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After struggling to make myself remember a dream…even a fragment, I finally did last night. Unfortunately it was a zombie-hunting dream sans the zombies. It’s happened before.

You heard right, “zombie-dream sans zombies”. Let me explain.

Before my teenage years, I had nightmares about a shapeless “monster” or group of monsters–just things trying to get me. Some time around high school, this formlessness was replaced by definitive zombies (I suppose my head found them a proper form of fear to replace formlessness), and I would have zombie dreams that involved me being attacked or surrounded, and some of them would be really horrible.

One night, the tables turned.

Something was chasing after me, like always–but this time when I tried to run, I wasn’t wearing steel boots that got heavier every time I tried to take a step. I wasn’t held back by anything. I wasn’t weighed down.

I found myself able to run. Fast. Effortlessly. I could run in big bounding leaps. I ran like a gazelle at what seemed to be something like 1/2 gravity. I even took time to look at the shuffling humanoid fading in the background. The monsters couldn’t catch me anymore.

They could no longer keep up.

When I came to that conclusion, something shifted. The monster failed to overcome me in my dreamscape. The terror had lost. The fear didn’t evaporate, though–it condensed into anger. Now that I knew for certain that I could get away any time I wanted, I was no longer happy with running.

It was their fucking turn to run.

I charged in the other direction until I met my assailant head-on. It was a target to me now–it was PREY. The zombies in this dream must not have been infectious, because I wasn’t shy about using my bare hands to permanently disable it. When I was finished, I leapt through a used car lot, taunting another before delivering it to the same fate.

That dream happened in the summer of 2003. One domino fell, and this momentary shift of power had repercussions for every one of my future inner explorations. Dreams with dangers and monsters weren’t quite “nightmares” anymore. They were replaced–by my reaction to them–by “action dreams” that seemed to exercise strategy-under-stress. My dream-scape was permanently rewired. Every “bad dream” scenario had gone from being a hopeless nightmare world to a one-man operations theater.

In the next few years, I’d roll through them. I remember a dream with this non-human humanoid attacking people in a place that looked like the winery I used to work at. Something in me immediately turned feral, and I leapt on it like a great cat seizing a wildebeest. I didn’t care what it was or how scary it looked. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be a victim–from the second I saw danger, I turned savage.

This fearlessness seemed to jump another level in my “Crimson Cat” dream, which I usually mention because it’s one of the most rewarding dream-experiences I’ve ever had. When I encountered a danger I had no way to fight, I faced it down and let it consume me only to found I’ve become it instead…

And things just got brutal from there. Since then, I’ve fought with wolves,exterminated more inhuman creatures with a guns-and-grit twist, stopped infiltrators with animal brutality…

Now, don’t get me wrong–all my dreams aren’t like this. I also do a fair amount of wandering around crazy structures and falling from the upper reaches of the atmosphere and hitting South Dakota (of all places). It’s just that when I have a dream with some antagonistic force–I win out.

But lately, starting a couple years ago and more often in the last six months (when most of my dreams have been slim memories anyway), the monsters haven’t been there. It’s almost like I believe the tone is set for it to be a bad-dream, but there’s never anything for me to fight.

It’s been a while since I’ve had anything like my HIGHLY DETAILED dreams–the long winding ones where I wake up and sit at a desk for a couple hours afterward and record everything I can remember in it. February, I think.

Last night, I was exploring this landscape–hills, tree groves, streams–and I was convinced there was some danger I had to be on the lookout for. This place was nice, really green and lush and beautiful–but I had military eyes on. I wanted a position at the top of the hill so I could look out beyond the other side of the stream and over the patches of forest.

If something was coming, I wanted to know about it.

It never did, and that’s been the theme lately. I explained it to Katt this morning–I went from running from monsters to fighting monsters to facing monsters to HUNTING monsters to hunting monsters that were no longer there to hunt.

Ok, brain. I get it. There’s nothing left for me to fight. I’m cool with that, but how about another flying dream (it’s been a while), or another one of those dreams where I ride a motorcycle through a crazy concrete structure?

