I seem to be experiencing restlessness, in all the meanings of the word.
I had back to back, intensely vivid and epic dreams last night. This was one of them:
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
I was Superman's emissary for his return to Earth.
We went through preparations together. He was having a conference with a select group of government people, dignitaries and other VIP's. I remember walking with him from his quarters and giving him the boxer's shoulder squeeze as I walked behind him - telling him it was going to ok, great even.
I'd always been his closest friend and confidant but we hadn't seen each other for 5 or 6 years so things were a little strange and forced between us. He seemed both sad and somewhat nervous about the conference.
When we got into the conference, everyone in attendance had special certificates of identification in front of them at their places at the tables. The calligraphy shifted and glowed. If you didn't have one, you weren't meant to be there.
I was seated at the end of the long, curved conference table - far from him - next to a woman who looked older and officious but whose appearance I noticed actually kept shifting. Everything about her, including her certificate was subtly transforming all the time but it was clearly beneath the radar of everyone's collective consciousness in the room. Except mine. She felt me looking at her, trying to make sense of it and started trying to tell me that I didn't meet the requirements for being there, I had no certificate etc. In short, trying to persuade me to leave.
Being his emissary, I took it with a grain of salt. I called to him in my mind and new he could hear me. I continued to look at her, determined to get to the bottom of it.
Superman has enemies, to be sure.
We had this thing we could do, he and I. He could use his X-Ray vision on something and I could see it too. We did it then and she was suddenly changed, revealed. She was young, beautiful, streaks of sunny, curly blond under a hood - and laughing, uncovered. An old friend evidently. I felt as though I should know her, or would. Or had forever.
Like meeting a returning character in a TV series or book, comic, half-way through and inferring via context that they're a familiar. Played a heavy role. We had history. I just didn't remember it yet.
I was awakening to my own back-story. I'd been asleep here while he was gone.
At this I knew things were safe with her. I got up to go to the bathroom outside across the hall. The bathroom was strange, dirty and maze like. (As most public and/or institutional ones are in my dreams.) A section of it behind the sinks opened up into a dark chasm of plumbing, wet-works and HVAC.
I heard someone throwing up in the stall behind me. I turned around and looked under and a youngish guy was vomiting a pool of dark bile onto the floor around the toilet. I asked him if he needed help, could I bring him some water. He said yes. I stood up to finish urinating and said I'd be right back. Suddenly another who looked just like him was beside me. A girl too. He asked if I was Superman's courier. "His runner boy."
They beckoned me over to the edge of the chasm in the corner. I craned my neck to look but didn't follow. Something felt very wrong. One of them held a strange cup, rounded and rectangular, up to my face. I started to run, to call for him in my mind - to warn him. It was too late.
I came to at a train station on the other side of the world. Suburban Australia. Melbourne I think. The bile-spewing guy was there with me. I knew I was in trouble and far from home. I turned to him and said I didn't care. I like Australia. He turned away to make a phone call. I ran up the hill away from him, as fast as I could. Traffic was going by in both directions. I saw an official looking vehicle approaching from the other direction. Police! I yelled, waved. They didn't see me. Yet.
I ran across 3 lanes of traffic and started chasing the vehicle. Somehow keeping stride with the vehicles. The driver finally caught sight of me in a side mirror - or heard me and came to a side-skidding stop. I ran around and jumped in.
Not a cop. A wide, squat trolley car. Public transit! An old Aussie guy in a hat and uniform was driving. He'd looked like a cop from the outside.
At least I was moving and quickly. All I had were UK coins in my pocket. 20p, 50p here, a quid or two there. I told him if he let me pay that way I'd see him again the next day and bring him beer. He was cool with that.
Close call. I was in a foreign country with next to nothing. But I'd figure it out. Always do.
I walked around the tram. It was very nearly as wide as it was long. People were seated, reading the paper, looking out the windows etc. It had a hatch in the middle of the floor - fenced off by rails and panels. I froze.
