whisper

I had a dream last night.

I had a dream that I was JD and I was sitting with Doctor Cox in folding chairs on his front lawn in Atlanta. We had just lost a patient to a car accident, so we were keeping a careful eye on traffic, hoping that somehow we could stop it from happening again.

By focusing on the cars I might have caused the accident to happen.

Fortunately my sense of destruction isn't very severe; a car overheated and pulled into the driveway. As JD I grabbed the fire extinguisher beside me (there was now a small bonfire on the lawn to justify the extinguisher) and ran over to put out the small flames coming from the engine. Only after I had finished did I realize that I was putting out flames in an empty extinguisher canister.

I made conversation with the men from the car.

I don't remember what we talked about. They implied I had made a general statement about black football players, so I decided to introduce them to Doctor Cox. I was no longer JD. JD walked over and sat down int he lawn chair beside Cox, and the men from the car sat facing us. Cox was terrorizing them, it was an unspoken agreement between us that he would do so. He arranged an altercation, and demanded that the man let Cox punch him in the face to even the score. The man offered him 50 dollars. Cox said he'd rather punch him in the face. The threat was left hanging, to be consummated on a whim, and the men drove off awkwardly in their now whole car.

The dream changed, but the rest is unimportant.

I was JD, but often I wasn't. I wonder, what lives inside JD when I am not him. I was never Cox, I knew I couldn't be, or shouldn't be. Are these people in my dreams just constructs, puppets for me to control to suit my fantastical narrative? The person controlling these puppet constructs is definitely me, at least when I'm inside the character. I can even change the tide of events, case in point the car over-heating, so perhaps I have a measure of control in this dreamscape, but did I create it? If so, why are there times where I can't change the dreamscape. If I am the creator I should be omniscient, omnipotent, able to bend the world to my will. But I can't, which means, I'm afraid, that either I am the creator of my dreamscape but the 'I' who exists in the dream isn't the whole 'I' that comprises me as a human being, or I am not the creator of my own dreamscape. In either case, If I can step outside my characters in my own dream, and exist there as a puppetmaster to my constructs, what's to stop another such puppetmaster from existing within my dreams? If I am not the whole 'I' which built my dream there is a chance that another form of me could enter my dream and control the constructs as I do. Perhaps that other form of me already does, but they are stronger, more capable as a puppet master. Why are they stronger? are they aware, as I am. Do they trade awareness for control? What does that even mean??? So many questions litter my understanding, but in the end it comes down to this: I fear an encounter with another puppetmaster within my dreams. I fear that should I meet that other I or the other 'I' not of myself who controls the dreamscape that the 'I' that I am in dreams will suffer consequences that I cannot conceive.

I almost wish I hadn't thought of it. Now that I have thought it, I might make it so, in my dream. That might be the first nightmare I have had in many years.