Dream Train

I had a dream I was living in New York in an apartment complex with the cast of Seinfeld. But I was a tourist. I went on a walk, and it was like a giant mall but with natural history museums and dinosaur bones every now and then. I kept running into Taylor Swift and her posse of model friends. I got lost and ran into George Costanza and asked him what my address was, and he thought I was checking to see if he had me in his contacts and he yelled at me and left. So, I kept walking and exploring until New York just ended at a parking lot.

I woke up. I laid in seat on a train. It zoomed at high speeds towards a bright light. I didn’t remember getting on a train or buying a ticket. I always wake up depressed although I don’t think of myself as a depressed person. Maybe I am. I think I wake up depressed because it’s a return to a dull reality in contrast to the vibrant strange adventures and sights I have in my dreams. I really didn’t describe that dream well. It was volumes of novels worth of meandering material, all seemingly consequential while living through the events, in the dream. I checked my feelings to see if I felt depressed to see if I were still dreaming or not. It didn’t feel like I was dreaming while on the train. Yet, it couldn’t be reality, could it?

An old man, I suddenly noticed, sat across from me. He was skinny and wore a baggy brown jacket and clutched a Care Bears lunchbox. He had peppermint breath like Santa Clause, but he still struck me as homeless. “I’ll cut to the chase,” he said. “This is a metaphor. This train here is speeding at increased speeds towards a bright light of heat. It symbolizes humanity plunging into destruction. Global Warming. We’re all going to die and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

“There were ice towers in my dream,” I said, suddenly recalling. “They looked like silver, but they were ice and big drops of water fell from them and made huge puddles. And there were little ships and submarines in the puddles. Viking ships, navel destroyers. They were fighting. Then a Daschle hound happily splashed in the huge puddle and lapped up the water and barked and people gathered around it to clap and cheer it and try to get some vicarious joyous energy from it just by watching it. Wishing they could be like that puppy. Dumb and oblivious. Then the puddle grew into a lake filled with speedboats carrying pretty girls in bikinis. But deep in the water a sleeping monster lurked, gradually being stirred awake by the commotions above. The sky turned dark, and it began to rain.”

The old man didn’t respond to me. I realized I were more talking to myself. He looked at me intensely and narrowed his eyes. “There’s nothing you can do to stop this train. You are small and insignificant. You’re being hurled at increasing speeds into the doom of the bright ball of heat and you can’t stop it. So, you should choose to just try to relax instead. Life is short.”

He had been leaning towards me. He leaned back and there was lemonade in his hand. He took a swig, wiped his mouth and said, “anxiety will kill you. There’s nothing you can do so just try to relax. It’s all in your mind.”

“Am I dead?” I asked. “Are you? Hurling towards a bright white light. They say you do that when you die. This doesn’t feel like a dream, it feels real, although it should be a dream.”

He looked at me and didn’t speak. He didn’t frown or smile. He looked motionless suddenly, like he was a wooden sculpture. I noticed green vines on him. I wanted to ask him what he meant by “It’s all in your head.” Facts are facts, objective facts, no matter what fantasy you hold in your head. I had a recent argument with my parents last Christmas over this. A fight so bad it made me not want to talk with them again. Because I don’t want to give them the excuse of their age and senility for the things they’ve decided to believe. Trump really got more votes and won; they falsely believe. The attack on the Capitol was justified to “save America.” Any facts they don’t like, such as Trump voters being caught and jailed for fraudulent votes are just “lies from the liberal media.” “I don’t want to hear from your liberal media,” my dad yelled at me. Global Warming is a hoax, he’s said. They can’t really deny the evidence of that anymore, of the earth heating, so the spin has now changed that humans didn’t cause it and can’t stop it; it’s all natural because of volcanos or something stupid. Just relax, don’t disrupt the fossil fuel industry gravy train.

