Earthquakes

Lately, I had a couple of dreams where there's earthquakes. I wake with a jolt, sitting up from bed too quickly as the dream-earthquake must be Intensity 10 and my mind still racked by pseudo-aftershocks. The first dream, I was at the highest floor of a tall building. The ground shaking, everything toppling down as I ran down the fire exit stairs, it felt so real. I wake, walking with dizzy balance as another day starts. I wake up inexplicably tired. 
***
I remember two earthquakes last 2012, in February and November. I was in the school both times. From the wide green field, one can see everyone rushing out of buildings. There's an odd silence combined with the low voices of people simultaneously talking about where they were those few seconds when it happened. Everyone's standing in open space, waiting for aftershocks. A water puddle beside where I stand is still rippling. Moments ago, the liquid was spinning and splashing around as if in a storm. 
***
My classmate had an interesting observation. "Ever noticed that after a quake, the weather turns like this?" she asks. The sky is grey-white and entirely covered in clouds, like its still deciding whether to let it rain or not.Often, it doesn't. The air is somewhere between cold and humid. I reply, "Now that you've mentioned it, I don't recall a sunny earthquake."
***
I almost memorized everything about earthquakes from an Earth Science textbook. The teacher is carefree and talkative, one who loves to gossip instead of talking about the lessons. He was likable at first-- until you see the exams and his strictness on laboratory reports. Each meeting was a laugh trip, but soon he's enumerating details about his sex life, things I don't care about-- I was so bored and irritated that I tried to block out his babbling by actually reading the textbook in class. See how irritated I was?

I only recall unconnected terms and details. There are three kinds of waves with varying effects on different kinds of matter. To find out the exact epicenter, there must be three seismic stations to calculate the distance in a method known as triangulation. These are easily-forgotten facts and empty names to fill blanks in an exam paper. 
***
I read about rocks, oceans, volcanic activity, earthquakes, the various things moving and heating up within the earth to change the surface. Mountains flatten, volcanoes erode, continents break, islands grow out of sea, plates collide and mountains arise from the impact. It takes hundreds to billions of years. In our lifetime, the changes are too slow to see. How brief human life is compared to eons in geologic time, the textbook says. I'm not sure how I feel about that-- somewhere between disappointment and relief. Life's too long, but too short all the same.

Dream District Creeps

I'm with a friend, though I haven't seen this person in real life. She's wearing a white lab coat and glasses, her long black hair in a ponytail. We're in an office in a funeral parlor to show me her work. There's a metal table with cut body parts from female corpses. She uses a device that fuses cells so she assembles a body, legs first, and the head looks like me. We transfer it to a room which serves as a freezer. She says, "She'll wake up tomorrow. Give her a name. Let's go."
- - -
This dream had a sort of ritual/game like "Bloody Mary" about a ghost tricycle that only appears at 1AM in front of a mall. I'm with my brother in the backseat. What we're supposed to do is ask the driver to take us to a bridge, but I don't know where it will go (to the Land of the Dead or Hell or somewhere...).
Driver: "Saan kayo?"
Brother: "Sa tulay lang."
Driver: "Anong tulay ang sinasabi mo?!"
Suddenly everything turned black, and I'm floating in the expanse. I thought, something's gone wrong. Then realized this is like a dream in a dream, then I woke up.

I notice that if I stay inside and don't go out for many days, the dreams get scary.

Unrelated things soon to be forgotten

Years ago, I saw a headline on the Entertainment pages of the Inquirer:  “Lindsay Lohan's Ex performs in Manila”. She's a DJ and the article was about the songs played, how good the party was, but I find it odd that her name was only mentioned once. She was mostly called “Lindsay Lohan's ex”.  She must be dating someone else or doing something else now, but she'll always be remembered as the ex of a famous star.

I experience the same. I used to have a friend, a popular girl. When I see people from elementary, I'm not my name but Diba siya na ang upod pirmi sang-una ni X? I'm only remembered as Someone's Friend. There's always the shadow of another person. At least I want to be known as myself, but I guess this can't be helped.

