Incite Full

I’m not sure if it’s the worry about my parents, stress at work, being incredibly busy as of late, or something completely different but weird things have been happening to me lately. I’ll go to sleep and dream very random, yet realistic dreams. The thing is, when I wake up, they are so real and undreamlike it is difficult for me to know if those things really happened or if they did not. I’ve been asking the people involved in my dreams if it’s really happened or not, and I’m getting some odd looks.

Now, I have been working on dream recall. It’s the first step to experience lucid dreaming, something which has been an interest of mine for a while, i’ve simply not applied myself to it. I’m working on recall and dream recognition in tandem, and if this is it working it’s actuall rather frightening to get used to at first. I really do feel like i’m losing part of my mind.

The dreams are about work, or friends, or both and they are very real conversations, perhaps bits and pieces of my waking life mingling and conversing with my unconscious. Not much unlike the Raw Shark Texts. Whatever it is, it has my stomach in knots during the day, and somewhat excited for my dreams at night. Not because they are great, but because it’s kind of weird not knowing what’s real and what is not. I guess I’m living my real own Tyler Durden. Could I wake up as someone else? Would that be such a bad thing?

As will happen when I’m writing, I got distracted by a hockey game and completely lost the train of thought… I’ll just end it here.

“If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.”

From an interview with Christian Bale:

So…outside of your roles, do you have a history of putting yourself in situations where you have to test yourself physically or even court danger?
Definitely. Though the one that stands out to me wasn’t physically demanding or dangerous. One of the places where we lived when I was growing up had this big wood out the back. And starting when I was about 8, I used to enjoy just walking alone through the wood late. Eleven p.m. Midnight. Later. Deep into the woods. It was terrifying. And I wasn’t allowed to look behind me, no matter what noises I heard. That was the point. That thing. The fear. To go into some deep place, a well of fear, that you’ve never been to before and that you didn’t know the way out of. Not looking behind, not turning around, just going deeper and deeper into those woods. I always enjoyed that.

That’s the word? Enjoy?
I learned something about myself, didn’t I?

What?
That I don’t want to be comforted. That I want to be able to face the hell I’m in.

So for that 8-year-old boy it was two things at once: I am afraid and that is unpleasant; at the same time, I am enjoying this.
But it was also I am staying. I am not running. There’s a beautiful epitaph on the gravestone of Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent I play in Public Enemies [the story of J. Edgar Hoover’s pursuit of John Dillinger, played by Johnny Depp, which will be released in July]. All that man went through, the gun battles, being a high-priority target of underworld figures… One time he was in Al Capone’s hotel room, meeting with him, and bullets started flying through the window, the two of them duckin’ down, firing back, looking at each other, and Capone says to him, “They after you, or they after me?” And neither knew. True story. So many situations like that the man went through. And on his gravestone it’s written—in Latin, so I had his son translate it for me—“I was often afraid, but I never ran.” Back in the day, he would admit to being scared. It was a bravery in and of itself just to admit that in that era. The papers called him Nervous Purvis. But that’s exactly what I was enjoying in those woods as a kid. I am afraid for my life, but I will not run and I will not look back. I will just go deeper. Until I come through.

The past few weeks of my life have looked more like a beginners attempt at pogosticks than a finely tuned (german) automobile. Which is to say I’ve been goofing off and not taking much of anything seriously. As a kid I still have this luxury- no one depends on me aside from people at work and I’m fairly professional there. As professional as one can be wearing an ironic T-shirt, shorts, and shaving more times than socks I wear on a weekly basis. And I hate shaving.

My father, unfortunately, does not have that luxury. For 45 some odd years of his working life, he’s been in control of his future. He decided to work here or there, buy this or that, and take vacations to where and when he wanted. All that has changed, and it’s been a struggle for him.  Hell it’d be a struggle for anyone, but I think he’s taking it in stride very well- better than I believe I could.

But it’s hard watching the ones you love grow worried and think themselves into a corner. I wish I could say something to him to make it all better, to make him worry less. When I was applying to colleges early in my junior year of high school, he saw me slacking and, afraid I was throwing away my potential, took me aside and showed what could only be called tough love. And it worked, I got off my ass and got to school and did well from there on. My point is, I wish I could do something to have such a profound effect on the man’s life. He’s given me so much and I can’t give anything back except for a listening ear and what little wisdom I have in comparison to his.

Here’s hoping it’ll do the trick, and if not… at least take his mind off of things for a while.

I knew better than to ask the question; I asked anyways, didn’t I?

This morning my roommate said “I’m so glad Gangl is back” and I have to agree with this.

The past few days have been a lot of fun, and it’s something that i really needed. I went through some rough times recently, as evidenced by my recent posts. Maybe i was a bit dramatic about it all, but some talks with a few friends of mine made a huge difference.

I asked a friend of mine what makes her happy. Her response was fairly honest, and it was spiritual in nature, but the way i asked the question made the conversation more itneresting and more revealing to me. I asked her what made her happy in a solitary way, that friends and family were a given, but what did she do that made her happy on her own. After she responded, i was telling her how i wasn’t very happy lately, and that i wasn’t sure what that meant for me or for anyone around me. I felt as if I was getting hapiness from my group of friends, but i wasn’t bringing anything to the table.

She was quick to point out that I’ve been myself lately, and that our friends have really enjoyed it. But most importantly she mentioned that she’s thankful for our friends and her family, and that it’s not a “given” as i so callously put it. This is about the time that I was struck by how awesome my friends are. It’s like those stories in which a group of people go looking for treasure, and the real treasure they found were the memories they were creating. Cliche shit like that, that’s about how obvious my revelation was, but you need it from time to time.

Quick note, I think those Nutrisystem meal programs which are advertised on ESPN now use the pot roast line as a joke. Mike Golic can’t possibly be that excited about pot roast. In fact, I think it’s the most forgettable meal in the history of meals.. what the hell?

Along the commercial lines, the Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwich commercial showing a man throughout his life enjoying the sandwich goes about one decade too far. There was absolutely no reason to make him bald at the end there, i’m not sure if he’s normally bald, or if they did that specifically for the age effect, but it’s ridiculous.

And I cannot get enough of Rise Against right now. Obviously the title is there, referencing Audience of One, but I think they have about 6-7 songs on my favorite list, a list which i can listen to everysong on it and not be tired of it. Ok, maybe there is one by Audioslave that i’m getting tired of, but it’s still good.