Last night I had a series of dreams which were about a previous night's series of dreams. Last night, I dreamed that the difficulties I had faced during the earlier night's dreams were due to my misunderstanding of the autistic-human interface, and that the solution was to understand the underlying human motivation whenever it is at odds with the ostensible reasons for the given event.
Get it? Got it? Good. It seemed like a big breakthrough while I was still asleep, but sometimes what seems like brilliance when I'm asleep turns out to be pretty much nothing when I wake up. We'll see whether or not I've actually had a breakthrough.
But first I should probably explain what I mean by the "autistic-human interface." We -- by which I mean we autistic people -- find you humans to be fascinating, lovable creatures -- and by "humans" I mean the 99% or so of you who are not autistic. We like you, but we often find it very difficult to care for you and provide healthy environments for you, conditions in which you can thrive to the utmost, because we don't understand how your brains work, and we very often do not understand what you are trying to communicate with your words and actions. To name just one example, there's the whole eye-contact thing. Boy, you humans really like to make a lot of eye contact! It's only been in the past several years, with the help of therapists specializing in aspects of the autistic-human interface, that I've noticed how much eye contact most of you consider to be normal. How much? Way too much for me in most circumstances, thank you very much! So don't take it personally if I don't look you in the eye nearly as much as you think I might. It doesn't have anything to do with me not liking you, or liking you too much and being all shy about that, or with me being a shifty coward instead of a "real" man -- no, it's just an aspect of the autistic-human interface. We may look the same and share a lot of the same DNA, but we autistic people are genetic mutants, and we're different from you humans. The eye contact issue is one of many, many examples.
So anyway, I don't remember much about the previous night's dreams except that in those dreams I was pondering the interface, as I do quite a lot in dreams and also while awake. Last night's dreams had to with improving the interface. First of all, I was in a very crowded mall with Matt LeBlanc (a movie star again). I often find crowds very stressful, as many autistic people do, but it helps if I'm with some other people and I'm involved with them either by conversation or by some shared task or by sharing an experience, like at a movie or sporting event. In the mall Matt and I, autistic and human united in a single purpose, were attempting to help some senior citizens shop. But it was so crowded and there was so much pushing and shoving in the crowd, and the senior citizens themselves were so energetic, running this way and that, that Matt and I had to agree that our efforts had met with only partial success, if that, but that we had gained some insight into the interface. We shook hands, and that was the end of the 1st dream. (Matt's hair wasn't grey.)
In the next dream I was outside in a Midwestern semi-urban environment. I and many other people were energetically running and jumping across the landscape, sometimes leaping from roof to roof in suburban subdivisions or leaping across narrow canyons, in a large-scale effort to do... something. If it was clear to me during the dream what all of us were doing, it's gone now, except that there were hundreds of us, too many to communicate with all of the rest in the midst of so much action and motion, and that we were all united in... something. Like maybe distributing bottled water to the populace, because the water supply had been contaminated, or the water-delivery system had been damaged. I mention this only as a possibility, because I don't remember what our shared purpose was, if I even ever knew it to begin with while I was dreaming.
A sub-group within the group of us, a couple dozen people, had paused in a parking lot to get organized for the next step. It was a parking lot but all of us were on foot. I had been given the task of explaining to this sub-group what we needed to do next, and how we were going to do it. The plan was very clear to me, it would have been very simple to communicate the plan to these several dozen people, except that every time that I began to speak, Mila Kunis (movie star!) and another young woman, sitting cross-legged on a blanket, began to talk to each other very loudly in a Slavic language. I stopped talking, and they stopped talking, and as soon I began again they began again. It seemed very clear that they were deliberately interfering with my prepping the group for the next action to be taken, although it was not all clear to me why they were doing it.
And that's when I had what seemed to me, while I was dreaming, like an epiphany about the autistic-human interface, which, now that I'm awake, seems like it might be be nothing. The possible epiphany is this: it's good for an autistic person, observing humans, to see the difference, if he or she can, between the explicit motivation for the event, and the implicit motivation for the behavior within the event which seems to contradict the event's explicit motivation.
