In the final stretch of my journey I was no longer running through a desert but was walking down a long corridor. When I reached the end of the corridor, I knew I would somehow have to get past Rosie, a gigantic spotted mastiff. I had been warned by someone in advance, "I don't care if you're black, brown, or white. You won't be any of those colors by the time Rosie gets done with you!"
My plan for getting past Rosie was to gross her out with vomit so that she wouldn't want to eat me. I was carrying a large bucket of vomit for this purpose. (Whose vomit? I don't know. You can't really dust for vomit.) I was splashing vomit all over the corridor as I went. When I saw someone else coming down the corridor, I realized that throwing vomit out of a bucket would look strange and that I'd better start vomiting for real. Fortunately I was able to produce enormous quantities of vomit at will. I decided my cover story would be that I was disgusted by the aesthetics of the modern world. "Modern art -- yechhhh! Buildings -- yechhhh!" The bloke in the corridor seemed to find this convincing.
Whether I succeeded in getting past Rosie I'll never know, because at this point the scene shifted.
I was reading a new book that had just been published by Bruce Charlton. It was quite thick, but I found that I was able to read it very quickly (I attributed this to the very wide margins and to my familiarity with Bruce's ideas), and before I knew it I was on page 415. This page said "Afterword: Changing YOU!" After the "YOU!" was a little arrow that curved around counterclockwise until it came almost full circle. I understood that Bruce had wanted the arrow to point straight out of the page at the reader but couldn't figure out how to make that work. Thus he kept changing the direction of the arrow but of course never found the direction he wanted because he was drawing on a two-dimensional surface. Lower down on the page was a much larger attempt at the same thing, with the arrow curving all over the page but never succeeding in pointing at the reader. The rest of the afterword consisted of a bulleted list of things you could do to change YOU, such as "Don't be afraid to take photos of the homeland" and "Re-educate yourself about Mormon history." (Obviously Bruce's real books are nothing like this.) Even though this was a paper book, it somehow ended with a video clip, a graphically violent one that I thought must have come from a war movie by Quentin Tarantino. It began with a voice saying something like, "You've been told that these people want to kill you. Think about what it really means to kill another human being," and then there was a series of closeups of people being shot, with blood splattering everywhere.
In a final dream scene, my wife shouted to me from another room, "Can you check these dates? June, July, 19th, 21st!" What did she mean? June 19th and July 21st? The entire months of June and July plus the 19th and 21st of some other month? I kept asking for clarification, but she just kept repeating, "June, July, 19th, 21st!" This became a sort of chant that got louder and louder until I woke up.
I don't know if this dream sequence will turn out to have any meaning or if it's just noise. Anyway, I'm posting it here just because it's so strange. Some elements of it seem to reprise "Nicotine, Mars, and the Secret Dojo."
5 comments:
The date chanting is interesting.
I looked up June 19 and July 21, in case that is what was intended, and should have known, at least on the latter date, how they might be relevant.
June 19th is celebrated as "Juneteenth", and the emancipation of slaves in the US.
July 21st was the date that Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon. That has been a highly symbolic date and event on my end, including tying into the Rose and Ithil Stones. Could be that "Rosie" has something to do with the Rose Stone. We did have those links with the the Spelling Bee and the Amazing Talking Dog.
I also wondered if the dates roughly matched to Cancer. My birthday is July 22, so I knew Cancer goes through that date. The sign starts on June 19, so close on both the beginning and end, but not exact, obviously.
The Bruce Charlton part was interesting. The attempts to get that arrow to point straight at the intended target perhaps illustrating the limitations (and in some cases uselessness and even counterproductiveness) of his ideas. It is a straight line or path that we are after on the path to probably the biggest change we will experience (at the White Tree of Lehi's dream). That wasn't coming through in that dream book or those ideas.
I meant Cancer started on June 21.
The vomit scene in conjunction with having to face Rosie is also pretty thought provoking.
You weren't really sick, but pretending to be sick in order to see if this could get you past Rosie. In my story (and even in some of my writings to potentially imaginary Elvish Beings would could be reading in on things and leaving encoded messages...), people, including Pharazon, being sick was the primary excuse for their prior bad behavior. What if some of them weren't really sick, however, or at least in the way I had imagined it?
Rosie, since it could potentially tie to the Rose Stone, would perhaps allude to the Judgment aspect that the possessor of that Stone is called to execute. I've mentioned the Being in Joseph Smith's GAEL known as "Jah ho e oop" (also Jah ni hah), and that is is the Being mentioned as the one dressed in Red Apparel (thus also a Rosie in that regard). Joseph's interpretation of that character is that they are given authority to act as judge and their power cannot be escaped:
"An ambassador: one delegated with Kingly power; one authorized to ex[e]cute judgement for the King; a swift messenger one whose power cannot be escaped; one next to supreme;"
This is also, per the quote above, the same Being we've been calling sometimes Swift Messenger.
Anyway, your dream imagery brought this to mind - the corridor that you needed to walk down to in order to get past Rosie and the fact that there was no choice but to face that Being gave this feel of a judge whose power there is no escape from - no way around, but only through. And, of course, the ridiculous ruse of the vomit in an attempt to do that.
It does make you wonder though, if Rosie is as bad as the warning seemed to indicate. You could interpret the remark that a black, brown, or white person wouldn't be that color anymore after Rosie was done with them as their mortal bodies and the associated various skin color as not being relevant anymore, as in via resurrection or restoration to new bodies.
Jah ho e oop is also named or titled Jah ni hah, in my guess, and the description for Jah ni hah is all about redemption and redeeming power.
"One that with delegated and redeeming power, and second in authority; being a swift messenger going before, and having redeeming power, as second in authority: and stand next to on or on the right hand of power."
So, maybe no need to go through the extravagant sick/ vomit ruse, due to a misunderstanding of what Rosie was about, particularly given the theme of change.
A few ways one can think about it, I guess.
The funny thing is that dogs are proverbially NOT grossed out by vomit but turn to it like a sow to her wallowing in the mire.
I think we have a potential Michael Jackson allusion here, too, saying it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white in the context of an implied warning or threat.
I looked up those dates, too, and found the same things you found. I think there might be some additional meaning, though, due to the strange order.
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