essentialsaltes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
essentialsaltes) wrote2007-11-20 06:02 am
essentialsaltes) wrote2007-11-20 06:02 am
The Unfortunate Luge
Had a really strange dream this morning, just as I was waking up. It was close to lucid... I wasn't quite in control, but I was much more 'aware' than usual.
Sadly, I was stuck in English class in high school, and the teacher was a cross between my hated 9th grade English teacher Mrs. Gahr and Joan Tyh*rst, who also does not rank among my favoritest people. It was as though I was a new student at the school, still getting my bearings. Due to my instant dislike of the teacher, I was spending more time goofing off and drawing pictures in my notebook than taking notes. The fat cholita behind me was distracted by my off-goofing, and she got the teacher to move me to the front of the room. Then the teacher came up with a brilliant plan, she asked me (and me alone) to do a mwahwah pouquoiquoi (<-- nasal French phrase unknown to me). I asked for clarification, and she said that it was an undirected composition, and that the title of my composition would be... "The Unfortunate Luge".
I asked if I should start now, and she said something that sounded like "loss," which I (for reasons unknown to me) questioningly repeated back at her with the pronunciation of the German "los"; and then the Ukrainian exchange student (or something like that, dressed in her native dress) corrected us both by intoning something like "gelöst". O...kay.
The teacher and the other students left the room, and I can recall in the dream, me hunching in my desk over the lined paper and setting my pen to it and beginning to write... to write angrily and with bloviation aforethought, something very much like this:
At this point, dream-me got tired or distracted of writing, and I wandered out of the classroom, where I discovered -- discover is maybe not the word, since dream-me felt no surprise -- that the classroom was on board a large cruise ship. I found the rest of the class in the bridge, and Mrs. Ty-Gahr wanted to know if I had finished my assignment. I said something to the effect that I had completed it mentally, but not writted it down. She gleefully rounded up the class to go back to the room to hear me read my composition.
I recall distinctly on the way back to the classroom that I had a chat with another classmate, who (Camazotz help me) was Vinnie Barberino from "Welcome Back Kotter". We had a brief, yet poignant, discussion concerning the basic futility of the educational system, and our shared probable future of desperate lives of complete obscurity. Back in the classroom, I read through the previous introductory sentence, and then continued the story:
And then I woke up.
Okay, "Kubla Khan" it ain't, but at least it does allude to "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" for half-credit Coleridge points.
Sadly, I was stuck in English class in high school, and the teacher was a cross between my hated 9th grade English teacher Mrs. Gahr and Joan Tyh*rst, who also does not rank among my favoritest people. It was as though I was a new student at the school, still getting my bearings. Due to my instant dislike of the teacher, I was spending more time goofing off and drawing pictures in my notebook than taking notes. The fat cholita behind me was distracted by my off-goofing, and she got the teacher to move me to the front of the room. Then the teacher came up with a brilliant plan, she asked me (and me alone) to do a mwahwah pouquoiquoi (<-- nasal French phrase unknown to me). I asked for clarification, and she said that it was an undirected composition, and that the title of my composition would be... "The Unfortunate Luge".
I asked if I should start now, and she said something that sounded like "loss," which I (for reasons unknown to me) questioningly repeated back at her with the pronunciation of the German "los"; and then the Ukrainian exchange student (or something like that, dressed in her native dress) corrected us both by intoning something like "gelöst". O...kay.
The teacher and the other students left the room, and I can recall in the dream, me hunching in my desk over the lined paper and setting my pen to it and beginning to write... to write angrily and with bloviation aforethought, something very much like this:
The Unfortunate Luge
His long, fine blonde hair was whipped into a frenzied corona by the Foehn wind, which - up here in the high reaches of the Alps - had none of its warmth, but all of its reputed power to inspire madness, as his steps crunched through the hard crust of snow, slowing his movement, offering him time to reflect how, under similar circumstances, Odysseus had led an army of warriors into the boreal snow, where they came upon an army of polar bears, which, having been tricked by the wily Ithacan into standing at attention, were quickly dispatched by the rude clubs of the Myrmidons.
At this point, dream-me got tired or distracted of writing, and I wandered out of the classroom, where I discovered -- discover is maybe not the word, since dream-me felt no surprise -- that the classroom was on board a large cruise ship. I found the rest of the class in the bridge, and Mrs. Ty-Gahr wanted to know if I had finished my assignment. I said something to the effect that I had completed it mentally, but not writted it down. She gleefully rounded up the class to go back to the room to hear me read my composition.
I recall distinctly on the way back to the classroom that I had a chat with another classmate, who (Camazotz help me) was Vinnie Barberino from "Welcome Back Kotter". We had a brief, yet poignant, discussion concerning the basic futility of the educational system, and our shared probable future of desperate lives of complete obscurity. Back in the classroom, I read through the previous introductory sentence, and then continued the story:
Although he was fond of extreme activities like skydiving and the luge, those were just hobbies, his true love was just enjoying remote areas of snow. And it was here that he made his discovery. HIs eye catching a glint of green, he stooped down and picked up what appeared to be a gemstone, like green amber. Unfortunately, it was the cold-hardened remnant of a loogey hawked up by a Cro-Magnon or Neandertal in ages long past. And this unfortunate loogey carried some virulent strain of disease to which modern man was all too vulnerable.
Upon returning to the lands below, he was at first non-plussed by the fact that the loogey held its cold within it, so that it neither thawed, nor melted, but retained its frozen shape. But more disturbing still was the way in which those he met clawed at their throats and fell. He bore the green talisman like an albatross to all the corners of the earth, until there were few other humans left on earth. Near the end, he bore it toward a white-coated scientist, who croaked, "Is that what I think it is?"
He made an ambiguous gesture and replied, "Itsnot."
And then I woke up.
Okay, "Kubla Khan" it ain't, but at least it does allude to "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" for half-credit Coleridge points.