For example: say that we were all there to get bottled water to people who needed it. That was the explicit motivation of the event which had brought us all together. I had the same explicit motivation in attempting to address the people in the parking lot. Now say that Mila and her friend were making a joke by repeatedly interrupting me in a Slavic language. That would mean that the implicit motivation of their repeated interruption was humor. Nothing wrong with humor in the midst of a day of hard, important work. Perhaps humans could easily see the implicit motivation of the actions of Mila and her friend. Perhaps, if I were human instead of autistic, I would know what to do. Perhaps a human would know exactly how to react, in a way which would make everyone laugh, and we were all tired and the laughter would re-energize all of us, and then it would be appropriate for me to continue sharing the plan for the next phase of action.
That's the possible epiphany: see something that at first looks to me like hostile disruption of the explicit purpose of the event, try to grasp the implicit motivation, see if maybe it's not hostile at all, react to the implicit motivation, rather than becoming angry at the disruption of the larger explicit purpose. Because perhaps Mila and her friend had no intention at all of hindering the explicit purpose, but just felt a need, not just on their parts, but on the part of the group -- maybe even on my part as well -- to blow off some steam for just a moment, before returning to the explicit purpose, the distribution of the bottled water.
Epiphany? Crap? Part-epiphany, part-crap? I don't know.
Showing posts with label movie stars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie stars. Show all posts
Monday, October 5, 2015
Monday, September 21, 2015
Dream Log: Still More Movie Stars
What is it lately with my subconscious and movie stars? In the first of 2 dreams last night, I found myself facing a large roomful of women seated in rows of chairs. The gathering felt like it had something to do with show business, although it was not being televised, so everyone was wearing normal clothes instead of haute couture. Still, even though I had wound up at the front of the room by mistake, it seemed that people were looking at me expectantly. So I improvised what I hoped were some witty remarks. To my relief, my little improvised routine seemed to go over well. I was very tired when I finished, and I saw an empty chair at one end of the front row, and, hoping that it was not being saved for someone, I hurried over to it and sat down with a groan.
I wasn't injured. I was groaning merely because I am 54 years old. However, the sound was apparently alarming to some people, who assumed I might be injured. A very tall and athletic-looking woman -- she looked like a professional basketball player -- hurried over and began to vigourously massage me and to call out instructions to others. I felt that the concern and the massage were unnecessary, but it was very pleasant, and so, feeling a little guilty about allowing others to assume that I was unwell, I didn't say anything and just let it happen. Heeding the tall woman's orders, some people had carried a table over to where I was and put a blanket on it. I was laid face-up on the blanket, where the tall woman massaged my neck and shoulders, while two other women massaged my arms and torso and two others massaged my legs. It all felt very, very good.
My improvised remarks in front of the group had gone over so well that -- combined, perhaps, with misplaced sympathy over an injury I had not sustained? -- NBC offered me the leading role in a sitcom, along with positions as a writer and producer. The show was put in the Thursday 8PM slot.
Not long after this I was in a large house with several gay men who were mutual friends of Kristen Bell's and mine. Kristen and I had not met before this. Some of the men and I were in the top floor of the house, while just above us, audible but unseen for the moment, were another one of the men, and Kristen. Kristen had injured her tailbone and was crying out in pain. Then she heard that I was here, and she looked down through that square hole in the top-floor ceiling and attic-floor which is the usual way you get from a top floor to an attic, and gave me a big smile and said hello. I said I was sorry about her tailbone and asked if there was anything I could do. "Anything. Anything at all," I said repeatedly. She was being very friendly, and I had decided to be very friendly back, and "go for it," as the kids say these days.
Fortunately, Kristen's injury seemed not be severe, and fairly soon it appeared that she was no longer in pain. But, in playful response to my inquiries about what I could do for her, she came down to the top floor where I was, and picked up a magazine with two drawings on the cover. On the left was a black-on-white drawing of a cat. This was the logo of my sitcom. On the right was a drawing of a cat with vivid orange-and-black fur, and Gloria Steinem's face. This drawing indicated a half-hour special about Gloria Steinem which was going to air on NBC at 8:30 on an upcoming Thursday, immediately after my show. Clearly not actually expecting that I could do anything about it, Kirsten asked me if there was any way that the 2 shows could be flipped. They were only giving Steinem a half-hour, and at 8:30 the special devoted to her might get less viewers than if it were to air at 8PM.
"Going for it," I immediately took out my phone, called the highest-ranked person I knew at NBC and asked her if the shows could be flipped. As I expected, my big-shot network contact was not optimistic about this. Nevertheless, I persisted for a while before hanging up.
