Paul's posts with tag: dreams
 The first of the weird theater dreams.
The day after Writers' Night in 2003, I went back to UP on some business or other. As usual, I was coming from the UP Quill tambayan (Talulah Craft to the uninitiated) and had to go somewhere inside the Faculty Center. This involved the usual walk up the stairs and walkway that follows the FC's façade, which we called the Confessional. This walk gives one a peek through some windows into some of the faculty offices that line those academic halls. One professor had left his (or her) windows open, giving me a view of a figure with long hair, with a shawl wrapped around its shoulders as it looked into some frosted mirror. I was in a hurry, and as always, I climbed, Batman-style, into the hallway linking Gallerias I and II. This maneuver always saved me a round trip to the door facing AS. Once inside, I was suddenly naked and aware that a play, staged in the nearby Teatro Hermogenes Ylagan, was just about to end. Not wanting to be exposed, I rushed through the hallways of the first floor. The hallways describe a figure eight, with two long, parallel corridors and three shorter ones cutting across: Gallerias I, II, and the corridor at the end where the faculty restrooms are. I passed the entrance to Ylagan and turned the corner at the end, looking for an empty office to hide in. Of course, I didn't want to hide in the room where some professor was conducting an arcane ritual. I found one around the next bend, near the stairs leading to the basement.The door was blocked by a large dog, though. It seemed friendly enough and let me into the office, or at least what looked like an office in the middle of some repairs. For some reason, I f ound a quilt in there, which I wrapped around me. Then the theater-goers went out, and it didn't seem to bother them that I was naked under the quilt.I went down into the basement with some people, but instead of finding the usual canteen (Katag, if it's still there now), it was some kind of loading bay for museum artifacts. By this time a suit and tie had somehow materialized and clothed me under the quilt. So I walked towards the Academic Oval, where I was met by a bunch of other people in similar attire--without quilts on their shoulders, that is. And for some reason, Diliman had merged with London. Big Ben and the Carillon were one and the same, and there was a light mist in the air, as if it were spring in England or an early morning in December here.Apparently, the people I was walking with were part of some artsy protest march, and they were headed towards the Sunken Garden (maybe Hyde Park, too?). We all took our seats near the Grandstand; mine was on the far left of the audience. It became clear then that this group was protesting the banning of some film from the local cinemas, and in defiance of this censorship, they decided to screen it in as public a manner as possible, projected onto the rear façade of the Main Library. But before any of it could be shown, we had to sing some kind of invocation. They needed a flag, and apparently it was the quilt I found back in that FC office. In a few moments, it was flying from some flagpole that showed up just for that moment.I woke up after that, wrapped in a comforter against the December cold.
* * *
Carillon picture from Wendell Capili.
Hardin ng mga Diwata and Faculty Center pictures from the College of Arts and Letters website.
 I was a freshman in UP, waiting for a friend to get done with his studying for the day so I could go with him to meet his mother. He said he would be done by 1:00 AM. His boarding house was was placed where the UP Cooperative is now and was run by my ninang. She was too busy to talk or even pay attention to me, so I alternated between sitting in the cramped living room and going back and forth into the rooms, passing my friends equally uncommunicative boarding-house mates. At half past midnight, I noticed that my friend had fallen asleep on his bed with a plate of food on his lap, and everyone at the boarding house looked like they wanted me out of there.So I went out and looked for the jeep that would take me through Sta. Ana--the geography had changed sightly and shifted Diliman closer to Manila. There weren't any jeeps, so I tried passing through the Shopping Center. The people there were closing it up for the night, with chains and padlocks around the door handles and signs prohibiting people from staying inside after hours.I walked some more, this time to the Bahay ng Alumni. I entered through what must have been a backstage entrance, because there was some activity going on up ahead. There were several foot-wide gaps in the floor that stretched out towards the front, and I followed them by walking on the uninterrupted floor on the right. It wouldn't do to fall into the gaps, after all. When I got to the front, I remembered that there was a noodle exhibit I'd forgotten to attend. Fortunately, the entrance was free and you could go in anytime. Of course, the highlight of the exhibit was just about to start. I found myself--and at least a hundred other people--on top of a black, 100-foot platform studded with smaller white platforms. In front of the small platforms, noodles dangled, dry and brightly colored, like straw or hay. We were supposed to climb down those white platforms and stroke the noodles for the acoustic pleasures they produced. The absence of safety harnesses was probably part of the experience.But before I could do any of that, the show started. I sat on the far right of the stage, with a guy and his son (he must've been six). The whole thing was sponsored by this brand called Lively, a variant on the brand of breadsticks that came packaged with its own chocolate dip. Anyway, the show started off with some ominous organ music with techno undertones. Suddenly, there was this screen in front of the stage, blending projected images with neon lights displaying "French" words for 'breasts' and 'woman' and 'prostitute'. It was obviously preaching against commodified or shallow love in a way that was so bold and avant-garde it could only be French.Then the stage we were sitting on (my feet were thankfully long enough to rest on one of the little white platforms) started moving backwards. It picked up speed. The father beside me told his son, "Don't be lively!" perhaps so the little boy wouldn't fall off. I retreated into myself and tried not to move so much; I didn't want to fall off, either. The speed picked up, and the images on the screen in front flashed with greater frequency as the whole experience built up to some climax. When the stage stopped moving, I jumped off to the more solid sidelines and ran off.My feet were hot. I woke up, and found the sun shining on them.
