Lent out a manuscript copy of my first NaNoWriMo novel the other day, somewhat against innate introversion tendency. This here is an exercise in letting things out, letting things go. Also testing out document embedding through issuu.com.
So below is the twelfth chapter of Tales of Andrew Waters, a chapter that stood out to me for some reason, written in the month of November 2004. Below that is the full book.
Chapter 12 – The Dream
I don’t usually dream really that much at all. They say you’re always dreaming while you’re asleep and it’s just that you don’t always remember your dreams half the time when you wake up, but I’m not too sure about that really. If dreaming is always that same process, where your eyes begin to go darting crazy all about in rapid eye movements and all and they measure the same difference in your brain waves and everything, then why would some dreams be remembered and others forgotten? Maybe it’s just the way certain dreams interact with the reality of your mind that really makes a difference. I have no idea. When I do dream, the ones I remember after I wake up, they’re always really vivid and all like it’s not even really a dream or anything. There’s also always all these strange things happening in the dream that wouldn’t usually happen in real life, just little spots of incongruence, but it’s like I just accept that they’re happening and all and don’t even worry about it too much, just going on with whatever I’m doing and just put everything in place, even the things that don’t seem like they would fit. I think it’s strange that sometimes after you’ve just woken up, you can remember just about every part of your dream, but then as the day goes on, you keep on losing more and more of all the details and everything. I sometimes wonder where those details go when they disappear from your memory. Is it possible that they just don’t exist any more? I think it’s more probable that they’d most likely just migrated over to another part of the brain or something, because sometimes when I remember something, like things that have happened to me and just trivial daily events, I’m always getting this weird feeling like I don’t know if what I’m remembering really happened or if it’s maybe just part of some mundane dream that’s just gotten all mixed in with reality.
Anyway, the dream I had while sitting up against that dirty, old tree in the alleyway, was like no other dream I’d ever had; I’m not kidding. And I can still remember just about every small detail like I’d just woken up from it, still thinking it all over in my head and everything. Usually my dreams are not at all that exciting really, about just things I’d done during the day or various things I’d been thinking about and all, but this one seemed different, like all profound and significant and everything, like it could have had some kind of meaning in it or something. Everyone is always saying how dreams can have all these hidden meanings and messages and whatever and that they are a door to your unconscious mind and all, like that weird, old, crazy psychologist over in wherever who thought that just about every dream you ever have symbolised something dirty about your mother or whatever. What a nutcase. I don’t really believe in all that too much though.
Anyway, I remember it started off in this really wide open space with blue skies and rolling hills and all that rubbish and I was lying down on my back on top of one of these really green grassy hills, just watching the clouds pass on by and seeing what little fuzzy animals or whatever I could make out from the billowing shapes. It was also almost like I was somehow looking down on myself lying on the hill and also looking at the clouds from the hill at the same time. I leaned my head to the right and saw there in the distance, all these really tall buildings and everything, like this giant city metropolis lining the horizon and I thought how nice and peaceful and everything it was to be up on my green mountain like I was, just breathing the cool morning air and all. I looked up again at the clouds once more to see what I could see, but after lying there staring at the shapes for a few minutes, it was like my mind just refused to see any more fuzzy animals and all the clouds just kept looking painfully more and more like plain old stupid clouds.
I began to suspect that something wasn’t quite right and looking down, I suddenly realised that I wasn’t wearing any clothes. It was okay though. There wasn’t anyone else around anyway so I wasn’t embarrassed or anything, but I noticed that on my hands and on my feet and everywhere was growing like all this dark fur and it continued growing until I was pretty much covered from head to toe in this thick furry coat. Then it became apparent what was happening to me. I was evolving, only kind of reverse over millions of years in time and lying there, slowly becoming more and more like some kind of apeman or whatever, I thought I’d better try to get up. I rolled over and pushed myself up on my hands and feet and then tried standing, but found, no matter hard I tried, that I just couldn’t keep upright properly for very long and had to keep setting my furry hands down on the ground to stay balanced. I looked to the right again to where I’d seen the big city before, full of buildings and everything, but now instead there were all these trees everywhere, a huge forest that looked as though it was spreading all over the countryside like some kind of mouldy green growth on the bark of a tree. There was no mistaking it, it was indeed coming closer and before I knew it, there were all these trees, springing up everywhere around me, turning the lush green hill into this dense, dark rainforest and all, with the squawks of birds and everything coming from high up in the trees.
I noticed that I’d grown this really long curly tail, I was quite a bit smaller than I had been just a second ago and was now down on all fours looking around with large beady eyes, when I got this sudden urge climb up one of the trees and so I did. Before long, I was swinging around from tree to tree having a hell of a time in the canopy. I felt myself changing once more and this time, I turned into this little rodent creature that was apparently not very good at climbing because I fell right out of the treetops and landed in this real disgusting mud next to a large riverbed that smelled really bad, but somehow I didn’t really care too much. I had a good little shake, just like dogs are always doing to dry themselves after they’ve just had their weekly bath, that seemed to come just naturally to me, like it was instinct and all, but before I had a chance to start licking my fur and everything, I turned into some kind of scaly lizard for a second. Then I became this really slimy creature that looked like a squishy grey frog with a tail, hopping all around the mud and the edges of the river and then I was this really weird fish, using my little front fins to trudge through the muddy water of the riverbank and then at last, when I got to the water’s edge, I dived in.
I had never been a terribly good swimmer in real life, but it came just about as natural as anything where I was and I was having a hell of a great time zipping around the great lake, and then, all of a sudden, I got this great urge to just follow the current and swim out to sea. I felt all my fins and whatever becoming all streamlined and everything as I began to dive down into the depths of the ocean and then race back up again over and over until I got the fright of my life when my seeing, hearing and just about all the feeling in my body just simply vanished like that. I was like floating, just about dead in the water with my long jellyfish tentacles trailing behind me and no matter how hard I tried, all I could do was float there, virtually at the mercy of the ocean currents, flapping my body to say afloat and this strange craving, like I was just dying for something, anything to just brush past my trailing arms.
The end part of my dream was kind of weird, stranger than the rest I mean. Missing most of my senses, all I can remember are all these different sensations as I felt myself progressively became smaller and smaller, an amoeba type thing, then a little single cell bacteria type thing, then I could feel absolutely nothing, but I imagined I was some kind of amino acid or something floating in my primordial pond of goo, completely at the whim of nature and everything. Then strangely, right at the end of my dream, just before I woke up to the alley way under the moonlight, I felt this odd kind of feeling like I was nothing, but then not just nothing. It became like almost that I was nothing and everything at the same time and then it was more like the very concept of nothingness or whatever never even existed. I know it sounds really stupid and all, but there’s no way I can convey to you what it felt like because I can’t really explain it all that well in words. Anyway, so that’s when I woke up and saw that the moon had disappeared, dark sky had become a touch lighter and a few early birds had sensed that the sun was on its way and were beginning to call in the new morning.