Then Kristen and I had lots and lots of sex. I'll spare you the filthy details. That was the end of the 1st dream.
In the second dream there was a lot of hugging and some kissing, but no sex, and everyone stayed fully-dressed the whole time. In fact, we wore sweaters or light jackets the whole time, because it was rather chilly. The hugging and kissing didn't feel intensely sexual, but it was much more emotionally intense for me than all of the sex in the first dream.
It started out in a place with a white floor and white walls and white plastic seats fastened to the floor, like an airport terminal or a laundromat. I was sitting on a white bench with a woman and we were hugging. But after a while I left this woman and started hugging another one. I didn't recognize this 2nd woman. In the dream it didn't seem as if I had ever seen her before. But after I woke up I realized that she looked exactly like Chloë Grace Moretz. Chloë Grace Moretz is just barely 18 years old. 1/3 my age. Yeah. In the first dream, Kirsten Bell had been Kirsten Bell the movie star. In this 2nd dream, this young women who looked like Chloë Grace Moretz did not appear to be rich or famous or an actress.
She had a lot of friends, though, and in between hugging sessions with me she talked to a lot of different people. I don't know whether or not in real life these days there's some way that a person can color their hair in just a moment without a lot of mess or dangerous chemicals. In this dream there was, and -- I'll just call her Chloë for the sake of convenience, although I don't remember what her name was in the dream -- Chloë took a moment now and then to change the color of her hair.
After spending some time in the white-plastic environment, we moved to a huge party or gathering of some sort, crowded with people and with some animals too, including some very large bears and a full-grown male lion. Chloë spent a lot of time hugging and petting these large beasts. After she was done with the lion I petted its mane for just a moment. But I didn't feel good about the lion and bears being there. I was afraid that someone might get injured or killed at any moment. (Perhaps these animals symbolized a subconscious anxiety that Chloë's father might be much younger and in much better shape than I, and might suddenly appear and kill me? -- Well, okay, it's not so much a fear of being physically overpowered. I'm old but I'm spry. I think it's more guilt than fear, because it seems to me that the father of an 18-year-old woman might be very justifiably annoyed and suspicious if he found some 54-year-old man hugging his daughter a lot. Even a spry 54-year-old.)
I very quickly developed very strong feelings for Chloë. Standing a little ways away with some of her very many friends, she apparently read something in my expression, and asked me what was wrong. I told her that I liked her a lot, but that I wasn't completely sure about her feelings toward me, and I didn't want to take up a lot of her time, if she preferred to spend it socializing with others. She hurried over to me and hugged me and held me very tight and said, "Take up a lot of my time."
And then I woke up.
I wasn't injured. I was groaning merely because I am 54 years old. However, the sound was apparently alarming to some people, who assumed I might be injured. A very tall and athletic-looking woman -- she looked like a professional basketball player -- hurried over and began to vigourously massage me and to call out instructions to others. I felt that the concern and the massage were unnecessary, but it was very pleasant, and so, feeling a little guilty about allowing others to assume that I was unwell, I didn't say anything and just let it happen. Heeding the tall woman's orders, some people had carried a table over to where I was and put a blanket on it. I was laid face-up on the blanket, where the tall woman massaged my neck and shoulders, while two other women massaged my arms and torso and two others massaged my legs. It all felt very, very good.
My improvised remarks in front of the group had gone over so well that -- combined, perhaps, with misplaced sympathy over an injury I had not sustained? -- NBC offered me the leading role in a sitcom, along with positions as a writer and producer. The show was put in the Thursday 8PM slot.
Not long after this I was in a large house with several gay men who were mutual friends of Kristen Bell's and mine. Kristen and I had not met before this. Some of the men and I were in the top floor of the house, while just above us, audible but unseen for the moment, were another one of the men, and Kristen. Kristen had injured her tailbone and was crying out in pain. Then she heard that I was here, and she looked down through that square hole in the top-floor ceiling and attic-floor which is the usual way you get from a top floor to an attic, and gave me a big smile and said hello. I said I was sorry about her tailbone and asked if there was anything I could do. "Anything. Anything at all," I said repeatedly. She was being very friendly, and I had decided to be very friendly back, and "go for it," as the kids say these days.