Suddenly, camera cuts to: An electrical box, a hand with an implement sabotaging it. Another electrical panel, another sabotage. And another. The lights go out in the tram. We're going through a tunnel and I know I don't have much time. Under cover of darkness I slip through the hatch in the floor and clamber, inches from the ultimate exfoliation, across the underbelly of the tram. I climb along the sides, careful to stay below the windows and then up the back corner. The blind spot. I am on the roof. We're out of the tunnel. The surrounding environs is beautiful, old Europe or old west. Wallace and Gromit through a photoshop filter. I see the top of my assailant's head coming out of the front door to climb on the roof. I swing down and hang off the back of the bus, waiting.
I hear him on the roof. He looks over one side, then the other. I'm just a step ahead of him. He knows I'm somewhere here though. It's cat and mouse. I pull and swing up and throw myself at him. We struggle, twist, grapple, throw wild punches and then we are both rolling down an embankment. I'm in a rage. Hitting him as we fall and tumble and bounce in a fury of stones, dust and unsuspecting foliage. We come to ground beside a lake or river. He hasn't expected me to fight. Is thrown off by it and extricates himself while I try to power my lungs on sod and shale. He disappears into the water. I stand and wade in after him, swiping at strange fish and eels in a fury to find him and teach him who he's fucking with.
Fucking with... I realize that there are more of them, I've forgotten this. I can't waste time on this one, I have to run.
My father's voice is with me. Cheerful and British, directing me like a GPS along litter filled trails and through the grimy bellies of old culverts towards the relative safety of town. I come to a dead end in a deep culvert and think "thanks a lot, dad." Then realize that I can climb out and be on the road to my destination. Have had the benefit of cover the whole way. Ah yes.
There is an old man who looks like Albert Einstein on the overpass above me. He is gone when I climb up. I run along the little road up to a soaring suspension bridge that traverses clouds and possibly countries. It is narrow and curves around the hill and out of sight across the sky. The view is breathtaking, the sun is gold, silver and pink, low in the huge dome sky with a pillow of cloud over one side of its face - like the girl in the hood. The fields dark and light green below, the lake brilliant with light and the sky every shade of blue in the book and some that aren't.
I see the old man again further along the suspension bridge. I run towards him but cannot keep my eyes from the view and he is gone when I get there. I sense pursuit now. I see them coming from below, from behind and to the side. On the floor of the bridge in front of me, I see a strange little object. Like a pill but larger. A tiny coffin - an inch long or so, glowing like something you'd collect in a video game. It is mine. I know it. I have been missing it for years. He has returned it to me. I pick it up, knowing what will happen before my hands even touch it.
My outstretched hand closes around it and before I have fully straightened to stand, all my systems are coming online. I am incomprehensibly strong. I can see in all directions. Move blindingly fast. Slow down time.
I can fly.
I run, laughing along the bridge towards town. I traverse miles in seconds. They pursue me but deep down they know it's too late. They have power, numbers and high-tech gadgetry but they cannot stand against me.
I turn to face one of them. He is firing bolt after bolt from a crossbow at me. They float lazily towards me and I brush them aside, catching the last one. He realizes he is fucked, jumps in to a strange flying car and makes a break for it.
I can fly.
I pursue him. I am on him like a rocket. The roof of the car, steering it, I have control now. We careen to earth and it is a spectacular finale of screaming metal and spraying glass. He is grounded, stripped of power. Demoted to mere annoyance.
They call it off. I let the rest of them go. I return to the old man in the laboratory in Japan. Superman is there waiting for me.
He is being rehabilitated, reacclimatized to Earth. He is still a melancholy figure, head bowed between enormous shoulders. I keep him company in the lab, float beside him.
There is a huge cake for us both in the atrium, all of the officials and VIP's from the conference are milling about, lining up at buffet's, chatting at tables, looking out the windows. The cake is up high in the air, suspended from the ceiling by massive steel cables at angles. Like the scoreboard at a sports arena. To save Superman the effort I fly up and start untying the cables, bring the cake to the ground - the enormous weight, nothing to me.
We're all standing around eating and suddenly I realize that this isn't the movie I came to see! Where the hell was Lex Luthor? Lois Lane? This isn't Superman Returns?
"No," says John, "It's Superman and Astroboy - part one of a trilogy!"
"WTF? You tricked me!"
"Sorry dude, I just thought you'd want to see the first one first!"
"Oh. Ok. Let's go play foosball."
