I had a dream I went to Hogwarts except instead of being for magic it was for disabled people. All my RL and Internet disabled friends were there and I felt anxious about who to hang out with.
We were each supposed to put on a little skit about our experience with our disability. I forgot to prepare my skit but I did at the last minute. My friend Gabe (who isn't disabled, but this wasn't a very well-constructed dream) was in the skit.
In my skit I am an elephant wearing a trunk made out of blue construction paper. Gabe tells me it's awful for me to have a trunk, so the next time I see him I'm hiding the trunk under a huge coat.
"Why are you hiding your face under that coat? What's wrong with you?"
"I'm an elephant."
"Don't be stupid! You're not an elephant. You don't have a trunk."
I take my trunk out from under my coat. Gabe stares at me.
"What the fuck is wrong with your face?"
I timidly stumble offstage. Everyone likes my skit.
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
11 December, 2011
12 January, 2011
from the inside, #1
Someone I used to be really close friends with, and am now out of touch with and really miss, has a visible disability. Last night I dreamed that I was singing with this choir that was meeting in a building where my friend had classes. He had somehow gotten put on some kind of special ed track in college, which I don't think was academically easier or something (or maybe it was in some way more accessible to people with mind disabilities, and I was jealous) but almost everyone in it had a visible disability. So I was sitting there with the choir practicing, and I looked up and saw my friend standing in a doorway with a bunch of people from his classes and this other guy who had a similar gait to my friend walked up to him and hugged him, and then they started talking in American Sign Language. I was just watching them as I was singing thinking how I wished that I knew ASL and was in their classes and their group of friends.
No, my friend is not D/deaf, but apparently my unconscious mind thinks that all disabilities that are more acknowledged by society are kind of the same thing? I just think this dream is hilarious.
No, my friend is not D/deaf, but apparently my unconscious mind thinks that all disabilities that are more acknowledged by society are kind of the same thing? I just think this dream is hilarious.
15 November, 2010
On Shambling
I had the creepiest dream about zombies, you guys. They were pretty out of it, but they could talk so even though you could tell by looking at them that they were dead a lot of people wouldn't read them as zombies. I got on one of those really big elevators with a guy my age and his little son, and then this older guy started to get on who I knew was a zombie. I told the guy my age not to let the guy on the elevator, and he ineffectively tried to stop him but he got on anyway. The whole time we were on this elevator, I was telling the zombie to stay on the other side of the elevator, and picking up this folding chair that was in the elevator and threatening to smash his head. By the time we got to my level (we were in a parking garage) the living guy in the elevator obviously thought there was something wrong with me because I was being so aggressive and rude to this other guy, who seemed really gentle. As I got off the elevator I grabbed the living guy and whispered in his ear, "He's a zombie. He will kill you."
When I got in the car two zombies I knew were just sitting in there like we were friends. Riding shotgun was this really nice female zombie (she reminded me a lot of a particular lady with a disability who I worked with this summer). In the back was the zombie from the elevator who was a little more calculating. I couldn't convince them to get out of the car, so I just started driving. The zombie from the elevator kept saying, "What did you whisper to him in the elevator? He was staying away from me. Why did you do that?"
Finally I was at the end of my rope. "Because if you bite people, they will die," I said. "When you bite people, they die, okay? I didn't want you to bite him."
"Oh, I see why you said that," said the female zombie.
I think this dream was interesting because it was the culmination of a lot of thoughts and feelings I've been having about zombies lately. I've been watching The Walking Dead a lot and obviously--and, yes, this does skeeve me out--pretty much every horror entity can be read as disabled in some way or another. Well, I don't read vampires that way, but lots of supernatural figures and ghosts tend to be creepy because they have nonstandard faces/bodies and/or they move differently. For example, in this completely terrifying short film Mama--which I've never been able to watch all the way through so don't be too hard on yourself. Another example is The Grudge where one of the ghosts often crawls around instead of walking. The Orphanage and Darkness Falls have ghosts that cover their faces because their faces are supposed to be so horrifying.
Recently I saw a YouTube video of people dressing up as and impersonating zombies. One commenter said that "they look like they have cerebral palsy," and was lambasted by other commenters for "making fun of people with special needs." I can't help seeing this as really disingenuous--not that the first commenter was awesome, but are you seriously going to pretend to be some kind of gooey champion of "special needs" when you're into zombies, which resemble disabled people more than any other monster? Like, look at this video of extras in The Walking Dead learning to "walk like zombies":
I mean, without the makeup there is kind of a sketchy feeling in watching this, at least for me. Some of the people still look supernatural, but a lot of them just look like they're doing an awkward impression of a disabled person. (By the way, I'm definitely including people with mind disabilities, including myself, in the "people who zombies movie like" category. For whatever reason, weird gaits tend to be a thing for a lot of people with ASD and ID.)