It's so far (civilization and our species ending due to the world being too hot to live in anymore) away that it doesn’t matter anyways, is their attitude. Or God will fix it all. Believe, have faith. You’ll be happier if you do. Don’t you want to be happy? So goes their reasoning. It’s a dumb but maybe persuasive philosophy in some ways. You can’t control it so just try and relax. Anxiety will kill you. “It’s all in your head.”

I expected my parents to die before I did. That’s how it’s supposed to go. It often doesn’t. it will be weird when it happens. My parents dead. It could happen any day. They’re old. But anyone could die any day. I could die any day. Maybe I did die. Sort of sad to think they died, or I died, while I was holding a grudge with them. It was a grudge of respect. I decided to respect them too much to pretend they’re not smart enough to know better. They could have decided to do something else instead of watch Fox News propaganda which made them hate liberals. Deny truth. Hate me. I don’t hate them. I’m disappointed in them. Just as I’m sure they’re disappointed in me, for believing what they think are “liberal lies.” For not thinking God will just fix everything for us; the same god who they believed almost destroyed all humanity with a flood earlier. First with flood, then with fire. And yet, not all is subjective. There are facts. We must live in reality. The election wasn’t stolen. The stories of those trump voters, voting twice for Trump in Florida and Colorado are real. There are police records of it. I told my dad this and he laughed haughtily in my face. As if such a notion were so ridiculous, they could simply not be true. All liberal lies from the lying liberal press. As if Trump supporters, the same people who shouted, “Jews will not replace us,” in Charlottesville in their Nazi tiki torch parade, are simply not capable of doing anything wrong. It’s good vs. evil and all Republicans, including Donald Trump, are the good guys, my dad believes. He hates prideful people he’s said but he laughed with pride at me when I told him a truth which he refused to believe. And now I don’t want to see him or my mother again even though either of us may die at any moment. And I don’t care. He said liberals think Conservatives are stupid. They believe in trump like they do, yes, I do think that is stupid. It’s stupid to deny reality. It will destroy us. He thinks I’m stupid. I am in many ways stupid, but not in that. There is not a subjective issue here. Trump really did get less votes than Biden. That is truth. That is reality. I am right. They are wrong. Why is that offensive to say so? Why is it okay for him to think me stupid for believing in truth? Why should I excuse his own stupidity for believing in obvious and odious lies? Why pretend this is all okay for the sake of some superficial comfort. It doesn’t matter because ultimately, they don’t matter and I don’t matter and you should try and get along and do good; that is more important than these political fights and whatever; I’ve reasoned this as well, but I don’t know. I just don’t want to see them anymore. If that makes me a bad person, a bad son, so be it; I can’t help how I feel. I won’t cause any drama, however. Just, not see them anymore, then they die, and they’ll die not really knowing I had this grudge, perhaps; I don’t want to cause them pain or hurt. But I just don’t want to see them; I doubt they really care. Not like I’m denying them some great pleasure by not visiting them. We live far away already. It’s strange to think I would not be alive were it not for them. Would not look how I do or think how I do. The passing on of genetics. And yet this does not mean I must believe the same lies that they do. I cannot. They are the ones who taught me to try to value truth.

These thoughts swirled in me. “Go to sleep,” the old man said, although his mouth did not move. “Just sleep and dream.”

I thought of the sun expanding in a few billion years. Humanity will probably have been long extinct before then. Isn’t that strange to think of. I closed my eyes. In my dream I were talking to a tree, telling the tree of my past recent dreams.

“I dreamed that Ukraine won the war, there was a big celebration at a music store, and Zelenskyy danced while my brother gave a concert. in the only wet dream that I still remember Britany Spears took off her top and her nipples suddenly grew long like snakes. We were in a garden.

I dreamed I was talking to a friend about her new house. I told her: “Looks like a literal dream come true. Like a picture in a fancy interior design magazine, you see and think "someday I'd like to have that" and now you have it.

