than our own names?

Eat ze bugs.

Alright… I had to pause for 2 hours to talk to Mathew. Because I was in the middle of writing this Substack, I had to tell him about this dream and in the middle of telling him, he suggested that my subconscious was trying to tell me that the reason I lost the frames for my glasses was that I need to ‘re-frame’ my perception (or sight) to decipher the code or text in the book that I bought in order to understand and use the information in the book to survive the dictatorship. I find it incredible that he ‘saw’ this in my recount of the dream. I had not seen this. And I think he’s right.

One of more difficult things that we all face in this shared conscious ‘reality’ space is change, or re-framing. It feels, uncomfortable, most of the time.

I can see without my glasses. But not well. Or, so I think (thought).