Lord of the Flies

1/12/2015: 12 Hours Later... 
IMAGE: AyamiKojima

This was an especially long and memorable dream, intense in its moments of emotion and philosophical over and undertones. Like all my favourite dreams, I seem to remember most of it, but not nearly enough. The following is what I can recall.

The dream started with a group of children converging in an open plaza, their mean age was around 8 years old and I was one of them. At some point it became apparent that I was participating in the "world youth fair" or some such occasion, where children from all around the world converge for cross-cultural experiences. It in many ways reminded me of a "Scout Jamboree", a nation wide event I attended at about the same age. I have never before had a dream of being a child again - it was quaintly interesting in that I was at once aware that I was a child, and able to second-guess my own primitive reactions, while at the same time - sufficiently absorbed by the experience to loose myself within it.

We were gathered around, exploring our surrounds but it was not long before the dream narrative launched its ordained script. Perhaps echoing recent current events, there was a sudden outbreak of Islamophobia; and groups of children were converging into groups to persecute other children on evidence or even suspicion of being Muslim. As these quasi-pogroms would form, the targeted children would in turn merge into defensive groups and eventually start launching pre-emptive attacks and assaults on the progenitors of this unrest, till eventually the cycle of conflict was so cultivated it was without apparent cause, and simply perpetuated.

This is the point where the dream became increasingly vivid, profound and very much un-dream like. A child wheeled another around, disabled or presumably paralysed from the waist down. He was gaunt and thin, but he brandished an AK-47, and would occasionally aim it to fire at a fleeing non-faction member, and excitedly proclaiming "allahu akbar". The individual pushing his wheelchair would whisper something in praise before steering him towards a new target. A child with dark hair ran up to me, but was shot in the chest before I could help him. As he lay there on the ground, dying, he proclaimed in shock "I came all the way from Iran to watch people from around the world, but all I see are people turning into animals" and the life slowly left him. As with all my dreams, especially the intensely traumatic ones, my own lucidity is never far away, waiting in the wings to make sure that I don't actually experience any real fear or trauma. It was about this point that I had a chance to stand back and marvel at the theatrical capacity of my own unconscious mind, before the scene changed and my lucidity went back to where it was hiding, and I was back in full belief that what I was seeing was real.

The next thing I recall was that a group of us were sitting at a table, in the corner of the plaza, while the violence reached its climax. We were dismayed at what we saw, and had opted to simply sit down and await out fate and die at the hands of the frenzied mob. Though we did not voice it, our collective existence, in this corner of the plaza, was mutual confirmation that we preferred our boycott of this violent enactment even over our own instinct for self defence, and perhaps did not wish to continue on in a world such as the one that was readily shaping itself around us. As we sat there, in silent mourning and awaiting our impending peril, a few of us locked eyes and realised that we were all ethnically diverse and crossed many of the factional lines that now spurned the open conflict around us.

Some time later, we were still waiting, for the violence never came. The combatants had largely consolidated themselves into a single roving faction, and had ceased the indiscriminate killing of all before them. They approached our 'table of boycott' cautiously and curiously, and inquired as to our identity and our allegiance. It then became apparent from the conversation unfolding that the single consolidated group was not actually a surviving faction, but a loose coalition of all the surviving groups, and what united them was their extreme religiosity. One by one we were quizzed by members of our own 'faction' about how religious we were, and made to recite prayers and details of landmarks of pilgrimages we had made to pass the test and have our lives spared. It then became apparent that within this loose political group not all factions were equal; as the pacifist Muslims at my table were subjected to much stricter litmus tests than the Christians, and me being Jewish apparently had but to recite a single sentence in Hebrew to be deemed safe. And before I could even do this, and well before the panic set in that I could speak no Hebrew, I was passed anyway.

The Muslims at my table were then ordered to pay $200 as a 'survival fee' which they did, to the representatives of their faction, and I was asked to pay $20 though when I handed over a fifty I was gazed at coyly and received no change back. We then parted ways and begun to discover and explore life in this new world order. The surviving members of the ultra-religious meta-faction were the new policemen, the teachers and the clerics of known political world and we one by one determined to keep our heads down and survive as best as we could. Life at this point became quite fun, and contrary to intuition it was quite exciting and remarkable living in this strange oppressive village. Romances and intrigue flourished, and somehow we were now either teenagers or had inherited a teenagers mentality as we had all suddenly become aware of each-other and our mutual capacity for reciprocal sexual feelings. It was a lot like graduating from primary school and emerging into high-school.

A series of bizarre plots, adventures and mischievous pranks dotted the next hour or two of the dream (and yes I am adamant it was this long) and I became virtually lost within the entertaining world that unfolded before me. At some point things became somewhat serious, and an energy of insurrection or uprising was in the air. I cannot recall specific details, but at some point through a Sunday school-esque classroom lesson about how "each ethnicity-faction is distinctly different" and "therefore should not mix or become friends"... an ostensibly cynical method for the ruling elite to maintain their powerbases, I reasoned... I got up and 'stole' a series of plastic disks with symbols printed on them, that were supposed to represent pseudoscientific evidence for genetic differences between the factions... and somehow as I ran out of the classroom this mere act heralded the beginning of the uprising, and I was its reluctant leader.

The dream goes blank for a while, for the memories and emotions are far too intense and the images far too hazy for me to be able to transfer them into words or narrative, but this was one of the best parts of the dream. I later recall coming back from a sensitive mission of some sort, and being greeted by two girls who had been childhood romantic interests from the very start of the dream, but who I had not seen for some time. We were all in our early teens by now. One rushed up to me and jumped on me in a kind of flying aerial hug, and I was overcome with joy when suddenly the next one jealously did the same and I felt myself divided and confused, for I liked them both tremendously. Looking back, they were pretty much just variations of my present, real-life romantic interest (Hi Chan) differentiated only by their extremely curly and straight hair respectively. I also think the curly-haired one represented this specific individuals confidence and masculine tendencies, while the straight hair represented her meek and feminine side, but all being said it was the same person.

The world was turning for the better, and I was filled with optimism and joy for the revolution against tribalism for political purposes was coming to an end, but before I could execute my plans I could sense my vision fading and a desperate desire to stay in the dream came over me. But it was too late; for I was well and truly waking up and I emerged into consciousness at 5am, in part dazed and confused, in part impressed with awe and in part simply longing for return to this universe of my own creation. I went back to sleep, but did not return at all.

๑๑๑

Analysis time. I suppose you can see the common themes? Lord of the Flies? Tick. Current France/ISIS/West-versus-East cultural turmoil? Tick. The Hunger Games.... yes, shudder, tick. It seems my dreaming brain has concocted a virtual reality from whatever it had laying around, up to and including a Scout camp from my childhood, a book I have not read in over 10 years, and a film series that I detest. That said; it was totally worth it and I commend my own imagination for having taken me this far. Perhaps the single biggest influence on this dream, if you have read my previous entries, was my own dream entry 'I am my own Complexes' which it most certainly shares some stylistic themes with.

Well, I'll leave it there. This dream was so amazing it pretty much speaks for itself. I only wish I could have actually found a way to record its real-time duration... for as scientifically implausible as it seems, it felt like it lasted a good 4-5 hours in the depth of content it covered, which would be an amazing feat of physiology were it even remotely possible.