December 3rd-4th edition: Dreamings

But he wishes us more than this. To be free
is often to be lonely. He would unite
the unequal moieties fractured
by our own well-meaning sense of justice,

would restore to the larger the wit and will
the smaller possesses but can only use
for arid disputes, would give back to
the son the mother’s richness of feeling:

but he would have us remember most of all
to be enthusiastic over the night,
not only for the sense of wonder
it alone has to offer, but also

because it needs our love. With large sad eyes
its delectable creatures look up and beg
us dumbly to ask them to follow:
they are exiles who long for the future

that lives in our power, they too would rejoice
if allowed to serve enlightenment like him,
even to bear our cry of ‘Judas’,
as he did and all must bear who serve it.

One rational voice is dumb. Over his grave
the household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved:
sad is Eros, builder of cities,
and weeping anarchic Aphrodite.

would restore to the larger the wit and will
the smaller possesses but can only use
for arid disputes, would give back to
the son the mother’s richness of feeling:

but he would have us remember most of all
to be enthusiastic over the night,
not only for the sense of wonder
it alone has to offer, but also

because it needs our love. With large sad eyes
its delectable creatures look up and beg
us dumbly to ask them to follow:
they are exiles who long for the future

that lives in our power, they too would rejoice
if allowed to serve enlightenment like him,
even to bear our cry of ‘Judas’,
as he did and all must bear who serve it.

One rational voice is dumb. Over his grave
the household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved:
sad is Eros, builder of cities,
and weeping anarchic Aphrodite.

From In Memory of Sigmund Freud by W.H. Auden

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I’m playing a game of soccer with no discernible end, beginnning, or score. The match appears to be full-field, 11 on 11. There are people in the stands watching, but it seems their chief interest is in fighting with each other.

Of the 22 players on the field, I am the only one who is not a zombie.

Intermittently, a zombie- either on my own team or the opposing side- will try to take a chunk out of my arm or neck. They try, but I somehow successfully fend off any undead related injuries or drainage of precious bodily fluids.

After repelling the attack, I continue to play soccer with the zombies. They all seem surprisingly nimble for laying underground for what I can only assume is a number of years. In fact, all of them are better players than I am. I’m hapless. Zombie eyes of disapproval hover throughout the game as I keep making the wrong pass, guarding the wrong man, and generally tripping over my own feet.

I’m terribly frightened. But the fear stems not from being eaten. There is an effortlessness in my struggles to remain unbitten and unchanged. I’m as serene and defenseless as a Hindu Cow. Only I’ve been suddenly uprooted from the Ganges and plunked down in a Nebraska processing plant. I’ve wittingly avoided the grinder so far, but I know eventually I’ll be swept up.

The soccer field is thick with fit, agile, athletic zombies. I’m resigned, not frightened, to eventually being bitten.

In fact, I’m terribly frightened of not playing well enough to the expectations of the reanimated corpses running around periodically attempting to eat my flesh.

I’m failing the zombies on my team. I’m an atrocious player, I’m worse than I ever remember being in high school. I’m terribly disappointed that I’m disappointing them.

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.

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A conversation I had with a friend upon telling her my dream

“So the zombies weren’t playing by the rules?”

“Well, no, they technically were. They weren’t using their hands, or committing any illegal fouls” “They were actually much better players than me”

“They were trying to eat you at various moments” “How is that playing by the rules?”

“Point taken, but technically there isn’t a stipulation in the FIFA handbook discussing the permissibility of eating one’s own-or a member of the opposing-team. So they were, in fact, playing by all the rules of what we know as the game of soccer. I suppose if soccer’s world governing body had any sense, they’d have a meeting before the next World Cup devoted to this matter”

“Um….sorry I asked”