What I am calling the short dream was initially not clearly a dream; this is because it happened upon waking. But the falseness of the reality I experienced has to put it in the dream category.

I awoke, as normal, to go to the bathroom. I was at work, and as you know, in a sleeping bag. The particular bag I use is a queen size (really, just two “adam and eve” bags zipped together) and so sometimes while on the twin mattress, I can get oddly wrapped up.

Keep in mind, it’s the middle of the night. And I’m tired.

So I start yanking harder at the silky outside of the bag and unfortunately I feel it tear. I finally make it out, and, glasses-less, zoom in close—in the dark—to confirm that it’s torn. Confirmed. Then the walk to the restroom and back is unremarkable.

As I am laying down to try to resume sleeping asap, I cannot help but look forward to getting a new sleeping bag. Luckily, the excitement abated quickly and I fell asleep again.

Lo and behold, in the morning there was no damage!

Obviously, to my thinking, this dream was unflattering evidence of some kind of addiction to perfectionist shopping—which I am told afflicts nearly all of us. The remarkable part, to me, was how I really couldn’t believe the bag wasn’t torn. Crazy. Moving on.

I’ll keep the long dream’s recap short.

I had pissed off an Indian I work with (feather) and he told his pals and they were coming to kill me. I knew they were coming to kill me because a really fat mutual friend, also a pow-wow Indian, told me. And this friend wanted to help me by arming me to the teeth.

The odd thing about this dream is, like the short dream, I awoke to go potty, knew that it was a dream, wanted to know how it ended, and then fell back asleep and picked it right up again! As it continued, the main action was concentrated on the fat Indian resignedly giving me all sorts of guns as I made small (and weak) talk.

I can tell you it felt real. Like I felt sick to my stomach while I was in the dream and in the bathroom over the fact that I had caused all this nonsense. I also pulled my own weapons cache into the dream and seemed to consider opening it—I’m talking about waking up and opening the gun safe—in case it wasn’t a dream. Powerful, dreams are, no?

Well, the other key feeling the dream was causing or bringing to light was a hefty resignation alongside confusion at the fat Indian’s actions because I knew I couldn’t win. Surely he had to agree, no?

This dream pulls in a lot of disparate parts of my life. The main theme, to me, obviously comes from back in college when I told the blacks that I had been hanging around that we whites told racist jokes and then inquired about any white jokes they might have that were worth sharing. Not a happy group after that. Nor unified. The ones who could take a joke clearly stopped the ones who could not from black on white violence.

Additionally, I have an Indian co-worker, who I have, this time unintentionally—I was trying to find common ground—offended. (Religion, politics, AND immigration are to be avoided at work. Also, the fashion combo of flannel and rat tails is generally not donned by hispanics. Lesson learned.)

Lastly, I am currently reading The Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. In them, he recounts a duel and offers his opinion that he would never let anyone known he was going to kill them—if in fact circumstances led him to conclude that he needed to kill someone. Conversely, if he ever so-offended someone that he learned they were out for his blood, he would do or say, within reason, whatever was necessary to make amends. (I think there was an implied “it could only be a misunderstanding” aspect to this.) My point being that this connects directly to the “resignation” and “sick feeling” part of my dream. Implied was that I knew that a group is unconsolable (different than an individual) and so they were surely going to get their kill—even though I knew in advance.

And obviously we’re all thinking about “do I have enough guns?” all the time. Hehe.

How about you, faithful reader? Anything odd in the head movies to recount? If so, don’t be a stranger. Post it and/or comment below.