Note: stan requests his name and address be kept with the dream - r
stan kulikowski ii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
DATE : 23 september 1998 08:35
DREAM : ron's pet shop
=( wednesday night, i got home just before 22:00, tired from teaching the networking course and all day preparation for the java lesson. my mother said i looked really tired, but i had some web work to do getting a newsletter into its archives before i could get to sleep. around 01:00 i got that done and caught up on my evening email. by this time i had regained my alertness, but went to sleep anyway around 02:00 after reading in the final chapter of decline and fall. )=
behind his house in massachusetts, ron fussell has finally gotten around to remodeling his garage, expanding it into a large barn into which he has moved his pet supply business. when i knew him, ron raised hamsters in his basement which he sold to local pet stores. he specialized in exotic dwarf hamsters that were difficult to breed. he could better prices for the dwarf hamsters compared to the usual sirian golden hamsters. years back he started this operation to keep a supply of feeders available for a snake we shared. eventually the snake died, but the operation of keeping a population of mice, hamsters and gerbils kept going in his basement. now he has expanded the operation into his brand new barn and he is showing me the set up for the first time.
since the barn is new, everything has a new clean look and smell. the hay scattered loosely on the floor is all fresh and all the timbers of the structure, though hand hewn and rough have that raw wood texture to them. very little paint on the interior of the building. the front area where the customers are to come in is mostly small cages and tanks with a variety of small animals for sale.
"and here we have our basic stocks, your teddy bear hamsters, black gerbils, and the russian dwarf." he shows me rack after rack of the small creatures, all busy scurrying around, do what ever business rodents do. a lot of constant activity which presumably has as much significance to them as our actions do to us.
"oh, here is the new breed i am trying out." ron points to some larger cages mounted on the wall a bit higher up than the rest. inside is a beautiful creature, a little larger than a kitten but smaller than a cat. it has long fur which swishes gracefully when the animal moves. it is generally a golden brown color with leopard spots all over its long fur. it looks and moves more like a monkey with really short legs, but ron assures me it is a rodent of the hamster family. "i don't know how they will breed. i think they will need larger cages than these rabbit hutches." he takes one out and gives it to me to handle.
up close i can see that it does have the pinched rodent face with its incisors showing when it smacks its lips. the face is not very attractive up close, but the long shiny leopard fur has a nice smooth feel to it. its legs beneath the shaggy coat are a little longer than i had expected. it looks more like a guinea pig, but i have to take ron's word that it is a large hamster.
"can it learn to ride on your shoulder like a parrot or a monkey?" i ask him.
"i don't know." he replies. "just got the pair of them in and have not had much time to handle them. that would make for a convenient way to handle them." i put this one on my shoulder and walk around a bit. it does seem to know to hang on there, but since the rodent feet do not have prehensile digits, it has a difficult time keeping its grip as i move. after a little trial, i bring it back to be cradled in my arms where it is more comfortable. i doubt the shoulder ride will be a frequent method of activity for it.
"one of the things i have learned about keeping these is that they need a few peanuts in their feed each day." ron points to a large bowl of peanuts over by the cages. i take a few out, giving one to the hamster and shelling one open for me. the nuts inside are a little larger than usual and taste rather bland, unsalted and under roasted. not very good, but the rodent seems delighted.
going around the corner from the small animal area, he has displayed some accessory merchandise. i examine a sort of totem pole made of a blonde bleached wood, shaped with various faces but it ends with a large ball that mushrooms out on the top. "that is a monkey totem" ron tells me. there are sashes of cloth attached to the sides which give squirrel monkeys a grip to climb and play on it. i tap the thing to find out that it is hollow and surprisingly light weight. the totem is a somewhat less than two meters tall and less than two thirds a meter thick. it is a thick piece of furniture. i can not imagine them being a very popular item of purchase, but maybe the monkeys like it.
as we turn the corner into the larger area of the barn, ron puts out his hand to stop me from going on. "we better be careful here." he tells me pointing to the calico tiger. "she is pregnant and i do not know how she will take to strangers around her litter of cubs."
the calico tiger is a large cat, bigger than a german shepard but smaller than a great dane. it is a very stocky animal, but the startling thing about it is its colors. it looks like it is made of a patchwork of cloth. little bits of color in reds, orange, brown and white cover its body in irregular patterns. it looks more like a small lion with a shaggy mane on its neck than a tiger. the colors have a muted look to them like a fabric that has faded with many washings. ron tells me that effect is achieved by a speckle of the white guard hairs in the fur throughout the colored areas. over all it reminds me of the tiger in winnie the poo, larger and more alive.