I finally remember a coherent scene from last night, and it turns out that I wasted the whole construction sniffing out monsters that aren’t there. Shame.

I forgot/was too tired to post this yesterday, but it has to be done. Even in NYC, a restaurant experience as flawless as the one we had Sunday is worth writing about.

After Sunday’s concert, we had a passionate hunger for cheeseburgers…

It was already late on Sunday Night. I said that we should forego the taxi and just walk up through Gramercy before cutting west toward Penn Station. We had plenty of time before the last train to Suffern (where we left the car), and I figured we would happen across a place for cheeseburgers, even if it meant having to settle for a 24-hour fast food joint. Well, we didn’t have to, and it was all thanks to L’Express (Google street view).

The place seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t tie it with a previous visit, mostly because I couldn’t think of the last time I was East of 5th Ave.

The service was awesome. Now, I know it doesn’t seem like that should be difficult at 11:30 PM on a Sunday, but the place was actually pretty busy. Everything was aces: our server was attentive and delightful, our food came fast, hot, and perfectly to order (when I ask for a medium-rare burger, I expect a medium-rare burger).

The burgers ($11.95) were DELICIOUS, perfectly prepared and served on a toasted bun. Our server had gotten us both on the bacon upsell ($2.), but the add-on price was more than justified by the burger-load of bacon that came with it.

As a result of our days in food-service, we tip REALLY WELL for exceptional professionalism. Now, when I’ve been drinking I can be very generous with tips even for average service; when I’m sober, however, I can be very calculating with gratuity. As the night’s DD (for our drive home from Suffern station later), I was stone sober.

It didn’t halt my generosity; I had ZERO complaints. The ambiance was great for a post-concert-going setting, the service was perfect, and as far as the food went, I was happy with the portion-for-price and delighted with the presentation and preparation of the burger. The fries weren’t anything special, but they were crispy and munchable, and come on–I was there for THE BURGER.

Right. You might be saying “it was just a burger”, but it wasn’t just a burger. For this kind of experience, even my sober mind knew that a tip pushing the 35-40% line was appropriate. For us, this wasn’t just a meal, it was a seamless part of a fantastic evening out, and the staff at L’Express did a wonderful job.

We will certainly be back.

I never use my phone to type and it makes me feel like I’m falling behind the curve.

Actually, I normally feel like I’m behind the curve where technology is concerned. In the world of paranoid fears, I would say that this “falling behind” idea consumes me more than any other. It’s this sense that I’m going to be one of the have-nots in a world that is changing more and more rapidly. Is that silly?

Few things are as important to me as the digital interconnectedness I’ve been raised with for the past fifteen years. Chat rooms taught me confidence and quick responses in conversation, not to mention speedy typing. The web gave me a home when I felt alone. It gave me the sanctuary of other minds when I was at my most fragile.

Much as I love and respect my parents, there’s a sense that, after 10 or 11 years old–I was raised by the looming meta-mind more than I was raised by them. I don’t at all see that as a bad thing; it’s not as if my parents were absent–much the opposite. It’s more that they weren’t helicopter parents, for which I am eternally grateful. They truly allowed me to explore and to grow unimpeded around the start of my teenage years, and I believe that’s one of the biggest reasons I am who I am today.

More on this later, though. I think I’ve done enough thumb-typing practice for one night…

My office computer broke. I drew this on my office wall in retaliation.

Ten years ago this week, I was doing nothing more than waiting for my graduation day. I was dual enrolled my senior year, so my college-term classes had ended and I no longer had any high-school requirements left.

Mostly I would just go into school and bother my old design and drawing teacher, Mr. Leogrande, and my chemistry teacher Mr. Dermody. I was one of those kids that hung around after school in favorite teacher’s classrooms for a few hours–and, you know, this was back in the day when your teenage-self could exist on school grounds for no reason without the faculty thinking you were some kind of criminal.

When I was in school, I regarded school as a neat place to be–spending free time looking up books and old periodicals in the library, going to one of the tech rooms and work at a drawing desk outside of regular class time, talking to one of my science or math teachers about something I thought was interesting (but was told to ask about it outside of class so that we could cover the material that needed to be covered).

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