Fortunately, Kristen's injury seemed not be severe, and fairly soon it appeared that she was no longer in pain. But, in playful response to my inquiries about what I could do for her, she came down to the top floor where I was, and picked up a magazine with two drawings on the cover. On the left was a black-on-white drawing of a cat. This was the logo of my sitcom. On the right was a drawing of a cat with vivid orange-and-black fur, and Gloria Steinem's face. This drawing indicated a half-hour special about Gloria Steinem which was going to air on NBC at 8:30 on an upcoming Thursday, immediately after my show. Clearly not actually expecting that I could do anything about it, Kirsten asked me if there was any way that the 2 shows could be flipped. They were only giving Steinem a half-hour, and at 8:30 the special devoted to her might get less viewers than if it were to air at 8PM.
"Going for it," I immediately took out my phone, called the highest-ranked person I knew at NBC and asked her if the shows could be flipped. As I expected, my big-shot network contact was not optimistic about this. Nevertheless, I persisted for a while before hanging up.
Then Kristen and I had lots and lots of sex. I'll spare you the filthy details. That was the end of the 1st dream.
In the second dream there was a lot of hugging and some kissing, but no sex, and everyone stayed fully-dressed the whole time. In fact, we wore sweaters or light jackets the whole time, because it was rather chilly. The hugging and kissing didn't feel intensely sexual, but it was much more emotionally intense for me than all of the sex in the first dream.
It started out in a place with a white floor and white walls and white plastic seats fastened to the floor, like an airport terminal or a laundromat. I was sitting on a white bench with a woman and we were hugging. But after a while I left this woman and started hugging another one. I didn't recognize this 2nd woman. In the dream it didn't seem as if I had ever seen her before. But after I woke up I realized that she looked exactly like Chloë Grace Moretz. Chloë Grace Moretz is just barely 18 years old. 1/3 my age. Yeah. In the first dream, Kirsten Bell had been Kirsten Bell the movie star. In this 2nd dream, this young women who looked like Chloë Grace Moretz did not appear to be rich or famous or an actress.
She had a lot of friends, though, and in between hugging sessions with me she talked to a lot of different people. I don't know whether or not in real life these days there's some way that a person can color their hair in just a moment without a lot of mess or dangerous chemicals. In this dream there was, and -- I'll just call her Chloë for the sake of convenience, although I don't remember what her name was in the dream -- Chloë took a moment now and then to change the color of her hair.
After spending some time in the white-plastic environment, we moved to a huge party or gathering of some sort, crowded with people and with some animals too, including some very large bears and a full-grown male lion. Chloë spent a lot of time hugging and petting these large beasts. After she was done with the lion I petted its mane for just a moment. But I didn't feel good about the lion and bears being there. I was afraid that someone might get injured or killed at any moment. (Perhaps these animals symbolized a subconscious anxiety that Chloë's father might be much younger and in much better shape than I, and might suddenly appear and kill me? -- Well, okay, it's not so much a fear of being physically overpowered. I'm old but I'm spry. I think it's more guilt than fear, because it seems to me that the father of an 18-year-old woman might be very justifiably annoyed and suspicious if he found some 54-year-old man hugging his daughter a lot. Even a spry 54-year-old.)
I very quickly developed very strong feelings for Chloë. Standing a little ways away with some of her very many friends, she apparently read something in my expression, and asked me what was wrong. I told her that I liked her a lot, but that I wasn't completely sure about her feelings toward me, and I didn't want to take up a lot of her time, if she preferred to spend it socializing with others. She hurried over to me and hugged me and held me very tight and said, "Take up a lot of my time."
And then I woke up.
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Dream Log: Movie Stars & Vintage Cars & Stuff I Can't Afford
I dreamed that I met up with an old friend I haven't seen in decades. He was with one of his new friends, a huge movie star, a man about a decade younger than the two of us. (I've decided that if I were to name the movie stars in this dream, it would just be too embarrassing to write about publicly.) We went into a parking garage in the downtown of a city in the middle of the night. There were many American cars from the 1960's in there. I was about to remark that for such an upscale building, there were an a lot of really old cars parked here, but then I noticed that the cars looked like new. My old friend and I are so old that cars built during our early childhoods are now exotic antiques.
From the parking garage we went up into the building to the movie star's apartment. The two of them were talking about the three of us doing expensive things like playing golf in the morning. Apparently we were just going to stay up all night, and then go play golf. It occurred to me that I couldn't financially afford to hang out with these guys. I tried to bring this up but somehow I was always interrupted when I was about to say it.
