2.17.07

my night quickly went from fake blood to very real-seeming blood, the former with regard to my disaster-party costume, and the second with regard to my dreams. i had a series of really horrifying dreams, containing more violence than any dreams i had ever before had: i'm sure of it.

the first in the series of dreams included me walking around with a male friend. i ran into someone i had previously dated, at a weird nightclub. he was in the back room, sitting on a gaudy leather couch with two girls, watching pornographic videos on a television. one of the girls was seated behind him, at a table, and the other was on the floor in front of him, naked. the one on the floor had straight blonde shoulder-length hair, and a seriously dazed expression. somehow upon seeing her i knew that she was a prositute, but she looked somewhere between drugged and pure evil. she wasn't really paying attention to the television screen, but instead had her head turned toward the boy as he sat on the couch. her lips were slightly parted, and he started kissing her, although her response was minimal. he was kissing her savagely, and she let him, but she did not respond. the whole scene was really grotesque in a way that i cannot describe.

my friend and i then found ourselves up on some sort of rocky ledge or in the heights of buildings, high above the ground at a location with a lot of vision of our surroundings. first we saw a man walk by below, and he was struck with a suitcase on the body by another man. the man kept hitting him with the briefcase, really hard, and it started knocking the skin off of the man on the ground. the beating ensued, and the man was killed. these men - the ones who had repeatedly hit the man - seemed to look around them, and as soon as they came across another person or sighted another person, they would violently beat that person to death or shoot that person to death.

this dream went on for what seemed like at least four hours, and i witnessed, in the dream, the murder of what must have been hundreds, maybe even thousands of people, all of them guilty of nothing that i was aware of, and all of them violently killed, not just as means of their elimination, but for the sport of it, and out of anger. one part of the dream that i remember distinctly involved a locker room full of girls, filling an entire floor of a building, all of them naked. one by one they were killed and beaten. snipers and men with the intent of raping them and men who just wanted to see blood. from my place high above, on a ledge or something, i was able to see all of this. i didn't want to watch, but i had to keep an eye out for my own safety so as to know where the shooters were. essentially, my dream began with hundreds, maybe even thousands of people milling about. by the end they were almost all dead, and i was surrounded by human bodies.

i have never, ever, seen so much violence and been so afraid. never in a movie; never on the news (because they don't show that kind of thing on the news); never in real life. i hope never to see that kind of violence again. but it seemed all too real.

i woke up after this, really kind of distraught. kind of more-so than i've ever been made to be by a dream. i made myself go back to sleep, and i had another dream. in this dream, i was at some kind of party. i was introduced to someone, and instead of conversing with me, they shook my hand and looked into my eyes, in a really intense manner. they said, "China. 1949." and they said some name, which i can't remember. and then they walked away.

i woke up after this, suddenly, at 7:30 a.m., unable to go back to sleep, even though i'd only gone to bed at about 5:00 a.m. or somewhere around that time. i went to wikipedia and typed in "china", and i found that the People's Republic of China, established by the Communist party of China, led by Mao Zedong, was founded on October 1, 1949. this scared the shit out of me, because although i'm sure i learned the year of the founding of the ROC at some point, i seriously doubt that i'd ever be able to relay it to someone. perhaps it was buried deep in my subconscious or unconscious. it was really eerie though. it was as if i was being sent some kind of super-intense message, and it was as if i was being shown something for a really important reason: something that no one should ever be shown.

the massacre that i witnessed seemed something not from the past, and not from the future. it seemed current. i don't know what the connection was between that and the reference to the ROC that was in my other dream. i'm convinced the dreams were connected, because the second happened shortly after the wake of the violence that had just filled my head. perhaps the two were meant to be linked as references or comparisons, or perhaps the ROC is somehow linked to the event that i witnessed in my mind.

i don't know what else to write about it. i want to shake the images of people being slaughtered from my head, but i can't do so. i guess i'll do what i always do: go to delta and get coffee and breakfast and surround myself with people that i care about.

i guess something i found online after researching mao zedung (mao tse-tung) scared me a little more than anything else. it was this quote that i found, which seemed way, way too appropriate and way too relevant for me to feel at all at ease:

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." -Mao Tse-Tung

he was the central political figure in China from 1893-1976, which means he was the key political figure in the year of 1949.

i know that i learned a lot about all of this in highschool, when i worked for Students For a Free Tibet, but i find it hard to believe that i would have retained knowledge of the date of the foundation of the ROC.

also, on wikipedia, i found this: "Mao's policies are blamed for the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese." (and this doesn't even mention Tibetans)

did i dream some sort of collective conscious flashback to the deaths of Chinese citizens killed as a result of what happened in china in 1949? and why the fuck would i dream about such a thing? i'm seriously, seriously a little bit freaked out.

that people can remain positive and loving in a world where violence exists is something really, really important. that human nature is so willing to love despite so much reason to fear and so much reason to hate is also really important. i don't know if i believe in god, but i would thank him for taking me out of that violent and very real dream and into my bedroom; into the start of a new day hopefully free of such violence; and ultimately into the arms of friends that i would encounter throughout my day.

"i have seen violence in the face of one man, and thus i will face violence in the sea of the world."