the calico tiger sniffs his hand and looks at me with suspicion. i move very carefully through her area. the straw bedding on the floor is mixed with squares of cloth in the same colors as her coat. apparently her nesting behavior is to shred fabric into pieces which match the coloration of her cubs. they are very difficult to see as they wiggle around on the floor under foot. with earh step i have to move the small cats and rags away until i see a clear piece of wooden floor to put my foot on. i wonder if the mother cat is so touchy about its young around strangers than ron leaves it free about the shop. surely liability would be huge if it bit one of customers. i am finally near enough to the end of the tiger's nest that i can jump out onto clear floor.
turning the corner into the larger back area of the barn. there are many more cages keeping animals of all sorts. tanks for the snakes and lizards, perches for some parrots. looking down in my hand, i find a brown piece of dried beef jerky which i should have given to the tiger to make friends.
looking down at the piece of beef jerky, i think that i shall have to be sure to get this in my dream log. i then realize that i am sleeping and that i can wake up if i want to start writing this up. now wait a minute, if i am dreaming this, then right now i am lucid, a rare state of dreaming for me. i am aware that this is only the third time i have been lucid that i can recall in my dream records. ok, i stop the process of coming out to wake up and try to get back to dreaming. my sleep starts getting deeper again, this time intentionally. as i walk around the pet shop, i wonder what special use can i put this lucidity to. perhaps i can use this feeling of total control to explore some universal problem of human existence: the problem of self awareness; or the issue of free will; or the existential abyss of mortality; out of body astral projection; the luck of predestined fate; or the wellspring of imagination. anything is possible here. with this rare lucid moment, one foot in ron's pet shop and the other nearly awake in my bed at home, i can tap into these issues and discover something totally new in my experience. now, how can i best benefit with this control and power?
as i am thinking about how to use this opportunity, ron's wife debby comes up to me with a game she has invented. their son, lee, comes with her and they want me to play it with them. "it is a lot like cosmic wimpout" she explains. in that moment the lucidity slips away unrecognized and i am back in the dream as an experience rather than control.
in the first part of the game the three of us take turns drawing puzzle pieces out a cloth bag to assemble a playing piece for the rest of the game. you don't know what your piece will look like until its done. if the part you draw out of the bag does not fit anywhere on the assembly so far, you have to throw it back in for the next person's turn. eventually you get a complete piece and are ready to begin the movement phase, throwing dice. as is, i am the first one to get a complete assembly. my marker looks like a small rocket ship crossed with a food processor. it makes a buzzing noise when i turn the handle of the processor. since my piece is done before theirs, i can roll dice on my turn instead of drawing more parts from the bag.
i roll a three which does not seem to be the number i needed to move my rocket blender onto the felt playing board. debby completes her piece on her next draw. it is a robot that plays a sitar and puffs of smoke come out of its cheeks. lee keeps drawing parts that do not mount on his incomplete assembly.
i roll again and still do not get the number to get on the playing felt. debby rolls a three and moves her piece onto the left path and hops inwards two steps. "wait a minute" i say. "i thought we had to roll onto the number one mark by exact count. you went two more hops."
she tells me that i have to come by exact count since i was first done with the building phase, but the second one can over roll the first mark in order to catch up with the first. this makes no sense to me since i am not on the board, there is nothing to catch up to. she is ahead of me and i am still trying to roll a one to get on. "that's just the rules" she says with a smile. well, i can tell who made these rules, i guess. it is her game.
lee completes his piece on the next draw. it is a pencil that writes with chocolate. i finally roll a one and move my blender rocket onto the first mark of the right hand path of the felt board. unlike cosmic wimpout which has a circular board, these two trails are just linear and i wonder what happens when we go off the end of them.
debby rolls a large number and overshoots the lips. at different places on both paths, there are arrows pointing to objects in the middle. debby missed the first arrow that pointed to the clay lips. if you land on them you get to wear them or put them on you playing piece which adds to its abilities in the next phase of the game beyond the felt board. i see other little objects in the path ahead of us: two brass balls, a feather from icarus' wing, some gear sprockets, a puff of a blue cloud, nero's tear for seneca, the emancipation proclamation, a soap bubble, the chicken named rome, antidisestablishmenttarianism, a tooth of a saber tooth tiger, the koorinor diamond (unlucky for men), the keys to karma, the sound right eye of horus, a powderhouse fart and the falling fellatcio (unlucky for women). lee says that i should try to get the lips.
=( i wake here about 08:30 and hurry to get the computer on for this dream record. it is true that i have had very few lucid dreams to enter in the log, so i am eager to get this one in so i start typing right away. unfortunately the lucid phase of the dream between the tour of the pet store and playing the game did not last long enough to solve any of those problems. i had wondered what the exit from lucidity was like, being inconclusive on my two prior experiences. this time it was a physical sensation of rising up toward waking consciousness, or sinking back into the dream state. i wanted to keep the balance between the two until i decided what to do, but i could not. i only had a few seconds of control before the people in the dream drew me back into their frame of reference. because i was undecided on what to do with in, it appears that i lost the opportunity to use it. )=
. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
