orange and purple leadership

Good morning, everybody.

This post is related to this entry in my dream journal.

I also have some updates to some dreams I've had over the past few nights. I'm a slow thinker. So it usually takes a while for some image associations to my dreams to occur to me.

But -- actually, one of the main images of my dream connects to one of the images I wanted to mention in my updates. In the fifth and seventh dreams of today's dream journal entry, there was a tall, beautiful, black man. In the fifth dream, the man helped me find my way. In the seventh dream, he kept feeding me all kinds of sweet food.

I think this man is associated with the man who acted as MC at the Center Stage at this weekend's PrideFest in Denver. I can't find the guy's name right now. Anyway, he was really good, really smart and funny, and he seemed really kind. He's one of those MCs that really make you feel like he's guiding you through the show.

I liked him a lot. But -- he wore a lot of purple. He first wore a purple, sleeveless t-shirt and blue jeans. Then he wore an outfit with purple pants and a shirt like a tuxedo vest with long, purple tails -- so, like the vest of a tuxedo and the tails of a tuxedo's jacket all in one. It was pretty hot.

During the kid's karaoke show, the MC had a young boy up on stage with him. The boy went back stage one time and came out wearing a purple gown, like a graduation gown. The MC had a little exchange with the boy, something along the lines of, "Are you getting into my clothes again?"

And -- even more to my taste -- one of the little girls doing karaoke came up on stage wearing a pink tutu and a pink leotard. After the girl's performance, the MC said, "I need an outfit just like that!"

Of course, I agreed -- except that I would have liked to be wearing a diaper under that outfit as well.

Anyway, after all this purple, it's not surprising that I had the purple diaper and t-shirt dream in this dream entry.

But in this group of dreams, the man acts as something of a leader to me. In one dream, when I myself am trying to be a leader, and I've lost my way, I'm guided without anybody knowing. I think my admiration of the man's crowd-leadership skills (and sense of humor) made me see the man as a leader teaching me to be a leader.

I think the reason that the man appeared as the guy who was going to feed me cupcakes "or else" was probably because I saw him as a man who was so unabashedly himself, while I was still stuck in my shell. I think that eating the sweet food just means allowing myself to be a part of the sweet things in life -- like love. If I didn't open up and accept the sweet food, the man was going to spread my secret, which, obviously, was that I liked the sweet food.

Although, one thing I'll say about the image of the sweet food, is that this definitely comes from this entry in the blog Dust Jacket Attic, showing photographs of sticky date pudding. The sticky date pudding looks pretty much like the little cakes in my dream.

Another thing about being over-fed sweet food is that it is probably a compensation, or a balancing out of the theme of not eating at all in this dream journal entry.

Usually, Jung says, when you have one theme pronouncing itself really powerfully in a dream, you often get the opposed theme pronouncing itself really powerfully in a following dream. That's not always the case. Nothing is "always the case" in dreams or in waking life. But I've noticed that sometimes Jung is right about the idea of compensation.

Of course, another dream I had involved cooking way too much food. The food was fish. And I think that part of this might be my body's reaction that I've been (bachelor, terrible, terrible) eating way too much canned tuna fish lately.

But I think it might also come from this news article, which one of my friends sent me, which describes how a woman in Korea, eating a parboiled squid, had some of the squid's spermatophores shot into her mouth and embedded in her gums. The woman ended up being okay, of course. But it was kind of a gross story.

But this connects the food to sexuality, I think. I think that, if I were equate the food in my dream to my sexuality, I'd say that I probably am "a closed down shop" that "isn't expecting much business," but when I get excited about new business, I prepare too much food. Then I don't really do anything with myself, and all the food I made just sits there and rots. It's a waste of my energy -- physical and emotional. But it's all my fault. Because I don't open up my closed down shop.

I think the hitchhiker in my sixth dream is an interesting image. But I don't know what he means. Last night I browsed around through Alvin Toffler's futurist/sociological work Future Shock. There are a lot of really great things about the book. But I think the hitchhiker image came from a section in the book where Toffler mentions how many young girls in the 1960s hit the road and traveled by hitchhiking.