Then I was interrupted even more because another huge movie star, a woman about a decade younger than my friend's new famous friend and two decades younger than my friend and I, showed up, and both my friend and his friend were obviously gaga about her, and unable to completely conceal their feelings. It seemed that this was not the first time that they had unsuccessfully flirted with her, and that she wasn't interested at all and felt sort of sorry for both of them, and that it was awkward because they took her politeness and efforts not to hurt their feelings for encouragement.
And then both my old friend and his friend were even more hurt in their feelings because it became obvious that the young starlet was attracted to me.
It was about 4 AM and I was exhausted, there was no way I was going to play golf in the morning, even if I could afford to. I'm not sure how much it costs to play 18 holes on a swanky course, but I'm pretty sure I can't afford it, and I was in no mood to let one of the other guys spring for it. I knew that for the movie star, and possibly for my old friend as well, the amount to pay for me was not significant -- my old friend was at least dressed as if he were now rather well-off -- but if they'd shelled out for me, it would've made me uncomfortable, and if I'd payed for club rental and greens fees and whatever you pay for a round of golf -- well, it wasn't going to happen. They were talking about getting brunch after 18 holes at a place where my share of the bill might have been more than a month's income for me.
So I just stood up and excused myself and walked out of the apartment. The young lady followed me, and hugged me, and stared at me with her big beautiful eyes. I said I was going straight home and to bed. She responded to that with a big smile. I said that although she was very beautiful, and although I was more than merely flattered, I was overwhelmed by how friendly she being toward me, I was simply too tired right now to do anything but sleep. She hugged me tighter and and said she was sleepy too. I was too tired to argue. I was too tired to analyze whether she was slumming, or just using me to make a point to one of the other two guys.
We took a subway to my place. I apologized for my squalid lodgings. She said they were just fine to her. I stripped down to my T-shirt and shorts, laid down on the bed on top of the covers and went to sleep.
I dreamed that I went to sleep. I can't remember ever having done that before.
From the parking garage we went up into the building to the movie star's apartment. The two of them were talking about the three of us doing expensive things like playing golf in the morning. Apparently we were just going to stay up all night, and then go play golf. It occurred to me that I couldn't financially afford to hang out with these guys. I tried to bring this up but somehow I was always interrupted when I was about to say it.
Then I was interrupted even more because another huge movie star, a woman about a decade younger than my friend's new famous friend and two decades younger than my friend and I, showed up, and both my friend and his friend were obviously gaga about her, and unable to completely conceal their feelings. It seemed that this was not the first time that they had unsuccessfully flirted with her, and that she wasn't interested at all and felt sort of sorry for both of them, and that it was awkward because they took her politeness and efforts not to hurt their feelings for encouragement.
And then both my old friend and his friend were even more hurt in their feelings because it became obvious that the young starlet was attracted to me.
It was about 4 AM and I was exhausted, there was no way I was going to play golf in the morning, even if I could afford to. I'm not sure how much it costs to play 18 holes on a swanky course, but I'm pretty sure I can't afford it, and I was in no mood to let one of the other guys spring for it. I knew that for the movie star, and possibly for my old friend as well, the amount to pay for me was not significant -- my old friend was at least dressed as if he were now rather well-off -- but if they'd shelled out for me, it would've made me uncomfortable, and if I'd payed for club rental and greens fees and whatever you pay for a round of golf -- well, it wasn't going to happen. They were talking about getting brunch after 18 holes at a place where my share of the bill might have been more than a month's income for me.
So I just stood up and excused myself and walked out of the apartment. The young lady followed me, and hugged me, and stared at me with her big beautiful eyes. I said I was going straight home and to bed. She responded to that with a big smile. I said that although she was very beautiful, and although I was more than merely flattered, I was overwhelmed by how friendly she being toward me, I was simply too tired right now to do anything but sleep. She hugged me tighter and and said she was sleepy too. I was too tired to argue. I was too tired to analyze whether she was slumming, or just using me to make a point to one of the other two guys.
We took a subway to my place. I apologized for my squalid lodgings. She said they were just fine to her. I stripped down to my T-shirt and shorts, laid down on the bed on top of the covers and went to sleep.
I dreamed that I went to sleep. I can't remember ever having done that before.
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