Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Subliminal Message

Subliminal Message
                Okay, so I dream virtually every night. While some are dust in the wind, some will forever be tattooed on my mind. For a few years now I’ve been wanting to create and organize a group of writings that relate my dreams. While they were my creation, I don’t think they belong to me. They are, in essence, stories, and every story no matter how dull should be given the opportunity to be heard or in this case read. This particular idea was conceived because of one particular dream, and it is this dream that I choose to kick start this “dream project,” if you will. While this, like all of my writings, is mind puke, I hope that it comes across as organized and cohesive, but more than anything I have hopes that it has a purpose.

                What follows is simple and a ramble.

                My grandfather passed away days before this dream…

                I open my heavy eyes and see my shoes. Oddly enough the shoes I see are shoes that I would never in my life wear. Too fancy for my simple taste. I lift my head to a sight of my grandfather sitting behind a large baroque style desk Godfather style. He looked utterly majestic. So straight. So clean. So strong. Perfect. This image of him is the image of him that I’ve decided to store in my mind. I don’t want my final image of him to be of him lying on the hospital bed surrounded by his loved ones waiting for his last breath. He was more than that. Anyway: There he sits. On the desk there lay two serial killer looking knives. They look sharp. There’s one other person in the room. A girl. She’s tall, white, and quite beautiful. She’s foreign to me. I’ve never seen that face before. I would recognize it if I had. A triangle. The knives. We stand there motionlessness until my grandfather decides it’s time to speak. “Behind each of you there is a door.” She and I look at each other before we both turn. A few feet behind each of us is a dark brown wooden door just like he said. “You are both to grab one of the knives in front of me, walk into your designated room, and cut your hands.” In retrospect I wish I had asked why, but I didn’t. And neither did she. We both walked over to his desk, picked up a knife, and walked into the room. Pitch darkness. Reluctant thoughts. Pain. Wetness. What seems like an eternity passes before she and I both open the door at the same time and walk over to the exact same spot we stop prior. I don’t look at her hands, and she does not look at mine. He sits there, waits a moment, and then calls her over to stand in front of him. I see him moving his mouth and smiling, but I can’t make out a single word he’s uttering to her. She lowers her head, turns, and walks back to her spot. He then calls me over to stand in front of him. He looks down at my hands, and for the first time I also look down to see the extent of the damage. My hands were gnarly. Chunks of meat had been torn off, blood was creating a puddle at my feet, and flaps of skin and flesh hung off of my hands and fingers. I look at him; he smiles. And this I’ll never forget: “Good. Good job son. I didn’t expect that from you. You did it better.” I turn to look at the girl’s hands; she had tiny cuts, almost scratches on her hands. I turn back to him. “You did it the right way,” he said smiling, “I’m proud of you. Keep it up.”


                Then I woke up. Yeah. I’ve chosen to interpret this simple dream to fit perhaps what I want it to mean rather than what it does mean, assuming dreams have any meaning: “it matters not what you’re doing, but what you are doing do it right and do it with passion.” Thank you for this final message grandpa. Love you. 

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