I personally equated this idea with an idea of Friedrich Nietzsche (I can't remember from which book -- maybe Ecce Homo?) that wanderlust is equivalent to sexual potency. People who have a great desire to travel are often very bold and powerful sexually. Of course, this was an argument made to prove that Kant, whose travels never strayed beyond his afternoon walks around Gothenburg (?), was a prude. And that argument, of course, was made to prove that Kant's philosophy was no good.


But I think that the sexually bold woman (in Nietzsche's scheme of things) in Toffler's book became the hitchhiking boy in my dream. Also sexually bold, the boy just latches on to any old car that passes, assuming it will "give him a ride," which can be taken sexually. Although, I do have to say that that image reminds me of one of my favorite movie scenes, from Back to the Future, where Marty McFly, on his skateboard, latches on to the back of a pick-up truck for a ride.


I'm not sure why we end up killing the boy. But there's obviously a development from the boy being killed to the girl stopping the yellow taxi cab and getting in. I'd say that the boy stands for one aspect of my sexuality and the girl stands for another. I probably need to let the one aspect of my sexuality go and take on the other aspect. 


But the girl seems very much like she's in a horror movie. And I get involved in that "horror movie" atmosphere with her. I'm not sure what that means. Well, I think I have some idea, though. In another passage of Future Shock, Toffler mentions a survey which showed that the one of the top criteria by which girls judge prospective boyfriends is whether they own a car.


So the boy is a hitchhiker. Like me, he hitches rides -- except that I "hitch rides" on public transportation: the bus. The boy is thrown off the bus and killed. Then I find myself in a car. But it's still not a car of my own. It's a car I pay to use by the mile. It's a taxi cab. And it's driven by my mother. But for some reason, this is good enough for the girl to get into.


But the girl "feels sorry" for me and my mom. Why? Probably because I have to get rid of the taxi cab as well. If a car can be seen as standing for my own identity, then I'm in an identity which is *not* my own. I need to get rid of this paid-for identity, which my mom is driving, i.e. in control of, and I need to get an identity of my own. But this would likely be a painful experience for both myself and my mom. Hence the reason for the girl "feeling sorry" for us both.


The final image I'd like to discuss from these dreams is the image of the bottles. A few days ago on this blog I mentioned a "fight" (wasn't much of a fight, on my side) that I got into in 2006. A group of kids gathered around me, right in the very nice Manhattan neighborhood of Gramercy Park, and took turns taunting and hitting me. 


One of the kids actually hit me over the head with a wine bottle. He must not have hit me hard because, even though it really hurt, it didn't stun me or knock me out, and it didn't break the bottle. Anyway, I think the image of hitting my boss over the head with bottles came from this image, which remained at the top of my mind since I'd mentioned it on this blog.


But the bottles I want to smash by dream-boss' skull in with are PET bottles -- plastic bottles. The worst a plastic bottle would do is annoy the heck out of somebody. It would be ineffective as far as knocking somebody out, not to mention killing them, would go. 


But I think these bottles also stand for space station modules. I think I, like a lot of other people, have been interested in China's Liu Yang, the first Chinese woman to go into space. Yesterday I watched the docking of the Shenzhen space capsule with the Tiangong 1 space station on YouTube.

This event, as well as the mention in Future Shock of modularity -- building things like homes and offices and what not, in a modular, changeable way, made me think of one of my favorite space companies, Bigelow Aerospace. They manufacture what used to be called inflatable space stations but are now referred to as expandable space stations.


These space stations are modular. The modules can interconnect with each other, thus building, I believe larger and larger space stations. I think the concept of the Bigelow space station modules is pretty well explained in this YouTube video.

I'm not sure why the space station modules changed themselves into PET bottles that would be completely ineffective at injuring my dream-boss. But I'm pretty sure they did.

Now -- I'd like to discuss a couple final images from some previous dreams. In the second dream of this dream journal entry I was being interviewed to work for a company called Orange. Upon waking, I couldn't think of why I'd dream of a company called Orange.

Well, yesterday, while reading through Reuters, I found this article on piezoelectric power generation. Piezoelectricity is basically a characteristic in certain materials that causes them, when compressed or vibrated, to give off an electric charge. This charge can be stored in batteries or used to charge small electronic devices.

