![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A dream and a memoir...
Oct. 31st, 2004 01:25 pmI've gone to sleep the past couple of nights and dreamed the same strange dream. In it, under cover of darkness, I withdraw from the house into the wooded lot next door, for the purpose of setting up suveillance of the house and an ambush for a likely visit by unfriendlies. I am armed with a nondescript hunting rifle and equipped with an almost-adequate suit of clothes and a pair of binoculars that don't quite meet the standard of night vision hardware.
Nobody ever comes, in this dream, and if any bad guys did show up, I'm sure my subconscious would compose some elegant scenario where I manage to take out the baddies and survive. No, instead of action, I am faced with the prospect of inaction; the task of keeping as low a profile as possible (it would, after all, be embarrassing for the ambusher to suddenly become the ambushee; recall also The Adventure of the Empty House) while trying to cover as many avenues of approach as possible with 100% alertness all night long.
As someone who once did this kind of work for a living -- albeit only during military exercises, usually as part of a remote (and expendable) "listening post" intended to protect a main force -- I can tell you that sitting still and paying attention to mostly nothing for long periods of time is hard work, though nowhere near as terrifying (even in an exercise milieu) as when the opposing force does show up and overruns your position, but I digress...
Anyway, I'm not one to make a big deal of dream interpretation, but I think this means I am raring to get this Kazakhstan gig under way. Either that, or I am playing out -- in some strange way -- a variation on a theme of self-protection that I associate with this locale from a long time ago. I think I alluded to it a few days ago.
It was, if memory serves, the summer between my junior and senior year in college. My girlfriend had broken up with me several months previously and I was at home, feeling depressed and generally dissatisfied with life. My only release was to walk down to the beach owned by the property association my parents belonged to, climb out onto the end of the jetty, and yell at the seagulls for a while.
The caretakers hired to take care of the beach house that summer were a pair of college guys a year or two younger than I, and friendly enough with me and the rest of the local youth. However, I hadn't grown up in the area, having moved from Queens in time to do my last two years of high school, after which I spent most of the year away at college. Between this and the fact I was shunning company in general at this time in my life, you'll understand when I say I was definitely not part of the "in" crowd that summer.
Anyway, one fine evening, I stop off at the beach house to get a soda for the walk home when the place fills with some of my, um, younger contemporaries and the doors at either end of the large room housing the soda machine are closed. One young man I don't know starts fooling with a spear gun over in the opposite corner. A tall, lean guy with a sort of buzzed look in his eyes -- a friend of the caretakers, I seem to recall -- steps up to me and tells me his friends want their car radio back.
It turns out the assembled kangaroo court has convicted me, in absentia, of stealing the radio from the caretakers' car. I proclaim my innocence and am duly ignored, as "someone" -- who wished to remain anonymous, lest I exact some kind of retribution -- had seen me commit the foul deed. I announce my intention to call the police and am prevented from doing so.
I eye the lone fluorescent bulb above the ping-pong table and toy with the idea of shattering the bulb so as to help even the odds slightly should the question actually come down to fisticuffs (I would be free to hit anyone within reach; the members of the group would not). Beating me to within an inch of my life had been discussed as an appropriate response to my transgression, and the lean guy even managed to mention, with something of a leer, that he didn't much care on what side of that mark that inch fell. My mind kept returning to that light bulb, and I began to size up how best to incapacitate the string bean standing in front of me.
Somehow, however, I managed to negotiate my way out of the situation. I think I did so by admitting the theft and offering to return the radio along with some additional cash as restitution.
I must've sounded convincing, but of course, I had lied about stealing the radio. The doors were opened and the party broke up.
My first step upon getting home was to call the police. The response to my complaint -- I had described what had occurred -- was a sort of epiphany for me: "We're sorry, but unless they actually assault you, we can't do anything."
So intent was I in calling the police, I had not even shared what had happened to me with my folks, who learned the details as I described them to the cops. When it became clear that no response would be forthcoming, I was more than a little nonplused, but before I could get a good sense of helplessness going, my old man hauled me into the car and we went to have a talk with the president of the owner's association, with whose son I had attended high school.
In the end, the situation was cleared up quickly. Both caretakers came to the house to apologize to me personally and profusely. A rumor surfaced that the stolen radio had been recovered in a pawn shop in Glen Cove, and that the person pawning the item was -- surprise! -- none other than the lean ringleader of the action against me. (I mean, if you submitted an ending like that to Hollywood, it'd almost guarantee getting a rejection on the basis of the resolution being too neat!)
