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Dream I have last night...


I can't really remember the beginning of it, but by the time I start remembering, we're in Remi's room (It's in third Campbell, facing Mellon), and he's going to assassinate the (I think) Critique of Pure Reason. So he puts on his big bird costume, which is understandably necessary for such an effort, leans out the window, and lets go several shots. There are a couple of screams down below, it turns out because a couple of the shots went astray. We go downstairs and outside to investigate, and nobody seems to be hurt (it was only a BB gun it would appear); in fact, one of those hit (Val, I think) cheers him on for his efforts, and indeed, the Critique seems to be dead. But we need to get to seminar (I ask how much time we have... we may just have time), so I dash into Mellon, only to realize that it's not actually in Mellon. So I head back to my room. Walking past Paca (which also seems to have back campus stretching out beside it, where the campbell parking lot used to be, but this is unsurprising in my dream), some things happen that I've forgotten, in the midst of which I see Anne McShane, carrying a cardboard box of the sort one sells candy out of, making her way along back campus away from the college, apparently to escape from her sister, Patrice McShane, who is carrying a similar box and bouncing along toward her. So anyway, I need to get my seminar reading, and I'm in Remi's room, with Kerne, and Remi's roommate, and someone pops in to look for Remi's former roommate, but no such luck, eh? Kerne suggests that I check if Remi has a copy of my seminar reading, and sure enough, there's a Critique lying in a stack of books by his bed, the pretty new one from Cambridge, at that. I start to take it, but think the better of it. Kerne has a Phaedo, but it's the wrong translation, and I tell him to get Brann Kalkavage Salem. We head downstairs to my room, which I look for, only to remember that my room isn't on first Campbell, it's in Chase-Stone... I dash across campus, sort of a Run Lola sort of thing, past the library, start to go down the steps and past the fountain, meet up with the parents of a prospective, who have a couple of questions, but I explain I don't have time to answer them. I think I pass the parents off to Kerne. By this time it's almost 20:25, I'm very late indeed, but I dash up the Chase-Stone stairs, run into Basia and Suzie on the way, say hello, they say something but I can't remember what. I burst into my room (for a sec I sort of see the building from the outside while I'm doing this, very odd), search my bookshelf and find my Pluhar Critique (all this while I never make the connection between Kant's Critique of Pure Reason the seminar reading, and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason the thing that Remi assassinated... I'm not even absolutely sure it was what Remi assassinated, I don't remember that bit real well), and dash off to seminar, which is in the L2 level of Woodward Hall (AKA the BBC). I walk down the hall a bit and burst (quietly) into the seminar room, where the tutors clearly have their doubts about the appropriateness of such a late arrival (20:35 at this point), as I do myself, and I apologize. They seem to be cutting out sort of two-foot-long-4-6-inch-thick-sides rounded-triangle-shaped pieces of cardboard, and then applying some sort of preprepared monopoly board pictures to them, making some sort of triangular monopoly (I think they designed the arrangement of the squares themselves... it was from a sort of kit). Maria's there, but I don't really note the fact. My seminar tutors talk to me for just a minute about grad school, and one of them hands me a folder of some forms that I need to fill out, sort of a self-evaluation, or a test, or an evaluation of how my experience was majoring in English at St. John's, something to this effect, all these feelings are present (even the Eng. at SJC one). I remember one question makes me think for a while, asking me to class myself as Ancient, Modern, or other explain. I have to think about this one for a while, and I think while we're in the van, driving past green fields. I decide more or less that I'll argue for the Moderns in a humanities context, where the bias is toward the ancients, and for the Ancients in a sciences context, where the bias is toward the moderns. Overall for myself, a qualified Modern, with the qualification that this doesn't mean Descartes, but the final decision there may have come while I was awake. Eventually, I realize that we're driving through west Marin County, and remark on it. One of my seminar tutors notes that it's a lovely area, aspects of the surrounding geography, I note that I already know having lived there in my earlier youth. She notes that we can't make it to the best bit because we don't have the money (what we do have, apparently, is $12 per seminar student plus an extra $6 she's contributing h'self). We pull into the campground, start to set up by a tree--nice line of trees actually, now I think about it it reminds me just a touch of the campground in Florence. If I'd thought of it before, I would have invited my mother to come along on this... how much warning did we have before hand? It's explained to me that we've known since Tuesday, which is a few days ago now. She should be here, because she said she wanted to meet my seminar and now's a perfect opportunity. I'm going to go call my mother, realize that I'll have to do it collect since there's no way I have the coinage to call up there... evidently I do so pretty damn quick, because the next thing I remember my parents (yes, parents) are there chatting with everyone else. The three of us make a series of punning transformations of a sentence someone said, growing less appropriate with every step, but there it is. And it's not long after we reach this state of affairs that I wake up.


Colophon


Dream I have last night...

Summary: The author recalls a peculiar dream he had one night in may, not long after graduating. Very exciting. Guns. Philosophy. People arriving late in seminar. Crazy fucked up shit without any chemical enhancement.

Keywords: dreams, subconscious, Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, St. John's

Created: 24 May 2000

Modified: 30 June 2000