I remembered reading about novel electricity generation concepts, including piezoelectricity, about two years ago. In my trekking through some of these ideas, I happened upon the company Orange, which was working with the company Gotwind to make an electricity-generating boot called Power Wellies. The boot doesn't use piezoelectrics, but a kind of electricity generation attained through temperature differentials -- i.e. the difference of the temperatures inside and outside the boot.

I had totally forgotten about the little excursion I'd done into research on these Power Wellies. And I can't honestly say, even now, why I dreamed I was working for the company Orange. But this is, I'm sure, the company I was dreaming about.

One more update on the color purple from my purple diaper dream from a couple days ago. This is, I think, just a coincidence. But it's interesting to note that Aung San Suu Kyi, a person I admire immensely as a leader, is wearing purple during her Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

And one last update. A few nights ago, I had a dream where I was standing out on a runway, watching an SR-71 landing. Again, I think this image is just coincidental. But the heat-view images in this video, of an Air Force "space plane" landing, have very much the same color scheme as that of my dream of the SR-71 landing.

rainbow eXhibitioN

Good morning, everybody.

This post is related to this entry in my dream journal blog.

Yesterday I went to PrideFest, the annual festival put on by The Center, a non-profit organization that provides support and advocacy for the LGBT community in Colorado.

I do have to say that I was a little wary about going to PrideFest. But my horoscope in the paper copy The Denver Post told me to get out and have fun. And... I hate to admit it, but I do listen to horoscopes.

Anyway, the reason I was afraid to go was because I've gone to the Gay Pride Parades in New York City a few times, and they've always been miserable. Maybe it's just the location. Everything takes place down in the Village, where the streets are all cramped and packed. And that kind of environment makes me really claustrophobic.

To be honest with you, I stopped going to parades of any kind in NYC after a while, just because the crowds were so dense and so unruly. People seemed to be out to make everybody else's time a bad time. It was kind of miserable.

So I was nervous heading over to PrideFest. But I can honestly say that yesterday was one of the best days I've had in a long time! PrideFest was relaxing and fun!

The event is being held in and around downtown Denver's Civic Center. The event runs through the weekend. So there is also stuff going on there today.

But it's a lovely event. All around civic center are your usual fair-like booths, selling food, art, clothing, etc. I spent a lot of my time walking around those booths when I first got there -- not so much to look at the booths as to look at the people. Everybody was dressed up colorfully, in rainbow skirts, with rainbow-colored hairstyles, wearing pink wings, rainbow wings, makeup, body paint -- you name it. It was really an eye full!

I had planned to go there and really download as many styles into my memory as I could. But I think it's been such a long time since I've actually gone out looking at people, that my memory was all flabby. I didn't pull too much in.

After walking around at the booths for a bit, I went to one of the concert stages. As far as I could tell, there were four concert stages: a Latino stage, a country music stage, a dance stage, and the center stage, where all the main events were held.

I went to the Latino stage. I watched a guy named Daniel Galindo perform some of his own songs. I liked his musical style a lot. I looked for a website or any info on Daniel Galindo. But I couldn't find anything. I know that he's performing today at noon as well, if anybody gets a chance to see him.

After that I wandered around a little bit more before heading to the Center Stage. I stayed there for pretty much the rest of the day. The first performance I watched was Pride Idol, a karaoke contest for kids under the age of eleven. There were actually a lot of really good performances in that show. I had a lot of fun.

After that, Denver's Drag Queen Nation gave a performance. By that time, the Center Stage audience was packed. Drag Queen Nation's performance was great! A different girl would come out on stage and give her performance, lip syncing to some popular artist and doing a lot of sexy dancing. A lot of people in the crowd -- including me! -- were dancing as well.

My favorite performers were the first girl, who wore this kind of gold lame leotard (I think); a girl who wore a red spandex full bodysuit and a red wig and did some Nikki Minaj; a drag queen and drag king (?) duo who did a Shakira song; and a woman named Victoria Sexton, who came up on stage with two sexy boys and did some really hot dancing.