“I had a dream that Leonardo DiCaprio was in a movie where he'd watch a movie and then as soon as it was over, he'd race to leave the theater to get in line to watch it again. (The movies were popular and there were long lines.) And, he'd have to go in elevators and stuff. And I think the theater was in a mall. There was tension because if he didn't watch the movie then he acted like he'd die. Margot Robbie noticed him acting weird and was curious and helped him get into the theater. Then she saw what he saw, which was the screen would show facts about actors. Except they were actors from a different dimension. Like, it'd say, "this actor played in twelve James Bond movies" and then the actor would be Harrison Ford. But at the end it would say how the actor would die. And Leonardo DiCaprio, who was taking notes on all of this, told Margot Robbie that this is how he finds out how he dies, and he wants to prevent it. And then I was on a movie lot or something playing some character with both, but I had a ton of down time and during my down time I'd wander this same mall where DiCaprio watched his movies.

I just remembered a dream I had last night. A rookie NBA player broke his foot on purpose so he wouldn’t have to play while still getting paid and I raided their team meeting at some posh hotel and yelled and him and the coach. I have no idea where it came from.

Ya know, now that I think about it, I think I realize where the impetus of my dream came from. Jealousy at others having talents I don’t have and then squandering the talent, maybe. Like the NBA rookie has my dream job but he doesn’t want to play. So, I vented at him. But it applies to other things too maybe.

In part of a dream, Tiffany was sleeping on a yacht with a broken engine, but she needed to go to a beach for a photo shoot. So, she jumped in the water and pulled the yacht by a rope in her teeth while others swam by her.

It’s all random.

That one would be symbolic maybe of how you need to work to make dreams happen; they won’t just happen on their own. There’s no wisdom in dreams except in how you try to interpret the meanings after the fact.

I had a dream Greta Thunberg, and I were friends and we wielded swords at some international climate change convention and threatened people, so I did my part to save the world last night, I think.

I just remembered I had a dream last night that I was driving a car through the desert and a pack of reindeer with cactus and bells on their horns were running alongside me and I took out my phone to get a video, but it wouldn’t work because pressing the camera would just take it to the Twitch screen.

I dreamed that I was on a cruise and there was a sexy dance competition (but it wasn’t a sexy dream).

I had a dream that a man kidnapped my sister and he turned out to be The Phantom of the Opera and now they’re engaged. And then my sister turned into Tiffany? Then I also dreamed I glued Ben’s hand to a table accidentally and Tiffany said if I did it again, I’d get in trouble.”

Have no pride but love yourself, they taught. You are nothing but dust to God, you are insignificant, but God loves you anyways, by miracles, they said. He loves and cares about you and you’re important, they said.

Lies. Things we pretend to feel superficial comfort. If there is a god, it is nature and nature is indifferent. It is beautiful and cruel and doesn’t care either way and it is everything. The Greeks were more correct in their god myths than we are in ours because in their myths the gods could be cruel and petty and horny as well as beautiful, just as we are. I thought of this breezily.

I woke up. I was still on the train. It was hurling towards the heat ball faster, the light brighter. The old man still seating in front of me. I sensed he was the tree that I was telling my dreams too. As I had told the dreams to him, I saw the dreams as if I had been in them again. It was strange; I’m not explaining it well. I was curious what the old man or tree thought of my dream stories but quickly realized he was indifferent towards them. Just as any real tree would be. You can talk to a tree all day; it doesn’t care. You can pretend it listens and cares; it doesn’t really. You can tell the rain to stop, it won’t. Pray to God that you’ll win a billion dollars, you won’t. Not because of God or a tree’s wishes anyways. They don’t care. Whether they are real or not. It’s like, I mused, how you tell your dreams to others. They also make for boring stories, no matter how farcical, fantastical and fun and weird they seemed to you. They don’t matter because they’re not real and are nonsense. But while you were in them, they were exciting and mattered a lot. They were everything. Life and death. You were in your own exciting adventure. Wonderful things happened. Weird and wild things. Things to wake you up from the dullness and sadness of reality.