~*~

I dread the cliché “I'm only human.” Why, who said you were something else?

Every time something is dramatic, they'll always say “...like a telenovela.” Turn on the TV, its the same: lost babies, all the screaming, slapping, hair-pulling... I don't want my life like that.

I saw a quote reblogged on Tumblr from Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami:
“If you read what everybody else reads, you'll think what everybody else thinks.”
My first thought was, hey, everyone (not all, but many) reads Murakami. I disagree, not all will think the same about a book.

~*~

Hearing the opening theme of Ghost Fighter on GMA, I feel nostalgic for those days when I was 7 or 8-- going home after school to watch 6PM anime. Slam Dunk, Flame of Recca, Hunter X Hunter, all else.

Those anime mostly start with ordinary guy/girl living a normal life, then there's an adventure waiting on another world. Maybe watching those made me imagine the same thing will happen to me, where I find some sort of portal by accident. Its childish, I know. But I have my own story here and now.

~*~

My dreams all happen in a place I call Dream District. Its a mirror image of this city-- even has its own malls like the ones here.

Last night in Dream District, I was watching news on TV in an electronics shop. I meet myself from years back. She's wearing uniform and black sling bag. I said Hi, she didn't recognize me. I wanted to talk but she looked lost in her own thoughts.

—30—

A bit of time away from society may be good, just don't spend it pitying yourself- it worked for me. But after almost a year of seclusion, its quite difficult adjusting back to FHBs* (fellow human beings) and 'normal' life. I'm not sure I missed it, hearing all the backbiting... again, the three things people DO, THINK, and SAY are never the same.

I deleted my Facebook. Yes, there are ways. Its a great site, but I have no use for it. I used to waste time every time I log in, reading about others, thinking of clever status updates... all gone.
- - - - -
finished Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
"I don't want to say my name. I couldn't trust you with it. To do something with it. I don't want anybody talking about me. To say where I was or what I said when I was there. I mean, you could talk about me maybe. But nobody could say it was me. I could be anybody. I think in times like these the less said the better."

Some dreams

Remember what they say,
There's no shortcut to a dream.
It's all blood and sweat,
And life is what you manage in between.
- "October", Broken Bells

As said in the movie Inception, practice makes perfect when it comes to remembering dreams. Writing what I can recall helps and I can remember them fairly well. For some reason, I'm wearing my high school uniform in dreams. Its like my "totem"- in the movie it's the thing you use to determine if you're dreaming or not, which means if I get stranded in some unknown place and I'm wearing uniform, that's when I know.
- - - - -
These are the short and simple ones. The longer dreams next time.

*A dream entitled "The Various Stages of Starvation". I am watching a video on a blog. A cartoon of a woman says something about famine and starving. It starts showing mother and child about to sleep. Their appearance changes, thinner until nothing remains but skin and bones. The cartoon woman says "So let's take a look at YOUR FACE" and a mirror appears on screen and I don't want to look but a hand goes out of the computer screen to grab my face and make me look in the mirror... I wake up.

*On my grandfather's house that has two floors... but I find stairs leading up to a [nonexistent] third floor, there's a hallway lined with doors and at the end of it is another staircase. Up there is a big white door, and inside is an empty white room and there's another door. I keep going in similar rooms and doors until I end up seeing a wall with a huge black hole then I wake up.
*I'm in a hotel. I'm looking for my room, I always open the wrong rooms and inside are people I know. I get to the right room and find the same hallway of doors in the dream above. -wake-

ALWAYS doors and rooms. A dream interpretation site said, "Corridors, hallways and passages with doors and rooms characterize free choices with options arranged ..."

*Elementary, high school, and college overlapping: HS graduation in a Grade 6 classroom, one HS class held in the the CAS lobby.
*This is cute. On a school bench, a big unicorn is teaching baby unicorns how to fly. (Someone asked if I dreamed this when I was a kid. It's not only kids who can dream of unicorns...)

Somewhere, there is a dream dreaming you.
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