... but I was saved by my dandruff helmet.
I usually dream in the early morning for some reason, and today marks the visit of one of my strange REM-induced imaginings. I was on EDSA and right before Ortigas, maybe in front of Poveda, where the buses rattle on by on their plumes of smoke. I wasn't looking at them, though, but up at the sky, which--it occurs to me now--is unobstructed by the bulk of the MRT Ortigas Station. For some reason, Mulder and Scully were there, complete with the bulky early-season trenchcoats. We were all looking in the direction of Shaw Boulevard, but up at the sky. "Hey look!" I called out to Mulder, "Aliens!" And right then, a thin, yellow beam of light shot across the sky like a meteorite, but it was bright enough to be visible in the daytime--possibly late afternoon. This was followed by the specter of a large bulk of flying technology--you kind of know by the black interspersed with yellow patterns--turning from behind a thick cloud cover. I was then accosted by a little girl--about three or four--who seemed to have been lost. Her features are indistinct now, but I do remember she had a backpack. So off I took her to look for her guardians. 
My perspective shifted then to a third-person camera view, focusing on some balding old man in glasses handling what appeared to be little toy men--not quite dolls. They had the same head-to-body proportions as Stewie from Family Guy, except their heads were slightly rounder and their eyes were closer to the nose. Their heads were also all orange, and their bodies all purple, like those cheaply molded plastic toys we see. And then I got a closer look at the toys: the right eyes contained two smaller circles in them, sitting side by side. Sometimes they would change positions within their eye. The old mad-scientist type started muttering something malevolent. As is the case with arch-villains--it was obvious then what he was--like this, he had a large globe with him, as if to remind him of what he was about to conquer. He took the little toy men and started pushing them, head first, into the globe, training their weird little eyes on the interior. I had a Hermetic moment ("As above, so below"), and considered it a simulation of what I had just seen outside. By that time, I had gotten the little girl into some building, and we were still looking for someone to pick her up. We were in a semi-circular room that looked like a cross between 40's and 60's architecture, with the polished wooden floors and staircase that followed the curve of the wall--like Eugene's house in Gattaca. One wall was flat, and had some kind of observation window, although there wasn't much to observe there. At that point, I was fully cozignant of the old man's nefarious intentions, so when the little girl gave out a cry of alarm, I knew it had something to do with him. True enough, inside her backpack was one of those plastic toy men, and it was moving. It was slow at that time, but I'd seen enough TV and movies to know it'd gain speed soon enough. I took it from the girl, laid it on the floor, and we hurried out of the room. As I locked the door, I had a vision of flames erupting on the inside, so I knew we didn't have that much time. The room we were in was an exercise in decadence: it was part of one of the office buildings near EDSA and Ortigas, but its design was solely for its owner's taste and needs--whatever they were--and wasn't meant for office work. We found this out because we were going down a fire escape and emerged once more near the corner of both avenues, beside the mall. I was afraid then that going into any of the malls would subject us to the old man's panopticon, so I thought of going to this fictitious park (the only kind we have in some parts of the city) build by one of the pharmaceutical companies that have operations in the Philippines. It's supposed to have lots of open spaces, few places where cameras might be hidden. I placed a call to someone, asking for backup. Getting there gave us another unrestricted view of the sky, this time of planes flying here and there. The local planes were the usual stiff vehicles we know them to be, but the others took on stranger shapes. A specimen from Air France in particular looked more organic, and was flapping its wings, much like the languid manner a swan has once it has achieved a high enough altitude. Still, we hurried on to the park. My priorities shifted upon getting there; it became less of a matter of global conspiracies and personal security, and more of ... socializing. My old colleagues from Makati were there, for one reason or another, and were regaling me of the new kinds of committee work they were doing. I retroactively gained another purpose in going there, flashing on a memory of reading an email asking for a meeting at one of the cafés there. Because of some communication mixup, they ended up going there just to hang out instead. The little girl was all but forgotten when Aldus turned up, leading to a strange meeting between him and my former officemates. Now I don't know what happened to Mulder and Scully, the old man and his panopticon, and the little girl. I hate these to-be-continueds.
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