Most people can’t afford the time to really engage with truth and politics. They make it hard to understand on purpose. Liars take advantage for power. Money and power. That’s all they want. They don’t care about you. I thought of this. That Ayn Rand philosophy that has rooted itself in modern conservatism that says that it is virtuous to not care about anyone or anything other than your own pleasures. Your own wealth and power and delusions of grandeur and whatever makes you feel good even if the world around you rots and burns. That gives you more power so let it rot and burn, they say. I thought of this. Machiavelli had the same sort of philosophy. “The ends justify the means.” Their “ends” are to attain power for power’s sake. They lie to themselves that they need this power to stop evil liberals from doing the evil things they dream and make up and pretend that they do. Just a nice coincidence they, the billionaires and propagandists, just so happen to make even more money by adhering and implementing this philosophy. I thought of how the people that so closely hold Ayn Rand’s philosophy, through modern conservatism, are the same ones who most staunchly believe Jesus Christ is on their side. Delusions. Jesus likely never existed yet if he did, they don’t follow the words ascribed to him, about the evils of greed and money and helping the poor and the stranger and turning the other cheek. They believe Jesus cheers on their bigotry, same as slave owners believed the Bible justified their crimes. They believe there is virtue in fighting dirty. With lies and smears. Anything to attain their power. I thought of all this but in a leisurely, sleepy way. And then we all die and then what? Then what power does the myth of money have then? Wouldn’t it be nice to not worry? To have a good relationship with your parents, like so many seem to have. To win a billion dollars in the lottery, before you get too old, and it doesn’t matter as much anymore.

I thought of a boy I work with. He has a Teddy Bear. I make a voice for the Teddy Bear. I give it personality. He loves that bear. He hugs it. But it is as inanimate as a tree. As uncaring as a tree. Maybe less so, trees are alive after all. We share a remarkable amount of DNA with trees. Proof of evolution and so forth.

I paused to doom scroll Twitter.

America almost lost. Stoic stable institutions only loosely glued together by the thin fragile whims of fallible men. Silly, clownish, selfish men, often. The heat melts the glue. It grows hotter.

Oh my god, wars are real. Oh my god. The unspeakable horrors.

They taught me to try to value truth. They taught me to love America. They taught me to care. It will be strange when we’re all dead.

Was it fun?

It’s relationships, she said to the tree, laying under its shade on that hot early August day. If you think about it. We want validations. To tether us. Give us meaning. We’re meaningless if we’re not tethered. Just floating. Unloved. We care so we want others to care about us. Parents, family, friends, strangers. By fans if you’re lucky. Praising your brain and beauty and talents. Voices crying out from the void. Otherwise, we’re nothing. Even if the truth is that we’re nothing. And that’s terrifying. Don’t you think, tree? She pretended the tree agreed with her and that this beautiful wise ancient and powerful tree agreed with her gave her comforting happy feelings which she thought only strengthened the truth of her ideas, as if her ideas were now confirmed by an outside supernatural source.

I just made all that up, he thought, having just made it up, sitting in the seat of the train. Thinking maybe I should write this down, but then he didn’t have a pen or tablet or paper and so it passed to become forgotten, and he knew it wouldn’t matter anyways; for who would read it and really no one really should read it, if he had written it, because it’s vapor and vapid and obvious anyways; just dreams and daydreams. Pretending someone would care. People seeking validation through attention to assuage their fears of the truth of their insignificance.

She wondered if her parents really loved her. And so did he. It will be strange when they’re dead. Strange to know I’ll have regrets.

I looked at the man. He turned into a tree. I realized I was alone. I have always been alone. Everything else is a type of delusion. “What would you do with a billion and a half dollars,” I mumbled to no one while I daydreamed of being a pro tennis player who never loses. “Djohariah,” by Sufjan Stevens played as I closed my eyes. I thought about that girl who played that video game about that cat for seven straight hours. I wondered, but didn’t really care, what dreams she had. Is what she did so different then having laid in the shade of a tree and talking to it for hours? Or children believing ducks or Teddy Bears can talk to them. “Death with Dignity,” played next on the speakers of the train. It was beautiful and felt nice in the moment, even with the melancholy, and I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again as the train thundered on into that bright white-hot oblivion.