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As I watched American Idol today I discovered something. Simon isn’t a big giant, mean-spirited, out-of-line, over-the-top, English, sadist, asshole. Not at all! The function he really serves is that of Father figure to the pseudo-reality loving teenager in all of us.

All you have to do is look at what he says and the singer’s reactions to him. He tells them when they’re doing good, and when their doing bad. Today he was even lecturing them on going out partying the night before the big competition; telling them to get serious and to start working harder.

Then you look at the looks in the faces of the singers when he tells them he’s proud, or when he isn’t. It is the picture of not living/living up to a hero’s/parent’s expectations. The tears are painful and the moments of acceptance are powerful.

Of course, if Simon is the Father, Paula Abdul is the mother. Just the way she looked when she had to tell a group of her “children” that they weren’t good enough is enough of an argument. She’s kind, gentle, but honest in a loving way.

Randy can be the crazy uncle…the one the kids think is definately the coolest!

More seriously though, I had what can only be an important dream, but in order to catch you up to the importance, I need to quote a journal from last year. It had to do with reaccurring dreams that I have frequently. This quote specifically describes one of them:

The third dream has always been the darkest one. Not dark in a negative way, but it plays with my fears and I always wake up in a sweat. It involves the bottom floor of a massive house. A huge mansion bigger than anything imaginable. The bottom floor is incredibly small considering how big the house is, but the mansion is taller than it is wide. In the dream I am fearful of leaving the bottom floor. I know that there are evil spirits and energies up there. The interesting thing is that the higher up you go, the more beautiful the house is, but the more evil the spirits get. Sometimes in the dreams I would manage to make it up a few floors of the house, and as I expected the rooms got more and more beautiful as I went up. I also became more and more afraid and eventually had to run down the stairs nearly crying because of my fear, resting peacefully on the bottom floor. I only remember one room I ever visited. It was almost entirely a pool of warm water with a mist floating off the top. The pool was surrounded by greek columns. Beyond the columns were large windows, floor to ceiling and wall to wall. These windows were of the bedrooms in the house that had a beautiful view of the pool. This is as far as I got in this particular dream, I sensed an evil spirit coming and I flew down the stairs to safety.

Well, last night I had this dream again. What was differently immediately was that I had a couple close friends there. I knew that every floor we went up was scarier and scarier, but I didn’t care at all. We started ascending the stairs, marveling at the beauty of each floor. With each level the house became increasingly more impressive and beautiful. We kept ascending, and I still wasn’t afraid. I only remember one floor from this house. It was a complex floor plan, immaculate in its intrigue. Lots of puzzling corridors, and fun paths leading to who knows where. Even more interestingly it was a mess with children’s toys. Everywhere you looked there was evidence of many children playing as though they had vanished right before I got there. This was enough for my friends. Although I could feel the evil prescence getting stronger and stronger, I wasn’t afraid at all. I couldn’t wait to explore more levels of the house, but instead I chased after my friends as they ran downstairs.

I used to have similar dreams to this all the time, and I could never put my finger on why the were important. I knew something was being told to me, but I couldn’t pick up on just what this “something was”.

Ravendreamer said in his comment to this entry:

I find your third dream interesting as I immediately thought it was about spiritual growth. The building (my opinion…so tell me I am full of it if you like) is like spiritual growth with each level being higher and higher spiritually. Spiritual growth can be both scary and beautiful. Your ups and downs in this building may be related to ups and downs in your spiritual life. And with the friends in it…well it is always better to explore spirituality with friends. It is more comfortable and when it flops you can all laugh together :). I especially like the floor you described with the greek columns….but I work with the greek pantheon, so of course it interested me :).

I found this to make perfect sense, so i’ve been going with this theory for awhile, but I haven’t had a single dream like it since this entry on August the third. That is…of course…until last night. It was much different though.

It actually takes place in a specific Calgary building - The Anderson - but in the dream it looked nothing like real life. My sister lived there once years ago, and a Jan Arden video was filmed there. I only remember how old fashion it was, and how afraid of the manual elevator I was.

It began on the bottom floor again, which as usual was small and bare. There was a bed in the main lobbey in which two people were sleeping, and were disturbed by the entrance of myself and the landlord who was going to be showing me my new appartment.

We began climbing the stairs and looking at all the rooms which again got more elaborate as we went up the stairs. As the Anderson in Calgary is, this dream version was very old fashion and made of red bricks. I wondered why we weren’t taking the elevator, but then remembered how afraid of the elevator I was.

As we got to each level I kept noting to myself how haunted each floor was, and that each progressive level felt even more haunted. There was no stopping me though! There was no fear of these ghosts. We just kept going higher and higher and higher.

We stopped at one lady’s appartment. to look off a balcony (which interestingly enough were fold-out balconies) to show how high we were. It had to be at least a couple hundred stories high, and right at the base of the building I pointed wildly to where I used to live, noting how small and dull it looked.

The lady seemed friendly, and noted how she planned to grow rasberries on her balconies in the summer. We moved on though a couple floors up to my appartment. Which, even though was high up, was nowhere neer the top, and nowhere near to being the nicest.

It was furnished and two stories. It had a beautiful view. All it needed was a little bit of paint, and some decorating and my new appartment would be absolutely gorgeous! The most intersting quality of my new living quarters was that the entire thing was decorated in Hindu religious icons. Murals, and painting of Gods/Goddesses. As well, there were several Buddhas, but not in the abundance of Hindu articles.

I was all of a sudden panicked that I was by myself. I would be living here by myself and paying for this place by myself. I was all on my own, and that gave me more fear than the obvious haunted nature of the Appartment. However, I sucked it up and began to decorate.