Anyway, these are the kinds of memories of this place I have to work with.
Cheers...
Nobody ever comes, in this dream, and if any bad guys did show up, I'm sure my subconscious would compose some elegant scenario where I manage to take out the baddies and survive. No, instead of action, I am faced with the prospect of inaction; the task of keeping as low a profile as possible (it would, after all, be embarrassing for the ambusher to suddenly become the ambushee; recall also The Adventure of the Empty House) while trying to cover as many avenues of approach as possible with 100% alertness all night long.
As someone who once did this kind of work for a living -- albeit only during military exercises, usually as part of a remote (and expendable) "listening post" intended to protect a main force -- I can tell you that sitting still and paying attention to mostly nothing for long periods of time is hard work, though nowhere near as terrifying (even in an exercise milieu) as when the opposing force does show up and overruns your position, but I digress...
Anyway, I'm not one to make a big deal of dream interpretation, but I think this means I am raring to get this Kazakhstan gig under way. Either that, or I am playing out -- in some strange way -- a variation on a theme of self-protection that I associate with this locale from a long time ago. I think I alluded to it a few days ago.
It was, if memory serves, the summer between my junior and senior year in college. My girlfriend had broken up with me several months previously and I was at home, feeling depressed and generally dissatisfied with life. My only release was to walk down to the beach owned by the property association my parents belonged to, climb out onto the end of the jetty, and yell at the seagulls for a while.
The caretakers hired to take care of the beach house that summer were a pair of college guys a year or two younger than I, and friendly enough with me and the rest of the local youth. However, I hadn't grown up in the area, having moved from Queens in time to do my last two years of high school, after which I spent most of the year away at college. Between this and the fact I was shunning company in general at this time in my life, you'll understand when I say I was definitely not part of the "in" crowd that summer.
Anyway, one fine evening, I stop off at the beach house to get a soda for the walk home when the place fills with some of my, um, younger contemporaries and the doors at either end of the large room housing the soda machine are closed. One young man I don't know starts fooling with a spear gun over in the opposite corner. A tall, lean guy with a sort of buzzed look in his eyes -- a friend of the caretakers, I seem to recall -- steps up to me and tells me his friends want their car radio back.
It turns out the assembled kangaroo court has convicted me, in absentia, of stealing the radio from the caretakers' car. I proclaim my innocence and am duly ignored, as "someone" -- who wished to remain anonymous, lest I exact some kind of retribution -- had seen me commit the foul deed. I announce my intention to call the police and am prevented from doing so.
I eye the lone fluorescent bulb above the ping-pong table and toy with the idea of shattering the bulb so as to help even the odds slightly should the question actually come down to fisticuffs (I would be free to hit anyone within reach; the members of the group would not). Beating me to within an inch of my life had been discussed as an appropriate response to my transgression, and the lean guy even managed to mention, with something of a leer, that he didn't much care on what side of that mark that inch fell. My mind kept returning to that light bulb, and I began to size up how best to incapacitate the string bean standing in front of me.
Somehow, however, I managed to negotiate my way out of the situation. I think I did so by admitting the theft and offering to return the radio along with some additional cash as restitution.
I must've sounded convincing, but of course, I had lied about stealing the radio. The doors were opened and the party broke up.
My first step upon getting home was to call the police. The response to my complaint -- I had described what had occurred -- was a sort of epiphany for me: "We're sorry, but unless they actually assault you, we can't do anything."
So intent was I in calling the police, I had not even shared what had happened to me with my folks, who learned the details as I described them to the cops. When it became clear that no response would be forthcoming, I was more than a little nonplused, but before I could get a good sense of helplessness going, my old man hauled me into the car and we went to have a talk with the president of the owner's association, with whose son I had attended high school.
In the end, the situation was cleared up quickly. Both caretakers came to the house to apologize to me personally and profusely. A rumor surfaced that the stolen radio had been recovered in a pawn shop in Glen Cove, and that the person pawning the item was -- surprise! -- none other than the lean ringleader of the action against me. (I mean, if you submitted an ending like that to Hollywood, it'd almost guarantee getting a rejection on the basis of the resolution being too neat!)
Anyway, these are the kinds of memories of this place I have to work with.
Cheers...
