Tag: #Change

Escaping the ‘god of the house’

November 2nd, 2023

Dreams can tell you a lot about yourself. If you decipher them correctly.

In fact, I think the unconscious gives us some best guesses about the big questions from time to time. And some of its guesses are pretty good. Unfortunately it’s damn hard to figure out what it’s saying.

I don’t think guides or charts are any help either.

Some dream symbols are probably common enough. I always considered tornadoes to mean, “chaos ahead.” I looked it up on some dream interpretation website and it said something close to that.

But I’m a weirdo. I read a lot of weird shit. I think a lot of weird shit. I like science fiction and trippy movies. The trippier the better. So you never know what my brain is going to throw at me.

I had a bizarre one years ago that I think I understand now.

I was in the kitchen of a house that I wanted to leave. But in the living room was a creature I was told was “the god of the house.” It was around three feet tall, with a gray body shaped like the base of a sea anemone.

I think it may have been sitting on top of a table.

Around it was a blur of tentacles, whipping around the room faster than I could see.

I had to go past it to get to the front door. Its tentacles could touch every book, every piece of furniture in the house. And it could see my every move.

When I stared at the god of the house, its eyes proliferated. When I looked away, they diminished. I don’t know how many eyes it had. I just got the impression of “too many.”

Someone said, “It has no power outside. It is all-powerful in the house.”

I was afraid to run past this thing. Its tentacles might grab me if I tried to leave. In the dream I stayed in the kitchen, but in real life, I did leave, bit by bit.

I think the house was me, and the “god of the house” represented identity. You know, the “you” that you’re proud to show off, to yourself and others. I think it must have been one of those times in my life when I was becoming a different person.

If you’ve ever been through a big change, losing your religion, changing your worldview, you know how scary it can be. Can you leave that part of you behind? If you do, will you be anybody at all?

The “god of the house” must have been the part of me that didn’t want me to change. As long as I remained the same, it could control me. When I became somebody else, it could not.
Why I can’t give up on the South

June 20th, 2023

March Slave by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

To say I don’t like the direction much of Southern culture has taken would be an understatement. Though not all of us are so resistant to change. I know I changed a lot over my lifetime.

But there’s another reason I can’t give up on us: My dad.

My wife and I were chilling out, listening to music yesterday.

Out of nowhere, I suggested we listen to some classical music. I especially wanted to hear Tchaikovsky’s March Slav and Capricio Italien.

But it wasn’t out of nowhere. Sunday was Father’s Day.

If I ever wanted proof that the unconscious mind is always busy…

Dad has been gone for almost 30 years now, but I still miss the guy. Dad had failings. He was a man. But he gave me the parts of myself I’m most proud of.

When I discover a new band or a new type of music I always have this impulse: I have to see what Dad thinks of this. Then I remember I can’t. Dad was all about music. He played clarinet, directed high school band for many years.

He taught me to love music. Music was always playing in the house. He especially loved classical. I learned to love it myself. Also turned him onto the Alan Parsons Project late in life – he finally gave rock a chance.

When I read a book that makes my head spin, I wish I could talk to him about it. I can still see him lying on the couch with his nose in a book, or sitting at the kitchen table with a book and a bowl of popcorn.

He turned me onto science fiction by handing me a copy of The Star Beast by Robert Heinlein when I was 9 or 10. He turned the walls of our house into a library, full of history, literature and science. I could read anything I wanted.

Capriccio Italien by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Berlin Philharmonic Conducted by Herbert von Karajan

He’s the reason it almost seems like I’m still in college. He talked to me like an adult, and could converse about nearly anything. I can’t stop reading the hard books and searching for Truth. That’s how he was.

He was a deacon in the Baptist Church. He directed the choir. He had four or five versions of the Bible, all highlighted and marked. He regularly consulted Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, even knowing that Asimov was an atheist.

If you couldn’t tell already he was not a typical Texan, Southerner or Baptist. But he had a curious mind and he grew, and changed. He came from poor and working class Southerners transplanted to West Texas. He served in the military, went to college and found a way earn a living from music in rural Texas.

Many of his best qualities came via education and the military, but some of them came from Southern culture. If Southern Culture managed to produce someone like my dad, there has to be something in it worth saving.

I guess this is one of those things that I’ve been hung up trying to express. Hope I did OK.
Which version gets to be me?

March 27th, 2023

David Bowie – Changes

I’ve lost most of last night’s dream, which felt like quite an adventure. I was with a team of people and we were on a mission.

Some were NPCs (learned that one recently from gamers) who were there for me to talk to, some were me, trying to make plans. Sometimes I forgot which was which – you know how you sometimes swap characters in dreams.

Our mission was to stop whoever was manipulating our timelines, changing our consciousness, making us over. We all wanted the identities WE chose.

Just before I woke up, someone who both was and wasn’t me said, “These aren’t the clothes I was wearing when I went to bed.”

I’d changed, and no memory of that change. Which sounds rather like a message from my unconscious mind, doesn’t it? Seeing as how my unconscious mind in charge of which dream characters wear what.

I’ve been some very different people over the course of my life. That’s why I believe in redemption and why I refuse to believe people can’t change. People don’t change all at once, but we DO change.

Sometimes it makes my head swim, remembering some of the beliefs I once held. Like, how could that have been me? Yet he was. I have the memories to prove it.

But just like in my dream, all those identities you used to be are in there somewhere, tugging at your sleeve, telling you what to do. But you’re in charge, not them. You get to pick which ones you listen to.

Tag: #Change

Escaping the ‘god of the house’

Why I can’t give up on the South

Which version gets to be me?