This is when the dream gently ended….

I think the symbolism is for the most part obvious. The little stuff may take some digging, but as I said yesterday, I was seeking the big picture and I would work on the details from there.

Interestingly enough, I’ve identified a fourth dream which is even more common than any that I listed on that August third post, and perhaps the most relevant. I was shocked it wasn’t there. However, I’m going to go into that dream later later. I’ve already taken up A LOT of space!

Whenever I’m making the twenty minute walk from school back to my house, interesting thoughts/philosophies/ideas/images pop into my head. Today was no different except that what I felt was more of an instinctual feeling; something deep inside that didn’t really have words, just underlaying emotions. Much like a dream that you can remember, but you can still feel the emotions involved.

I think I can put this into words though, because it wasn’t a unique thought. I have a social context into which I can pidgeon hole the feeling. I can label them, or more importantly, I can describe them. Much like someone who’s never had a drink of alcohol in their life can list off the qualities of being drunk.

As I was walking, I saw the world dry into a painting. In fact, the entire universe became a two dimensional object - including my body - and my mind was mearly a spectator in a museum. As my mind explored the gallery, it came to realize that there was nothing it could do to exit the gallery. Unless it separated itself, or walked out the door, the only activity it would ever do would be to stare at the painting of the universe - how dull! If coming to a realization that the mind and universe can be separate, than it may be possible to somehow actively separate my mind from the universe. I wonder what lies beyond the doors of the museum!

Anyways, back to reality! I haven’t posted in ages, but really nothing much has been going on. I’m back to the old routine. School, sleep, study, work, CCOP, TM, singing, masterclasses, sometimes yoga. The only difference is an absolute feeling of bliss that is eminating from inside of me.

Before you say it, I know! I’m resembling a new-age whacko today, but honestly I feel differently these days. This has been self-dedicated as my year of transformation, and honestly, if this is only the beginning of my transformation, I can’t image how blissful I will feel a few months from now! I’ve been told at times that I’m even glowing! There a giddy quality about me that doesn’t seem to want to go away.

Even better are the vividness of my dreams lately. I’m sure that something major is being told to me in my dreams, but I’m having troubles putting my finger on the messages. I’m sure I will start to get the big picture soon and can then start delving into the details.

School is going fairly good. It has become fairly routinized for me now, but I suppose that isn’t all bad. I’m enjoying the autonomy, self-direction, self-actualization, coping skills, and hard core learning that it is bringing to me. I’m not sure that there is anything I would want to change in my entire life right now. I really feel as though I’m on the right track to something big!

Let’s hope that this “something big” will be starring in a new broadway pruduction of Evita as Che!!!

ok - so I dream big - why the heck not!

A realistic dream? To be this content for as long as flippin’ possible!

In gross disgusting news…I got my tongue pierced again. Its healing beautifuly and is ready to disturb everyone I know. The first time I had it done, it took about seven days before it felt as good as it does now after only twenty four hours. Why did I get it done? I still haven’t thought of a good reason…

Stealing an idea, I drew a card from my tarot deck and here’s what I got:

Seven of Matter,

“Patience is a virtue, earned with hard work. The seated figure is a master of his profession. He understands growth cycles and has profited frm many years of acquired experience. The disk on his seat shows that he has tasted the profits of his methods and that he has the stamina to wait until the other disks have matured properly. At this point, inaction is the best course, but be ready to move quickly when summoned.” (Thomas, 2002).

Well, obviously this is describing me at university right now. Let me tell you, its doing it pretty darn perfectly! Perhaps I’ll just go with the flow for awhile.

Thomas, J.Philip. 2002. Tarot de Paris. New York: St. Martin’s Press: 105.

My mind works in interesting ways! Last night we had a party at my house. I’ll rephrase that - my roomate had a party at my house. During the party he kept disapearing with party guests into a closed room to snort a wonderful amount of cocain. Now, honestly I’m not overly disturbed by this - go to the gay bar its like an icing sugar factory. I never got to go to the special room though! Please don’t think I ever would do cocaine, because I never have and I never will, but it hurt that I wasn’t even asked.

I know that its strange that I should feel like crap over that, but it was just like in junior high when people would invite everyone to a party except for me. It brought back those exact feelings. In reality, I suppose I should be glad that he knows I’m not the kind of guy that would ever do that and that is the reason that he didn’t ask. I suppose it doesn’t help that I freaked out the other day when I learned he had cocaine in the house.

Why is it that sometimes my morals say “stand up and tell people you think its wrong to do drugs etc.” and at other times a darkness in me dives for anything that is deviant and taboo. I sound like an angstful teenager who has watched too many movies of the week.

Honestly though, I feel that everyone has that little darkness in them, perhaps not even little, that overshadows anything anyone ever tells you are warns you about. Its that piece of you that gets turned on by bad boys, or makes you want to get tattoos. It is that drive to experience everything that you know you’re not supposed to experience.

Everyone has a dark side, and mine is certainly strong and healthy and unbalanced. I’ve been repressing it for so long that now it is yearning to get out. Without anything tapping its energy, it has grown stronger. My yang is bigger than my ying and I need to get out there and be a bad person for awhile.

Of course thats harder than it sounds. When I was younger there were no reasons to put on the facade of innocent at all times. It was okay to try drugs, get drunk all the time, sleep around. It was easy, because it was expected. However, just because I’m older doesn’t mean that these urges go away. Why should it be less tempting now to experiment with drugs than five years ago. The only difference is that I’ve seen many lives destroyed by the above. I guess that’s enough.

Hopefully I’ll be able to find something creative to release all this built up energy without having to resort to becoming someone I don’t like. I need a canvas and paint…dark, deep, rich colours…