Saturday, March 01, 2014

Strange Dreams...

I was living in some little suburb of some weird dream version of Nashville that looked more like Taos, New Mexico, only greener, with mountains ringing the horizon. I'd get together with some neighbors every Monday night to play Scrabble, and among these neighbors were Johnny Carson and Kathy Lee Gifford. I borrowed the USB adapter for Johnny's Kindle and had to sneak it back into his house one Tuesday morning without waking up his Lhasa Apso and triggering a spastic barking fit.

There was an early Cold War propaganda film about the US Navy's powerful new fleet of supercarriers that were going to keep the Russian bombers away from our eastern seaboard, complete with five or ten Forrestal-class carriers starting in stern-to-stern star patterns and steaming away from each other while launching synchronized pairs of F8U and F3D fighters.

There were also these giant fixed pentagonal platforms, like carrier decks on oil rigs, that had five outward-facing catapults launching A4D Skyhawks. There was no way the aicraft could recover on those platforms. I guess they were supposed to shoot down Russian bombers and ditch or fly back to the mainland or something? The whole thing was like some Brobdingnagian techno-mechanical Esther Williams production.

Later, I was standing in a park overlooking the ocean. The slope down to the waters of the bay was covered in loose rock. There was a plane overhead, an early prototype jet with twin tails like a de Havilland Vampire, that came roaring across at treetop height. It had a red fuselage and yellow wings and empennage. We were watching one of the first jet flights in the U.S. and the plane was moving faster than anything anybody's ever seen. I remember I knew the pilot and waved as the plane streaked overhead.

The plane pulled straight up and over into a loop, and then roared straight down into the waters of the bay a few hundred yard away at full throttle. Debris went flying everywhere, including something skipping and bouncing into the rocks on the slope below us. Someone else in the park went scrambling down to get it as my brain processed what the lime-green missile I had just seen lodge itself in the rocks below was. "No, don't!" I yelled, "that's his helmet!" And yes, like the airborne song, his head was still inside.

And then some other stuff happened.

And then I woke up.

I realized I had just had a dream that would make Absolutely No Sense Whatsoever to a human living a hundred years ago.
.

18 comments:

Mike Fagan said...

Er, I'm not sure it makes much sense now either - never mind a hundred years ago! ;-)

greg said...

Maybe a bit of undercooked potato?

TBeck said...

Last night I was back in high school trying to remember what classes I had registered for at the beginning of the semester and wondering where the hell my pants were.

Cincinnatus said...

When I was younger, the Blue Angels flew A4D Skyhawks.

Paul said...

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense now. If we follow the links in my mind brings be back to a conversation I had with and old high patrol man on the effacy of helmets. He said if they wear a helmet we can always find the head.

He did not go into whether it was still attached.

Kristophr said...

I do dream interpretations for free:

The Forestall class carriers were in a pentagonal formation to contain Yog-Shugoth, just before they launched him at the Eurasian continent in reprisal for the Russians forcing the Fulda Gap.

IA, IA, America, Fuck Yea!

Bob said...

Carson would give you a funny look about the Kindle, I'm thinking.

global village idiot said...

Much of your dream would have made perfect sense to the World's Second-Favorite Fabian, H.G. Wells.

https://archive.org/details/worldsetfreeast00goog

The World Set Free was published in 1914. The second half of the book may be safely ignored - it's nothing more than a screed for technocratic collectivism. But the first half is pretty astonishing for what Wells got right.

gvi

Joel said...

Hey, Tam? Your war nerd is sticking out a little. Right...there, yeah. :)

Will Brown said...

I realized I had just had a dream that would make Absolutely No Sense Whatsoever to a human living a hundred years ago.

I bet Freud could have strained half-a-box of cigars out of that one. :)

burkdoggy said...

So how's Johnny doing?

Ed Jones said...

Ben looking at old Popular Science Mag covers lately.

Kevin said...

You have FAR better dreams than I do.

Mine usually involve work.

aepilot_jim said...

That's it! No more spicy Italian sausage and pepperjack cheese pizzas right before bed time for you, young lady!

aepilot_jim said...

That's it! No more spicy Italian sausage and pepperjack cheese pizzas right before bed time for you, young lady!

Jennifer said...

that's a good one

Maxwell said...

Um, just WTF have you been eating before bedtime? My dreams are dull, and I need an upgrade.
Also, I personally think the A-4s are one of the prettiest planes that ever flew. Just MHO.

PhilabOR said...

Picture yourself in a boat on a river...