Eclectic Dreams – 04/30/03

It has been a while since I’ve had a dream that I can remember well. Many are mundane and not worthy of discussion. This one however I feel just has to be written down. Plus it makes a good post filler.I’ll try to get as detailed as I can, but its been a few hours since waking up scratching my head.

It began like any other nightmare, in a cemetery. It was midday. We (and I say we because I was apparently with friends, even though I’ve never seen them before) were there attending the retirement party of the “famed” (that’s what the party’s banner and balloons said anyway) local gravedigger. She was a short Hispanic woman in her mid 40’s, who had given twenty good years to the grave digging industry. Apparently they can take early retirement… so she decided to become a bus driver instead.

But she has nothing else to do with the story.

After listening to countless grave digging jokes, I headed to the little boys room. The bathroom was a stall that was carved like a crypt and the toilet bowl looked like a brass vase (though now that I think about it, I hope it was a bathroom). No it had to be a loo, flower vases don’t flush.

After relieving myself, I decided to have a look around the cemetery… like any good inquisitive dream warrior should. For some reason , the graveyard looked more like a skate park than anything else. Miles of concrete walkways circled and rode all sorts of hills and dips. Large stone markers and skyscraper caliber mausoleums, all done in an art deco/baroque style, dotted the landscape. And yes, there were a few sk8ters about.

So I’m wandering about the pathways when I come upon a bunch of British soldiers, decked like they just fell out of the movie Zulu. They were digging about in the dirt getting ready to exhume a body. Who’s body you ask? Why Edgar Rice Burroughs of course. Ask a silly question…

Well by this time you know whoever is in the box is nothing but bones, so it’s of little point to take a peek to verify it was indeed the creator of Tarzan and The Warlord of Mars sagas. Plus, having never met the man myself, I wouldn’t know what he looked like even if he was well preserved.

Curious, I decided to follow (what else could I do, dawn was probably hours away). They led the rotting casket in a grand procession to a tall wooden stage, more like a gallows. Now I’m thinking, are they going to hang the guy’s skeleton? And if so, on what charges?!

No, they were in fact going to give him a cannon salute and rebury him with all sorts of British fanfare, high honors and reverence bestowed upon all famous English writers… which I found odd since Burroughs was most definitely an American. But hey, who was I to pass up a celebration? I was there, after all, to celebrate the fact a total stranger was about to get a pension.

They day went on; the speeches were long, but nice; then came time to wrap things up. The soldiers dressed up a large rat as the Martian dog from A Princess of Mars (pet to the main character John Carter), lit the rat’s tail (a fake extension) who then proceeded to light the cannon for the salute (hey, don’t ask me why, it’s their ceremony). The cannon fired and everybody cheered.

Everybody but one that is… You see, we all forgot to put out the rat, who began running around in pain when the fake tale burned down to the real one.

The whole party began running around in terror from this flaming rat, and soon after from the smoldering powder kegs (for the cannon) set off by said rat. Unfortunately, there were no stairs to get us off the doomed platform. And just as I was wondering how, if there were no stairs, we all got up there in the first place … KaBOOM!

Brits and Burroughs’ go flying all over the place, and we spend the rest of the day cleaning up Edgar and putting him back together again.

The End

Ever fickle, morning definitely didn’t come soon enough for me on this one. And I like Edgar Rice Burroughs too… I recommend reading anything you can find of his.

Ok all you dream analysts, get to it!