Dream of the Hero's Journey
and the Grateful Dead on Halloween
We were walking up a city street on a spring day, it was slightly too hot. I stopped on the footpath to look down through a wire fence into the foundations of a skyscraper, the raw gum of Earth's pulled tooth, great steel nerves, disconnected and waiting for a connection or higher purpose.
A few classmates stopped and looked with me, fascinated by the depth of the hole, red-brown puddles of mud at the lowest site level before we wandered off again.
The sun was becoming uncomfortable. Everyone filed in to a building with a sign out front — we were going for a drink to a downstairs bar.
Was it the end of term? It seemed too early for a drink. The stairs were dark by contrast and we all felt relieved, a new buzz grew between us, I sat at the first table I saw with a hand out to join. It was the guy who drew well; tall, too young for me, we shared cigarettes sometimes during break. No further attachments within that group.
I went to the bar and ordered an icy drink, maybe water with lime, maybe vodka tonic, it was crystal clear in a beaded glass. Back at the table I didn't want to sit down, so stood and took big sips, smiling while the others laughed at the silly story unfolding. I finished my drink quickly and put my glass down wondering how long I had to stay.
My back was to the entrance so I turned to face it, daylight shone down in a fractured blue mote, small gold exit lights embedded in the walls. I turned back again, it would be rude to leave. A violent explosion broke through the kitchen and bathroom hallway, the shared swing doors bashed so hard a hinge blew off. I stared dumbly at the broken door, a girl had just walked in to the toilet, was she okay? How could she be? Dust and choking smoke billowed slowly outwards, then through the swing doors the girl came like a broken porcelain doll, covered in thick pale dust, blood streamed from various places, eye sockets dark, forearms torn to ribbons, she held them up crossed like an X in front of her, strips of flesh like fabric, moving forward with unseeing eyes. I stepped back involuntarily. The place came alive suddenly, people picking themselves up in shock, helping each other, checking for life, screaming death, I turned to the stairs and walked up in to the daylight in disbelief right before the smoke and dust completely swallowed me.
I turned from the bar, crossed the street veering right, walked up towards the industrial end of the city, walked towards the tracks out of town with wobbling knees and shallow breath, how much brutality must be endured in one lifetime; willing peace, sanity, breathing deeply, nothing would stop me until I found genuine peace.
It had to exist. It existed.
The old train tracks were buried in some places, walking one foot in front of the other. Everything was grey. Gravel, sky, trees, weeds, all variations of grey. I walked.
Endlessly, I walked until a rhythm was set and a sense of calm descended. Hours, years, centuries. I would never rest unless physically forced.
Then, after an age of walking there appeared a silver tin shack, more like a covered bus stop... more like a wooden seat backed with corrugated tin and a roof, open along one side. Sitting on the wooden seat were three young men with a box of food and bottles, like old friends but I didn't know their names. I knew their natures — their archetypes. They watched me approach in silence. We judged each other as friends and they offered a drink, a smoke, food, friendship, respite from solitary struggle.
Hollowed out with hunger, shock, exhaustion, I sat accepting and so grateful. I sat among these new, old friends for an hour, a day, a week or so, laughed, told stories, drank scotch, smoked weed, cigarettes; one fellow I particularly liked. [Erick.] Bossy, opinionated, sensitive, funny, wise. I wondered if they’d move from the shelter then knew they wouldn't, so I stood up, dusted myself off and said I was going to see what was further along the tracks, it looked like it changed or turned further along the line. Difficult to tell through distance. We farewelled and I walked on, couldn’t turn back.
The grey had become silver, definitely silver. Silver trees. Silver track lines, silvery light of dawn above the trees?
Yes, I could see the tracks turning to the right, a long slow curve through the distance, and golden morning light shone through, sunbeams through the branches, ethereal, golden mineral light. The trees became gold, some leaves had fallen to make a gold carpet, still plenty of leaves on the branches, everything — even the air — shone gold. It was finally dawn.
I woke up.
(Dreamt c.2007.)
Recently, through necessity, I stopped work on the video introduction to the vast, past-overdue Uranus post to watch a show and chill the f— out.
Film is a two or three times per year indulgence so its reputation must precede it.
The Dark Crystal's Age of Resistance might seem a childish throwback but it is blackly dark, hilariously disgusting and sometimes even witty (laughed aloud at least twice). Using puppets and irony, set within an often nightmarish dreamscape, it follows the trusty Hero's Journey formula while being analogically explicit to our current world. If Jim Henson jarred (or scarred) ones childhood soul, this prequel will be a good time.
Anyway, Hero's Journey meant nothing until a good FB Friend, ‘Erick’, mentioned Joseph Campbell’s myth work in 2021. I’d realised how closely Erick resembled the favourite friend in the tin shed, so I told him hoping he wouldn’t think it a cheap advance… nope: he introduced me to the Hero’s Journey to explain the adventure cycle.
I deleted the FB account early 2022 and we lost touch, but not before we learned from each other. I would hack on his music taste, suggesting the modern beat was akin to voodoo spell-casting (I was trying out some new Evola ideas). He made me listen to Grateful Dead’s Crazy Fingers which brought on an hallucinatory daydream detailed down to the contents of the bedside table, colour of the walls, fallen leaves, afternoon light outside the french doors, and love as as real as any memory. (While beautiful, it still proved Evola’s idea that music, like other media, cast dream-like spells…)
Hallucinations and dreams share a common subtle state, an internal sense of the external environment residing in the nadis. In dreams, signals of perception exclude the outer environment (and higher-order processing) whereas hallucinations engage the whole brain network, albeit abnormally modulated (ie. listening to Grateful Dead..).
In a dream, the soul is its own light and creates a world entirely from itself.
Objects in a dream consist of the dreamers conceptions in waking life.
They may be illusory, but possibilities are far more extensive in dreams than waking life; in the Vedanta for example, dreaming is not considered an 'inferior' state, nor is it inferior from the Shamanic perspective, as one can act deliberately by using another type of existence or degree of development; in other words — dreaming is the soul's activity being exercised in a different realm.
Last month I heard the psychoactive Crazy Fingers for the second time thanks to a subscriber comment, and was inspired to write out the dream above. Strangely, Erick believed in myths but not dreams even though his favourite myth man Joseph Campbell himself said, “Dreams are private myths”.
Regardless of differences, Erick was a welcome reward in the dreamworld, and a prophetic marker or reward in virtual reality too, signalling the “road back” according to the Hero’s Journey chart… But back to where?
The gold light in the dream’s finale seemed to be of great value and was especially memorable. To resurrect, return with the elixir and complete the journey in 2021-’22, the merciless, fire-breathing dragon Kundalini electro-shocked my soul to Kingdom Come. Returning to Self is the ultimate homecoming, and the reason for our existence, but resistance to the ‘dragon’ must be developed through serious adventures.
Taoists call the result of the activated pineal and pituitary glands (equivalent to Catholicism’s gold & silver keys) the Crystal Palace. The glands form calcite crystals, and when unified electrically via an arc’ing spark from the electric Kundalini, the Crystal Palace is formed. These glands are symbolised as male (gold) & female (silver).
Lovely writing! Content a bit over my unenlightened head, but I am catching up slowly....
Gorgeous.