"K"
I was Superman's emissary for his return to Earth.
We went through preparations together. He was having a conference with a select group of government people, dignitaries and other VIP's. I remember walking with him from his quarters and giving him the boxer's shoulder squeeze as I walked behind him - telling him it was going to ok, great even.
I'd always been his closest friend and confidant but we hadn't seen each other for 5 or 6 years so things were a little strange and forced between us. He seemed both sad and somewhat nervous about the conference.
When we got into the conference, everyone in attendance had special certificates of identification in front of them at their places at the tables. The calligraphy shifted and glowed. If you didn't have one, you weren't meant to be there.
I was seated at the end of the long, curved conference table - far from him - next to a woman who looked older and officious but whose appearance I noticed actually kept shifting. Everything about her, including her certificate was subtly transforming all the time but it was clearly beneath the radar of everyone's collective consciousness in the room. Except mine. She felt me looking at her, trying to make sense of it and started trying to tell me that I didn't meet the requirements for being there, I had no certificate etc. In short, trying to persuade me to leave.
Being his emissary, I took it with a grain of salt. I called to him in my mind and new he could hear me. I continued to look at her, determined to get to the bottom of it.
Superman has enemies, to be sure.
We had this thing we could do, he and I. He could use his X-Ray vision on something and I could see it too. We did it then and she was suddenly changed, revealed. She was young, beautiful, streaks of sunny, curly blond under a hood - and laughing, uncovered. An old friend evidently. I felt as though I should know her, or would. Or had forever.
Like meeting a returning character in a TV series or book, comic, half-way through and inferring via context that they're a familiar. Played a heavy role. We had history. I just didn't remember it yet.
I was awakening to my own back-story. I'd been asleep here while he was gone.
At this I knew things were safe with her. I got up to go to the bathroom outside across the hall. The bathroom was strange, dirty and maze like. (As most public and/or institutional ones are in my dreams.) A section of it behind the sinks opened up into a dark chasm of plumbing, wet-works and HVAC.
I heard someone throwing up in the stall behind me. I turned around and looked under and a youngish guy was vomiting a pool of dark bile onto the floor around the toilet. I asked him if he needed help, could I bring him some water. He said yes. I stood up to finish urinating and said I'd be right back. Suddenly another who looked just like him was beside me. A girl too. He asked if I was Superman's courier. "His runner boy."
They beckoned me over to the edge of the chasm in the corner. I craned my neck to look but didn't follow. Something felt very wrong. One of them held a strange cup, rounded and rectangular, up to my face. I started to run, to call for him in my mind - to warn him. It was too late.
I came to at a train station on the other side of the world. Suburban Australia. Melbourne I think. The bile-spewing guy was there with me. I knew I was in trouble and far from home. I turned to him and said I didn't care. I like Australia. He turned away to make a phone call. I ran up the hill away from him, as fast as I could. Traffic was going by in both directions. I saw an official looking vehicle approaching from the other direction. Police! I yelled, waved. They didn't see me. Yet.
I ran across 3 lanes of traffic and started chasing the vehicle. Somehow keeping stride with the vehicles. The driver finally caught sight of me in a side mirror - or heard me and came to a side-skidding stop. I ran around and jumped in.
Not a cop. A wide, squat trolley car. Public transit! An old Aussie guy in a hat and uniform was driving. He'd looked like a cop from the outside.
At least I was moving and quickly. All I had were UK coins in my pocket. 20p, 50p here, a quid or two there. I told him if he let me pay that way I'd see him again the next day and bring him beer. He was cool with that.
Close call. I was in a foreign country with next to nothing. But I'd figure it out. Always do.
I walked around the tram. It was very nearly as wide as it was long. People were seated, reading the paper, looking out the windows etc. It had a hatch in the middle of the floor - fenced off by rails and panels. I froze.
Suddenly, camera cuts to: An electrical box, a hand with an implement sabotaging it. Another electrical panel, another sabotage. And another. The lights go out in the tram. We're going through a tunnel and I know I don't have much time. Under cover of darkness I slip through the hatch in the floor and clamber, inches from the ultimate exfoliation, across the underbelly of the tram. I climb along the sides, careful to stay below the windows and then up the back corner. The blind spot. I am on the roof. We're out of the tunnel. The surrounding environs is beautiful, old Europe or old west. Wallace and Gromit through a photoshop filter. I see the top of my assailant's head coming out of the front door to climb on the roof. I swing down and hang off the back of the bus, waiting.