But my absolute favorite was a girl named Alessandra Stiletta, a super-skinny girl wearing a blue wig, a black tank-top with blue and pink designs, tiny jean shorts, and bright pink lipstick. She did a really sexy and powerful performance! I can't find it on YouTube yet, but here's another nice video of hers.

After that I headed away from the Center Stage. I was about to go into the Dance Stage. But there was actually a line to get in. So I just headed home.

So I think that obviously the girl in my last dream, the girl with the black corset, pink wings, and pink hair, was a combination of a lot of the style that I was so happy to see at PrideFest.

But I think another source for the colored hair in my dream came from this YouTube video, from the ParisModesen channel. The colored hair the girl in my dream had was a lot like the hair coloring patterns you see in the Jean Paul Gaultier segment at the beginning of the video.

Another image that I think came from PrideFest was -- myself in the second dream. In that dream I'm wearing Pampers Underjams, diapers which, for girls, have a largely purple color scheme, and a purple t-shirt.

This partly came from the fact that I was going to, but I did not, wear diapers to PrideFest. A lot of times I just don't feel like being a baby. I just feel like being my regular, old, grody boy self. But I looked around at PrideFest to see if I could find anything adult baby or sissy related. I couldn't find anything. That may simply have been because I wasn't looking hard enough.

Anyway, at Center Stage, during the Pride Idol performance, there was a group of young women -- I'd guess around college aged or thereabouts -- watching the performance, too. They were all kind of butchy-looking, with short hair done up in boyish mohawks, jeans, and so forth. But I was really attracted to them. I mean... I like girls in general. And for each girl's look, there's probably some girl who has that look whom I'll be attracted to.

But there was one girl there wearing a purple sports bra and wearing her bluejeans loose, so that the purple waistband of her underwear showed over them. She had platinum blonde hair with black roots. She just looked really hot. Of course, I would have been happy if she'd taken me home to be her little boy or her little baby forever. But I wasn't going to bug her.

Anyway, I think I appeared in my dream wearing a purple t-shirt and purple diapers specifically so I could be that girl's little baby. We would match, I guess, if I were wearing purple, too!

I think my step-grandmother (who I like a lot and who is very kind) stands, in my dream, for all the insecurities I heap on myself that prevent me from showing myself as who I really am -- even at events where everybody else is showing off who they really are!

But there is another image that influenced this dream. It comes from the Pluggers comic strip, which you can follow on GoComics.com. Actually, like an idiot, I'd forgotten all about this website until this morning. Now that I remember, I'm going to have to follow some of my favorite comic strips on this site.

Anyhow, in yesterday's cartoon, the joke was that Plugger females get their perfume from the samples in magazines.

It's kind of interesting to see the GoComics version of this cartoon. In the paper copy of the Denver Post, where I first saw this cartoon, the image was in black and white.It's interesting to see how the actual color scheme of the GoComics image is purple, like in my dream.

But the cartoon obviously contributed to that statement my grandma made about the boy who'd left behind all his fashion magazines, which all smelled like perfume.

I obviously had a lot of dreams -- a lot of imagery to think about -- last night. But I can't get to it all. The only other thing I'd really like to discuss right now is the pools in my third dream. Those pools definitely come from my having watched the David Cronenberg film eXistenZ.

In one scene in the film, the main characters are taken out to a series of ponds that serve as a breeding ground for aquatic animals that eventually become components for a virtual reality game system.

I like these aquatic animals -- it seems like they are the last really slimy, ugly, gross images that occur in Cronenberg's movies. After eXistenZ, Cronenberg's films -- though still awesome -- seem to lose a lot of that slimy ugliness that's so enjoyable.

I think I wanted to bring these animals into my dream. But all I seemed to get were "ponds" that were more like swimming pools or industrial tanks or something. And even though there were supposed to be animals present in the tanks, I'm pretty sure I never saw any.

Themes from eXistenZ also resonate through my fourth dream, the hospital dream. I walk through a bunch of areas called "exhibits," which is obviously an echo of "eXistenZ." And I stab a needle into a boy's back, which is an echo of the image of people getting "ported" (having the virtual reality system plugged into their backs) in the movie, as well as of images in the movie where people actually get needles poked into their backs.