LuvDoc,
I keep having recurring dreams where I am being chased and shot at with bullets and lasers – usually in post-apocalyptic scenarios – either by gangsters or aliens/monsters. Somehow I always manage to dodge the bullets (kinda Matrix style?) and come out unscathed. What does it mean?
– Michelle
OK Michelle (or should I call you Trinity?), let’s just pretend for a moment that The Matrix doesn’t actually exist and that what you’re referring to is really just a dream and not an actual, post-apocalyptic hellscape run by a computer program that is farming your body for bioelectricity. [Ed. note: If there is a God, and he really does look just like Ernest Hemingway, may he smite the LuvDoc with a righteous bolt of lightning for his outright belligerence towards the practice of literary brevity]. Yes, let’s just throw plausibility completely out the window and buy into the whole “consciousness-unconsciousness paradigm.” Awake or un, it sounds to me like you have some really terrifying shit going on in your noggin. I wouldn’t go to sleep if I were you. Wait a minute. That’s not a real solution, is it? You have to sleep. After a few days without sleep, you might as well be sleeping anyway, because you won’t remember much about what happened afterwards – sort of like staying up all night snorting crystal meth and playing 24-hour bingo. Sure, it seems like a hell of a time when you’re in the moment, but the next day it’s all just a confusing jumble of boxed, double digit numbers and ink splotches in bold, primary colors. Really anything could have happened and you wouldn’t have known it. In fact, if you ever wake up one morning with a bloody corpse next to you in bed, insomnia is probably not a bad defense. Extreme sleeplessness is no way to go through life. Think Christian Bale in The Machinist. Ew. So yeah, go ahead and go to sleep. From what you’ve told me, you’re undefeated versus gangsters, aliens and monsters. That’s not a bad record. You’re kind of a superhero when you’re unconscious, so just go to sleep, bow up, and kick some ass. Traditional dream interpreters would say that dreams wherein you’re imperiled by dangerous things like bullets or lasers or monsters indicate that you’re in trouble either emotionally or socially. When you come out of them unharmed, these dreams indicate that you are capable of overcoming current obstacles in the real world and you will take a high place in business or society. Weird, right? Here’s my interpretation: Quit fucking around watching scary, violent movies and filling your head with that dreck. You’re better off getting high and watching Teletubbies … or maybe that’s just what the Matrix wants you to think while it’s sucking up all your bioelectricity.
This article appears in August 31 • 2012.
