Envisaged Thoughts from the White Board - April 22

"Envisaged" - as in dreamt up.  I had an interesting (and for once, lately, not disturbing) dream this morning.

Of course, dreams are fleeting, so I can't recall all of it.  From the earliest part I can recall, I was in the church foyer of the building I attended services in while growing up.  But in the dream it wasn't a church, but more like a school.  And of course, as always, the architecture was not spot on.  It is rare in my dreams that anything is exact.  My head pulls different things together, some real, some only imagined.

In this foyer, there were lots of people.  And I was trying to get through the crowd to a class or a meeting or something.  But along the way,  I met a friend (nobody I know in real life) who was in the air force.  He stopped me and we chatted.  He said he and a friend who could get me into the room where the air force pilot simulator was.  I was excited, because I was tired from my everyday chores of life and wanted some excitement.  Yes, gentle reader, I know exactly where some parts of this dream came from.

Anyway, he and I went into what would be the office parts of the church, right off the foyer.  I think we were in there for a little while, just chatting.  Then his other friend arrived, and this new guy took me to a small storage room in an entirely different building.  It was supposed to be behind the church.  And inside this room was a small CRT screen hooked up to a cord that came out of a rather puny looking computer.  I thought to myself that this couldn't be the flight simulator I had heard such great things about and therefore was so anxious to try a hand at.  No way.

The F-16 is the military aircraft I have probably seen most in real life.  I grew up within sight of the outbound flight path of the local air base.  But it isn't my favorite plane.  That'd be the F-14 Tomcat. / Source: asian-wallpapers-pk.blogspot.com

But yes, it was.  I sat down, and he left the room and then a moment later, the machine started up.  It seemed kind of primitive at first, but when I started manipulating the keyboard, the experience seemed - in my dream - to get better.


In my dream, I suddenly found myself in an overlooking viewpoint of a really well digitized version of an F-16.  Top down, so to speak.  And then I was trying, through the simulator controls, to manipulate it.  First, I crashed the plane outright.  And this was with the thing sitting on the ground, on its landing gear.  I tried to start the engine and instead I somehow made the plane fall over on its nose and start coming apart.  It was both odd, and kinda funny at the same time.

Then my friend's friend (the one who brought me into the simulator room) seemed to come over some kind of intercom and told me I was doing it wrong.  Mind you, from the point in the dream where I stared interacting with the simulator, I never returned to the place where I was in "reality."  Everything was seen through the lens of this "simulation."


As an aside, if this had been me playing (back in the day, that is), I wouldn't have missed so badly on the bombing run.

I discovered quickly that I was trying to run the simulator based on what I knew from playing old computer simulation games like "Falcon 3.0," and that wasn't working.  So I started to use non-intuitive commands on the controls at my disposal (mind you, I couldn't see myself manipulating the keyboard and the flight stick I was using in the simulator room, but I knew what buttons I was supposed to be pushing and how the stick should be moving and such), and the plane started to respond.

Then things got exciting.  I know where this part of the dream came from.  If you want to delve my subconscious, this part is a wish for entertainment and excitement.  I managed to get the plane to roll down the runway, and then made it take off.  I flew it around for awhile, doing acrobatics and getting a feel for it.  All the while, I was watching the computer-generated airplane from outside of it.  A "God's-eye" view, they call it.

Then things got even more interesting.  The guy running the simulator (my friend's friend), did something, and suddenly I was given a mission to fly my plane into this compound and bomb these Libyan bad guys (they were Libyans, specifically in the dream, and I recall Muammar Gaddafi being a "target by some point in the fight - isn't that wild?).

I'd look pissed off too if somebody dressed me in that funny looking hat. / Source: Wikipedia.com

So I flew my F-16 (I note specifically what it was, because it was still an F-16 at this time in the dream) over the compound, but suddenly I was switching views to inside the plane, and then outside again, and then... well it was cinematic, I guess you could say.  I saw the bad guys on the ground, shooting guns up at me.  I saw where my bombs impacted.  I was dropping single bombs like I was trying to hit specific targets, and I kept flying over the compound, which in real life would be suicidal.  The whole thing was very much like a video game. But my brain said that was OK, because this was a "simulator."  Nobody was getting hurt, and it was all just a fun adventure.

Then, right before I woke up, I accidentally crashed the plane.  I tried to do a loop because an important target (maybe Gaddafi) was right beneath me, and I flipped the plane over to do a nose dive on him and drop a bomb at him.  Right around this time, the plane I was flying had - for some unknown reason - turned into a French-made Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft.  I don't know why it stopped being an F-16 in my dream and switched to a plane I don't care too much about.  They are both similar in shape and size, but have distinct differences too.  For whatever reason, I had started out flying an F-16, but the plane I crashed was a Mirage.  Hmmm...

So the plane belly-landed and sort of "stuck" into the ground.  More like a toy plane that a boy has crashed, belly first, into soft sand.  It was "broken," and no mistake, but it didn't blow up or break into pieces or anything.  And I didn't eject out of it.  I just sat, unharmed, in the cockpit and thought, "darn, I crashed the plane."

The Mirage 2000.  This is what the one in my dream looked like.  Except the one in my dream was seen - most of the time it was seen - embedded in sand and dirt.  Weird. / Source: AircraftRecognition.co.uk

And then, as my view switched back to that "God-eye" perspective, and I saw the building I had been attacking and the plane stuck in the ground and the colors of the land and the sky, I started out of the dream and woke up.  I don't know if the dream was over or if I got woken up by something and that's why it ended, but... well, the ride was done for me.

Such a strange dream.  But much better than anything I've dreamed of lately.  I can't recall the last dream I had that wasn't a borderline nightmare, at best.  Tension and stress, that's what is giving me those.  Maybe I had this one because I just finished my last paper for the semester last night, and I gave myself permission afterward to have a little fun before I need to start doing chores and look for a new job and stuff like that.

But I didn't actually do anything differently after finishing the paper than I have for as long as I can recall.  No celebratory video game playing or relaxation of any particular type.  So I guess that dream was just my way of doing some relaxing.  Talk about a weird trip.

Well, I do have a few other things to do, so I'll wrap this inconsequential guy up and get on with my day. 

Every dream that anyone ever has is theirs alone and they never manage to share it. And they never manage to remember it either. Not truly or accurately. Not as it was. Our memories and our vocabularies aren't up to the job. - Alex Garland

In dreams, as in the Gospels, one usually possesses the gift of tongues. - Roberto Bolano

 Dreams are symbolic in order that they cannot be understood; in order that the wish, which is the source of the dream, may remain unknown. - Carl Jung

 Dreams last as long as you let them ... both good and bad. - Michael Marshall

The parting comment:

Source: LolSnaps.com

 I used to think like this when I was a kid too.  And I've dreamed like this too on occasion.  That seems like one of those "chicken or egg" things.  Did my imagination lead to the dream, or did the dream lead to my imagination?

A two-fer on parting comments today.  This little video clip about dreaming is both interesting and instructional.