I hear him on the roof. He looks over one side, then the other. I'm just a step ahead of him. He knows I'm somewhere here though. It's cat and mouse. I pull and swing up and throw myself at him. We struggle, twist, grapple, throw wild punches and then we are both rolling down an embankment. I'm in a rage. Hitting him as we fall and tumble and bounce in a fury of stones, dust and unsuspecting foliage. We come to ground beside a lake or river. He hasn't expected me to fight. Is thrown off by it and extricates himself while I try to power my lungs on sod and shale. He disappears into the water. I stand and wade in after him, swiping at strange fish and eels in a fury to find him and teach him who he's fucking with.
Fucking with... I realize that there are more of them, I've forgotten this. I can't waste time on this one, I have to run.
My father's voice is with me. Cheerful and British, directing me like a GPS along litter filled trails and through the grimy bellies of old culverts towards the relative safety of town. I come to a dead end in a deep culvert and think "thanks a lot, dad." Then realize that I can climb out and be on the road to my destination. Have had the benefit of cover the whole way. Ah yes.
There is an old man who looks like Albert Einstein on the overpass above me. He is gone when I climb up. I run along the little road up to a soaring suspension bridge that traverses clouds and possibly countries. It is narrow and curves around the hill and out of sight across the sky. The view is breathtaking, the sun is gold, silver and pink, low in the huge dome sky with a pillow of cloud over one side of its face - like the girl in the hood. The fields dark and light green below, the lake brilliant with light and the sky every shade of blue in the book and some that aren't.
I see the old man again further along the suspension bridge. I run towards him but cannot keep my eyes from the view and he is gone when I get there. I sense pursuit now. I see them coming from below, from behind and to the side. On the floor of the bridge in front of me, I see a strange little object. Like a pill but larger. A tiny coffin - an inch long or so, glowing like something you'd collect in a video game. It is mine. I know it. I have been missing it for years. He has returned it to me. I pick it up, knowing what will happen before my hands even touch it.
My outstretched hand closes around it and before I have fully straightened to stand, all my systems are coming online. I am incomprehensibly strong. I can see in all directions. Move blindingly fast. Slow down time.
I can fly.
I run, laughing along the bridge towards town. I traverse miles in seconds. They pursue me but deep down they know it's too late. They have power, numbers and high-tech gadgetry but they cannot stand against me.
I turn to face one of them. He is firing bolt after bolt from a crossbow at me. They float lazily towards me and I brush them aside, catching the last one. He realizes he is fucked, jumps in to a strange flying car and makes a break for it.
I can fly.
I pursue him. I am on him like a rocket. The roof of the car, steering it, I have control now. We careen to earth and it is a spectacular finale of screaming metal and spraying glass. He is grounded, stripped of power. Demoted to mere annoyance.
They call it off. I let the rest of them go. I return to the old man in the laboratory in Japan. Superman is there waiting for me.
He is being rehabilitated, reacclimatized to Earth. He is still a melancholy figure, head bowed between enormous shoulders. I keep him company in the lab, float beside him.
There is a huge cake for us both in the atrium, all of the officials and VIP's from the conference are milling about, lining up at buffet's, chatting at tables, looking out the windows. The cake is up high in the air, suspended from the ceiling by massive steel cables at angles. Like the scoreboard at a sports arena. To save Superman the effort I fly up and start untying the cables, bring the cake to the ground - the enormous weight, nothing to me.
We're all standing around eating and suddenly I realize that this isn't the movie I came to see! Where the hell was Lex Luthor? Lois Lane? This isn't Superman Returns?
"No," says John, "It's Superman and Astroboy - part one of a trilogy!"
"WTF? You tricked me!"
"Sorry dude, I just thought you'd want to see the first one first!"
"Oh. Ok. Let's go play foosball."
"K"
VIEW 13 of 13 COMMENTS
but hey, what are doin' sunday night?? it is my b-day and i will be having a little shindig here in hollywood. check your friends threads