For the Jung at heart...

... and fans of Freud, I offer up my dream from last night for your analysis.

It all takes place in one of the area's main high schools, either Huron or Pioneer, I can't be sure which. I'm sitting in a classroom at a desk with my back to the window. Students of regular high school age surround me, and it dawns on me, oh damn, I'm a student again. The teacher is going on about something -- I'll say it was history -- but I have no idea what she's talking about. I taste dread paste in my mouth.

At that moment, an administrator shows up at the door and calls for me. I'm in for it, I think. I get up and follow her. We walk down the tile-floor belockered hall to the vice principal's office where the door shuts behind us. The administrator, a woman in gray, and the vice principal, a man in brown, take their seats behind a desk. I sit opposite them, my back again to the window. A hazy afternoon sun shines behind me, casting the shadows of horizontal blinds across my back and onto the floor.

The two of them open up a manila folder and look me over. I already know what they're going to ask, and my mind echoes with their questions, as if their mouths and my conscience speak in unison. Did I really think I could just play tennis for the school? Did I know I had been skipping classes nearly everyday? I begin to recall enrolling at the school -- on a whim -- but neglecting to go to any classes. Even if such a memory is false and blatantly impossible, sitting there in that office and being confronted with manila-foldered evidence now makes it seem true. How else could I have ended up here? And yet I also have some recollection of being a grad student. How did I let myself get into this mess?

A knock at the door later, the tennis coach is standing in the room, kind of a portly guy but I have some good feeling toward him. He can only attest that I attend tennis practice. Another knock at the door later, my Latin teacher from high school and one-time colleague, CEW, is standing where the tennis coach was. I can tell she's livid but luckily in my defense: How can you accuse him of this? She turns toward me: Don't worry, Stewart. It'll be okay. My mind is racing. I'm trying to piece together a rational explanation, but my thoughts are sluggish, confounded by supposed facts that don't seem mutually possible. I'm in the middle of this when I wake up. Where am I? Why am I facing this side of the room? Don't I usually sleep in the other direction? It's a confusing couple of minutes.

So, Freudians and Jungians, what do you think? I'll give you some help or at least some possibilities. First of all, movies. I recently saw Brick on DVD which features that kid from Third Rock from the Sun, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, speaking in hard-boiled gum-shoe slang. (For example, he utters "Keep your specs peeled" more than once to his bespectacled friend Brain.) The movie is kids speaking as adults, and none of it happens in a classroom.

I also remember reading some reviews for another movie out this summer, Strangers with Candy. The synopsis on IMDB goes: "A 46 year-old ex-junkie ex-con returns to high school in a bid to start her life over." Yikes, I know I've made some mistakes in my life and I'm sure some can be traced back to high school, but I've never wanted to yell "Do over!".

How about this, too? Music. I've been listening to a Shoutcast station called the Drone Zone at work: a bunch of melody-less ambient noise that often sounds like water passing through the baleen of a whale. Or at least what I imagine that sounds like. On the one hand, it's great because I can really listen to my thoughts. On the other hand, it sucks because my thoughts are not some place I like to spend a lot of time. I leave the lab at night feeling like I've been floating in amniotic fluid for several hours, and I wouldn't be surprised if my psyche passes through the other stages of my life, a la the closing sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, to get me back to age 30 by morning.

Any other interpretations? Send them my way.