Monopoly

The Dreamer is outside of his childhood apartment complex in the passenger seat of a car; his Father is in the driver’s seat. It is the middle of the night. The Father has an initiative, to assemble his son’s sports team for a basketball game. He calls the Dreamer’s friends to join, and they begin to arrive. Patrick Kinney is the first one on the scene, and the others accumulate in the parking lot.

Then the Dreamer is outside, on foot, at the door of his old apartment building. Patricks asks if the Dreamer has already started drinking. The Dreamer blows his alcohol-laden breath on Patrick.

Then the Dreamer is driving in the backseat of a car; his Mother is the driver. His mother says they need to get sandwiches for the game from Subway. The Dreamer is trying to help his Mother count the required number of sandwiches and to determine from where they need to pickup the sandwiches and if they have enough time to pickup the sandwiches before the game.

Then the Dreamer is inside of a gymnasium, wearing his grammar school basketball uniform. The Dreamer is passing the ball to different players on the court for warm up, practice shots in the dark. Patrick is there, the Dreamer’s wife is at the top of the key, and next to her is a player from another team: Nicole Windenberger. All of the players are making the shots, except for the Dreamer. The Dreamer is fumbling around on the court making a shot here and there, but rather awkward, uncoordinated, and unserious. Then the Dreamer asks someone to turn on the lights. The bright lights come on and there are many people in the bleachers watching the warm up. Then the Dreamer is playing one-on-one with his grammar school friend Tony. The Dreamer is trying to dribble the ball in a cross-over, but he keeps losing ball control. Then the ball rolls over to the opposing team. The opposing team is warming up; their players (who are adults) are warming up using child versions of themselves as puppets (the children are attached to their limbs by strings, like puppets). Then the Dreamer is playing basketball with Tony, but now they are playing using a tea cup. The Dreamer attempts to dribble the tea-cup (it does not bounce very well). The Dreamer shoots the tea cup into the hoop. Tony catches it, looks at it, and says “I’m surprised it hasn’t shattered yet.”

Then the Dreamer is in the basement of a house party. There are people playing cards, watching sports on television, and drinking beer. The Dreamer sees some people have cases of Heineken. The Dreamer’s high school friend Bob arrives and tells the Dreamer that there is more alcohol in the car, but that Bob couldn’t get any closer to the house and the Dreamer has to go retrieve it.

Then the Dreamer is upstairs in the house. There is a group of people sitting around a large round table with computers in front of them. They are making electronic music. The Dreamer jumps in and makes some rap style rhyme. The group claps. Then the Dreamer tells them that what they are doing is “nerdcore” and asks them if they have ever heard of “YT Cracker”.

Then the Dreamer is outside with his gardener, Jen Pinneau. Jen has some new design options at her shop. The Dreamer shares his opinion that he likes the “pink setup better”.

Then the Dreamer is playing Monopoly. Jen Pinneau is next to him. Another player rolls the dice, and it is a high number. Then Jen rolls the dice and it is a “3”. She says “everyone has to start somewhere.” Then the Dreamer is told there are new game pieces, and to choose a piece from the board. Jen says, “I bet you are going to choose the skull,” but the Dreamer chooses the spinning-top. The Dreamer’s Wife tells him that is an “effeminate choice”, but the Dreamer tells her that he likes the spinning-top. Then the Dreamer is questioning why the players have not started with any money. Jen Pinneau is reading the instructions, trying to find where it says how much money the players are supposed to start with, but she cannot find the starting amount in the instructions.

Then the Dreamer is inside of a shopping mall. There is an arcade. Inside the arcade, Asian boys are playing a game that requires them to use their brainwaves. The Asian boys look very tired and are not able to pay sufficient attention to the game, according to the on-screen diagnostics. As the Dreamer is walking away, the people there ask him if he would like to play. He says yes: They hook him up to a brain-computer interface; one electrode behind the ear and two on his forehead. Then the Dreamer opens his eyes and the screen is extremely, blindingly, bright. The Dreamer takes the headset off and throws up blood. The technician asks the Dreamer if he has a “NMD” (neuro-modulation device) installed to help with fatigue. The Dreamer says no, but he uses meditation to help with fatigue. The technician chuckles at the suggestion of meditation and says that the Dreamer is going to need an NMD. Then the Dreamer is observing two young Asian men who are calibrating his device. Meanwhile the Dreamer is picking chunks of flesh and blood out of his mouth and placing them in a plastic bag. Then the Dreamer is telling the Asian men that he used to work with a brainwave company where the founder was using P300 brainwave patent to scan for absence and presence of information in the brain and using that in applications for DARPA and IARPA. The Asian men seem uninterested. The Dreamer looks at their computer screens and they are on a U.S. military website having to do with future warfare capabilities.

Context:

Associations: Father, sports-nut; Mother, didn’t like sports; Nicole Windenberger, meditation teacher; Tony, competitive; Bob, aggressive/competitive; drinking, addiction; nerdcore and ytcracker, old “hacker” persona; Jen Pinneau, gardener, outdoors person; Monopoly, competitive; arcade, videogames (reminds me of arcade at shopping mall that I always wanted to play in); P300, future

Motifs: basketball, cars, meditation, hacker persona, parties

Interpretation: This dream is continuing the previous night’s theme around the Dreamer’s “hacker persona”. The Dreammaker is suggesting that the hacker persona is a trauma response (inverted aggression and competitive drive) due to a lack of athletic ability that constellated in grammar school. The Dreamer was not able to be competitive in sports and became competitive online. He built an aggressive hacker persona (reminiscent of “yt cracker” and “nerdcore”). He also built an addiction to digital technologies (video games, arcade, intellectuation of future technologies) that has come to “monopolize” his life, and does not have any value in it anymore (low roll value and no money on the Monopoly table). The Dreammaker is surprised that the Dreamer is still holding onto this “aggressive, competitive, hacker-sportsman” persona: surprised that it has not yet shattered because it is in fact fragile like the tea-cup. The Dreammaker is also suggesting that in fact this old persona, which has almost become a “cybernetic” part of the Dreamer, is making the Dreamer sick (throwing up flesh and blood). The Dreamer might be better of learning a new, healthier, outlet, like tea-time and gardening, even if it is “effeminate”. Those “analog” games might keep him going better, like a spinning top.