I think I ended up having a dream where I was kind of friendly with zombies because for the last month I've been developing a sense that I'm basically a zombie. Like, it seems like a pretty simple way to explain stuff. Look at this from the Walking Dead comics Wikipedia page:
Zombies may follow something that has caught their attention for hours, such as a gunshot, after which they may follow in the general direction for days, even if they have forgotten what they originally were pursuing.
From the page describing Romero zombies vs. other kinds of zombies:
The animated dead retain vague impulses derived from former living behavior. For instance, zombies often return to specific locations they frequented when alive...Lacking immediate victims to hunt, zombies will often fumble through crude motions reminiscent of life activities, often when prompted by a familiar artifact such as a telephone or car.
Yeah, pretty much.
I was thinking of writing a story about a person who is bitten by a zombie but thinks she can remain human through willpower. Then I found out from TV Tropes that this is already considered a trope, but I think there would still be mileage in it. Especially because I don't think a zombie apocalypse would happen (can you imagine a bunch of AWVs being powerful enough to destroy society?), I think that the infected person could still be trying to go to school or work or whatever, while losing the cognitive function that enables them to succeed in those environments. And they do a pretty good job, until one day they can't anymore.
(Note: if you found this post when you were googling The Walking Dead or something, please don't start making comments about how I'm too politically correct or whatever. I'm not trying to attack/call out anyone for being into zombies--I mean, I'm into zombies and I obviously am into/am affected by some of the other tropes I'm reading as disability tropes. It's probably kind of fucked up that that's the case, but I'm more interested in reclaiming this stuff and thinking about what it means instead of just saying it needs to go away.)
When I got in the car two zombies I knew were just sitting in there like we were friends. Riding shotgun was this really nice female zombie (she reminded me a lot of a particular lady with a disability who I worked with this summer). In the back was the zombie from the elevator who was a little more calculating. I couldn't convince them to get out of the car, so I just started driving. The zombie from the elevator kept saying, "What did you whisper to him in the elevator? He was staying away from me. Why did you do that?"
Finally I was at the end of my rope. "Because if you bite people, they will die," I said. "When you bite people, they die, okay? I didn't want you to bite him."
"Oh, I see why you said that," said the female zombie.
I think this dream was interesting because it was the culmination of a lot of thoughts and feelings I've been having about zombies lately. I've been watching The Walking Dead a lot and obviously--and, yes, this does skeeve me out--pretty much every horror entity can be read as disabled in some way or another. Well, I don't read vampires that way, but lots of supernatural figures and ghosts tend to be creepy because they have nonstandard faces/bodies and/or they move differently. For example, in this completely terrifying short film Mama--which I've never been able to watch all the way through so don't be too hard on yourself. Another example is The Grudge where one of the ghosts often crawls around instead of walking. The Orphanage and Darkness Falls have ghosts that cover their faces because their faces are supposed to be so horrifying.
Recently I saw a YouTube video of people dressing up as and impersonating zombies. One commenter said that "they look like they have cerebral palsy," and was lambasted by other commenters for "making fun of people with special needs." I can't help seeing this as really disingenuous--not that the first commenter was awesome, but are you seriously going to pretend to be some kind of gooey champion of "special needs" when you're into zombies, which resemble disabled people more than any other monster? Like, look at this video of extras in The Walking Dead learning to "walk like zombies":
I mean, without the makeup there is kind of a sketchy feeling in watching this, at least for me. Some of the people still look supernatural, but a lot of them just look like they're doing an awkward impression of a disabled person. (By the way, I'm definitely including people with mind disabilities, including myself, in the "people who zombies movie like" category. For whatever reason, weird gaits tend to be a thing for a lot of people with ASD and ID.)
I think I ended up having a dream where I was kind of friendly with zombies because for the last month I've been developing a sense that I'm basically a zombie. Like, it seems like a pretty simple way to explain stuff. Look at this from the Walking Dead comics Wikipedia page:
Zombies may follow something that has caught their attention for hours, such as a gunshot, after which they may follow in the general direction for days, even if they have forgotten what they originally were pursuing.
From the page describing Romero zombies vs. other kinds of zombies:
The animated dead retain vague impulses derived from former living behavior. For instance, zombies often return to specific locations they frequented when alive...Lacking immediate victims to hunt, zombies will often fumble through crude motions reminiscent of life activities, often when prompted by a familiar artifact such as a telephone or car.
Yeah, pretty much.
