I dreamed a dream. And it was the apocalypse. Twice.
It was my witty, wise, and wiley roommate that said, “it’s probably from your dissertation!” I think she is right. Apparently, the stress of dissertating has produced “apocalypse” dreams in my head. I actually dream, and believe in the dream it is happening, about the apocalypse. The world is literally ending.
That is a highly unpleasant experience to feel.
The first dream took the form of a flood myth. I was strangely pleased with myself for imagining the end of the world in such classic terms: Gilgamesh, Plato, Popl Vuh, Genesis--all of these things contain a “flood story” and I thought to myself at least my apocalyptic endings have a literary history. The disturbing part of the dream was that it was a continuation. Prior to the night of actually dreaming the apocalypse I had dreamt that myself and friends were preparing for the apocalypse. We were gathering our necessities and had moved to a “safe” house; in the previous dreams it had been stressful to cut myself down to only a backpack’s worth of stuff, but I was able to keep things at the safe house and I wasn’t overly anxious about never seeing it again.
When the apocalypse dream hit, however, the most emotionally disturbing part of the dream manifested itself as I was holding my backpack in my hands, some clothes, some minor toiletries, and staring at my books thinking: you can only take two, maybe three books and these are the only books you can read for the rest of your life. You will never see any of this again. This moment was by far more emotionally disturbing than the twenty foot waves that pounded into the side of our safe house as we waited for the storm to abate long enough to move to higher ground. Oddly enough fear of death wasn’t nearly as bad as fear of no books. It was an admittedly materialistic moment, but what had me upset (honest to god) was only the loss of the books. I couldn’t imagine only reading two to three books for the rest of my life, and I was having a hell of a time picking them out quickly.
What two books did I pick? The Hobbit and The Bible. I was in mid-third choice when the dream ended, unable to make a decision. What were my rationale (this is really the better part)? I’ve never gotten sick of The Hobbit and there is a lot of story to read there. It’s more contained than The Lord of the Rings (which I considered picking, but the one volume is huge and the three volumes are too much though the final decision hadn’t been made) but was still a grandiose enough story to bear re-reading. After thinking about LOTR I realized I wanted the longest books I could find that were easy to transport--what was important was that I didn’t get sick of reading it over and over again. That was when I thought, The Bible. Easy to carry, obscenely long, and full of lots of smaller stories and poetry which provides variety amongst the reading (it was the variety of text that vaulted it above Atlas Shrugged). What was even more fun was that I became angry at myself in the dream for being “clichéd” but then decided it didn’t matter what others thought because a) it was the apocalypse and b) The Bible really does fit the limited-books-to-read-must-be-easy-to-carry category brilliantly.
I should go purchase a smaller one volume copy of LOTR, though, just in case. Preparedness is key.
One apocalypse dream (not just a nightmare, actual end of the world dream) would be enough for a month right? I would think it would be enough for a lifetime, but oh no--apparently apocalypse dreams are my new thing. Last night, therefore, I dreamed of the friggin’ zombie apocalypse.
I was in India (because clearly when experiencing the zombie apocalypse one would be in India) and fortunately everyone spoke English--that was handy. It was a disease situation that was passed through the bite, but could also be slightly airborne? I don’t know how a disease is slightly airborne, but I try not to question my subconscious too much. All of the healthy people left were loaded on tour buses and we were making a break for healthier countries (the disease hadn’t yet spread outside of India to our knowledge) but on the way to the tour bus a zombie lady is sitting in the front seat of my car. I, very casually, pull out the gun I bought earlier (with case and ammo for $27--even in the dream I thought that was a good deal) and shot her in the head. But, because I had such a weak gun, it didn’t kill her.
I quickly recocked (because it didn’t autoload?) and tried to shoot her again, but the gun jammed. At this point, the zombie lady was angry I shot her in the head and has gotten out of the car to chase me. My friends are beating her off with sticks, screaming at me to shoot her and I’m cursing at the gun trying to get it to work. Finally it’s ready to go and I proceed to unload an entire clip into her head. She finally goes down after that.
We make it to the buses and load up, but I’m in the very back, the last seat. We have stopped to turn onto another highway (it didn’t make sense, but it was a dream) and suddenly someone screams and points behind me. There, standing up was a strange man that hadn’t been on the bus before. Before I tell the next part of this story I would like to refer you to the zombie preparedness guide:
He looked disheveled, pale and disoriented and I was not about to see if he was craving my brains when someone else screams “Wait! We don’t know if he’s infected!”
I hold off on shoving him out of the bus, and he starts to talk but I keep thinking “this guy is totally mid-turn. He’s going to turn into a zombie and infect all of us. I am not going to be the person that dies because she was afraid to act.” So I hit the emergency release button that opens the exit doors behind this guy, the bus hits a bump and he flies out--dying as he hits the road. I had a brief moment of guilt in the dream because I hadn’t intended on him flying out of the bus, I was just getting the door ready in case I needed to shove him out of the bus, but I shrugged it off.
Then, same lady screams “You didn’t know if he was infected or not!” And this is the part of the dream that has left me feeling both disturbed and slightly ashamed of myself. I looked at her and very coldly said, “I wasn’t going to find out.”
So apparently, not only has my dissertation caused me to dream of the apocalypse, but it has turned me into a sociopath as well. It’s good to know my soul has, in fact, finally died.
In my defense I do think he was infected. Really.
On the plus side, if the apocalypse does hit I am going to be so prepared.
Perhaps this is a sign that I might be turning to the dark side?
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