Anthology Complex

Composition 1, Part 1

Chapter 1:

THIS ANTHOLOGIC LIFE

Last night, I had a dream. I'm walking alongside a row of parked cars in
broad daylight, peering through each car's driver seat window as I pass by.
This goes on for a while, and each time I think I'm at the final car, there is
another one. I start to think that this will never end. It reminds me of how
you can draw a circle on a piece of paper, and then put a dot anywhere on the
circle and as you attempt to move away from the dot by traveling along the
circle, you are actually moving closer to the dot.

As much as you want to escape from the dot, you are going to end up
going right back to it. You might think that you are moving on from some
horrible part or event in your life, but really you might just be ticking the
time away for when you have to relive it. I keep thinking I'm at the end of
this long row of parked cars, but I'm probably still at the beginning. Or back
at the beginning all over again.

As I pass by each car, I see that every driver's seat is empty, but of
course they are empty considering they are parked. Most people probably don't
sit inside a parked car unless they are waiting for something, or in my case,
someone. Every driver's seat is empty until I finally get to the car that's at
the end of the row, the last car before you reach the intersection.

This car is also parked, but running, as if it is ready to stop living
such an idle life, but at the same time too reluctant to do so. There is a man
in the driver's seat, peering through the windshield of his car, watching all
of the cars ahead drive by. Watching them as they pass by under the green
light. Watching these cars as they serve their purpose, as they function
properly.

As he turns his head to look at me, the day turns into night, and the
face I thought he would have is nonexistent. He tells me that we can fool some
of the people all of the time, maybe even all of the people some of the time,
but we can never fool all of the people all of the time. That we can never fool
ourselves no matter how deep inside our mind we think we are.

Before I could ask him what he meant, he was gone, but his car was still
there, running. It then started to rain, and a storm immediately followed. I
looked up at the rain and lightning, and then back down at the car, and now the
driver door was open, as if the car was asking me to the take the wheel. For
some reason, I couldn't bring myself to sit in the driver's seat, and that's
when I woke up.

After I wake up and think for a few seconds, I write down the dream in
my composition notebook. I write down all of the dreams I can remember because
I believe it's possible that the people we are in our dreams could be another
us in another life spawned by the decisions we didn't make in this life. How
different our life could have been and how different we could have been as a
person if one little decision was altered.

In this life, I made the decision to go to college after high school for
a couple of years, and I got what I needed to get to be successful. In a dream
I had years ago, I was homeless. My assumption on why I was homeless was
because in that life, I made the decision to not go to college; an assumption
based on the misconception that a formal education is necessary to be successful.

So much of a life altered by one single decision. I started to think,
even believe, that our dreams show us who we could have been, for better or for
worse, as opposed to who we are now. As opposed to this life we have chosen to
lead. A portal to possibilities that's just barely out of our reach. Every now
and then I ask myself if college was worth it, even though I'd end up losing my
sanity, or if I'd have been better off homeless, and maybe at peace.

I close the notebook and put it back on the shelf. A shelf that holds
hundreds of notebooks, all containing my other lives. My dreams. My complex.
Somewhere along the road of parked cars, along the road of my life, I became
aware of the psychological impact writing down these dreams had on me. Had for
me. Writing down these short stories where I believed I was the main character.
That the story being told was the story of my life. Finding so much meaning in
a life drowned in meaningless. This purposeless life. A life with no driver. A
life that never passed by under the green light. I try to trick my mind, I try
to fool myself. This is me, walking down this long road of parked cars. This is
me looking inside all of these cars, looking for a driver. Looking for a sign
of life, but the only life I can find are in my dreams. In these notebooks
filled with words, living my life vicariously through this strange fiction. I
look at these notebooks, and I curse this addiction. This anthologic life.

For so long I have cursed this life, but in the end I can only come to
accept it because I believe we all suffer from the anthology complex. We all
compile these short stories that turn into fantasies. We all suffer from this
condition where we live the life of someone else, the story of someone else,
where we see ourselves as ourselves, but under a different persona. Sometimes
this persona is a big change, or a slight change. It doesn't just come in the
form of dreams, but in the form of fictional work.

We watch these movies and television shows and sometimes we see ourselves.
Even if we don't realize it. We read these books and magazines, and sometimes
we see ourselves. It comes in the form of art. We listen to these songs, and
sometimes we hear ourselves. Sometimes we hear the stories of ourselves. We see
these paintings, these photos, and sometimes we see ourselves. It comes in the
form of thought. Sometimes we are sitting at home, or at work, or at school,
and we begin to think, daydream even, of another life.

Our mind comes up with these people that we represent and these actions
that we perform. Unfortunately, sometimes we know the version of us from the
other life better than we know our true selves, and sometimes we like that
person better, too.

I stare at the shelf, and I try to remember the driver's face, but he
was faceless. I try to remember the sound of his voice, but all I can hear is
the sound of mine. The problem with trying to remember a dream is that it's
like a faded memory sometimes, and if enough time passes by, say a few years,
it gets harder and harder to distinguish a memory from a dream. Reality from
fiction.