I was thinking of writing a story about a person who is bitten by a zombie but thinks she can remain human through willpower. Then I found out from TV Tropes that this is already considered a trope, but I think there would still be mileage in it. Especially because I don't think a zombie apocalypse would happen (can you imagine a bunch of AWVs being powerful enough to destroy society?), I think that the infected person could still be trying to go to school or work or whatever, while losing the cognitive function that enables them to succeed in those environments. And they do a pretty good job, until one day they can't anymore.
(Note: if you found this post when you were googling The Walking Dead or something, please don't start making comments about how I'm too politically correct or whatever. I'm not trying to attack/call out anyone for being into zombies--I mean, I'm into zombies and I obviously am into/am affected by some of the other tropes I'm reading as disability tropes. It's probably kind of fucked up that that's the case, but I'm more interested in reclaiming this stuff and thinking about what it means instead of just saying it needs to go away.)
20 September, 2010
my awesome dreams
So even though my entire theater started laughing when we saw M. Night Shyamalan's name in the Devil trailer (it's amazing how universal this experience is), after reading spoilers for it, I had this dream where I was cast in the movie as the devil but was too afraid to actually go in on the day they were shooting. I think that I think movies are like plays, so we actually had to just go in and stay in the elevator all day and have scary stuff happen to us and pretend to die. I was just really freaked out and didn't go. Then the director called me and asked where I was and I said I overslept and he was like, "that's okay, we can just CGI you in" and I think he just meant for the first few scenes, and I was still supposed to go in, but I just decided not to go at all.
(After I woke up I checked online to see if my unconscious mind correctly remembered the plot of the movie and it totally did, which is impressive given the stuff you usually get wrong in dreams. I'm pretty smart. Also on the "does Geoffrey Arend suck or is he awesome" debate, I'm definitely on the awesome side. If Christina Hendricks was married to some tall guy with giant muscles, it would just be sort of whatever, but instead she is married to someone who looks like us, which means that she's probably a great person and they play video games together all the time.)
I also dreamed that I was trying to find this poem "The Thought Machine," which was someone's poem about having ASD that they posted on the Asperger's livejournal community about seven years ago. In my dream, I went to this storage building that I was pretty sure the author of the poem used, and I was prepared to break into every storage space until I found the poem. But then someone showed up when I was looking around the first place I broke into, and when I explained why I was there, he said he was the person, and he'd go and get the poem for me right away. I was sort of disappointed because I was having fun breaking in to storage areas and reading people's old books.
Then when I woke up I tried to find the poem online, but I can't. I have parts of it memorized really well so I think if it was still up I would be able to find it. It's probably cheesy but I really liked it when I was younger and used to sing it to myself all the time.
eta: Adelaide is AMAZING, here it is: aspie song.
lol, look at this kid: Ergh. If you need any more proof that the way I talk is totally fake.
I also made a post that was like "I used to think autism was cool, but what about people who are severely autistic?" and got responses that were way too awesome for me to understand at the time.
I like this one: Out of curiosity. Also this: Meds and stuff. Although I think I have talked about that stuff here/on youtube.
Otherwise I wasn't a very interesting Baby Autie, although I do like the "Ergh" post.
(After I woke up I checked online to see if my unconscious mind correctly remembered the plot of the movie and it totally did, which is impressive given the stuff you usually get wrong in dreams. I'm pretty smart. Also on the "does Geoffrey Arend suck or is he awesome" debate, I'm definitely on the awesome side. If Christina Hendricks was married to some tall guy with giant muscles, it would just be sort of whatever, but instead she is married to someone who looks like us, which means that she's probably a great person and they play video games together all the time.)
I also dreamed that I was trying to find this poem "The Thought Machine," which was someone's poem about having ASD that they posted on the Asperger's livejournal community about seven years ago. In my dream, I went to this storage building that I was pretty sure the author of the poem used, and I was prepared to break into every storage space until I found the poem. But then someone showed up when I was looking around the first place I broke into, and when I explained why I was there, he said he was the person, and he'd go and get the poem for me right away. I was sort of disappointed because I was having fun breaking in to storage areas and reading people's old books.
Then when I woke up I tried to find the poem online, but I can't. I have parts of it memorized really well so I think if it was still up I would be able to find it. It's probably cheesy but I really liked it when I was younger and used to sing it to myself all the time.
eta: Adelaide is AMAZING, here it is: aspie song.
lol, look at this kid: Ergh. If you need any more proof that the way I talk is totally fake.
I also made a post that was like "I used to think autism was cool, but what about people who are severely autistic?" and got responses that were way too awesome for me to understand at the time.
I like this one: Out of curiosity. Also this: Meds and stuff. Although I think I have talked about that stuff here/on youtube.
Otherwise I wasn't a very interesting Baby Autie, although I do like the "Ergh" post.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