Sometimes it can drive you crazy, but having an organized shelf of
notebooks that can differ reality from fiction helps. Another thing about
dreams and memories is that they can have very similar properties. Usually in
both our dreams and our memories, when we try to remember them, we see them in
third person. In our dreams we aren't Jesus Christ, we are ourselves meeting
Jesus Christ, and when we try to remember it, all we can see is ourselves
meeting Jesus Christ.

I keep trying to remember his face, even though I know he has no face,
and that's when I remembered that I had a dream in that same exact location a
few months ago. I was in a helicopter, and the pilot was trying to land the
helicopter on the same street I had been walking down in the dream I had last
night.

The helicopter lands and there is a lifeless body on the sidewalk near
the last car in the row of parked cars. The same last car I saw the driver in
last night. I got out of the helicopter and kept trying to walk over to the
dead body, but each time I got closer, it seemed like he went further away. It
was as if the distance kept cutting itself in half, but I still could never
reach him. Just barely out of my reach. After a long time of walking, I simply
woke up. Sometimes dreams were weird like that; even though I had that dream in
the past, the events in it happened after last night's dream.

That's what I believe anyway. That's what makes sense to me right now.
And it's happened before. One time I had eight dreams where if I rearranged
them in a chronological order that made logical sense, I could make a tale out
of it. That's not to say the tale itself would make any sense. These eight
dreams led me to believe that maybe individually, our dreams may seem random
and irrelevant, but if we can remember these dreams, or write them down, and
then put them in an order that made sense, we could see the many tales of our
many lives.

Chapter 2:

THIEVES FROM NEW YORK

About a year ago, I had a dream. Dressed in a rich man's suit and tie,
committing a poor man's crime. They put the money in a garbage bag that I
supply because I threaten their existence. The funny thing is a third of them
have probably never taken the time of day to ponder their existence. Sometimes
I wonder if I've taken the time of day to ponder my own.

Is existence really that important? Is that life? Just merely existing.
If you are in outer space, and you see a piece of rock in a stationary
position, it will stay that way forever. If you see a piece of rock moving, it
will continue moving at that same exact speed in that same exact direction
forever.

This is true if no other forces are applied to the piece of rock; forces
such as gravity, electromagnetism or friction. The piece of rock doesn't have a
specific reason as to why it wants to stay stationary or why it wants to keep
moving, it just does because it is. It's not waiting for something to come,
it's not traveling because it needs to be somewhere. It just does because it
is.

Applying this method of thought to the idea of why something that's
living wants to stay alive is interesting. I'm holding a shotgun to this bank
employees head, and I'm wondering if she wants to stay alive simply because she
is alive. What if she were dead? Would she want to stay dead simply because she
is dead?

If she were happy, I'm sure she would want to stay happy. She probably
actually would stay happy until a force comes along, maybe a "force"
such as disease, and the doctors tell her she has cancer. That happiness would
be gone. She would stay depressed until another "force" came along.

They finish filling the garbage bag with money and I take it. Something
so valuable placed in a garbage bag, there is something poetic about that,
something symbolic. I run out of the bank and get into my partner's car. His
hands are sweating, his face probably is too, and I'm the one who did all of
the talking. We drive away with a garbage bag full of money, but we have no
real intentions of spending the money on ourselves. He drives into a parking
garage and we get out and look at the money. He takes off his sad theater mask
and his suit jacket and tells me he doesn't know if he can keep doing this.

I ask him what he means. I knew exactly what he meant. He couldn't keep
risking his life and freedom for other people, people he didn't even know. I
tell him that there are way too many people suffering out there from poverty,
from starvation, from whatever, simply because of this imbalance in the world.
I wanted to tell him that he wasn't angry enough. That he didn't have enough
hate in his heart. And then I wake up.

Some people die because of a lack of food, and others die because they
have too much food. Starvation, obesity. If that's not imbalance, I'm not sure
what is. Simple mathematics will tell you that if you have one apple on each
end of a table, totaling up to two apples, and you take one apple from one end
and put it alongside the other apple on the other end, you have subtracted one
apple from one end and added an apple to the other end. I visualize what was
once balance, but is now inequality. Imbalance.

There is probably enough food in the world to feed every mouth, but some
mouths take more than they are welcome to. How can someone right this wrong? Do
you steal that apple back, and bring it to the mouths that starve? Do you steal
that money and give it to those who need it? Robin Hood would say yes. He would
say you have to do the wrong thing for the right reason.

Earlier today I'm checking my mail, and I hear someone coming down the
stairs. It's Mary, who lives in the apartment above me. She walks by and nods,
and I nod back. She is walking so quickly that it's apparent that she's late
for something, maybe work, maybe an appointment. I'm standing there with my
mail in my hand, thinking to myself, realizing that almost every time I see
Mary she is in some sort of hurry. A look in her eye that she may not
accomplish what needs to be accomplished, and that scares her to death.