.
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In the dream I was young, just after highschool. In real life, I joined the Navy. I actually realized, in the dream, why. Part of it was that I knew something was a bit off, even then. I thought the Navy could... help me sort it out. In the dream, that problem didn't exist. The Navy didn't help me fix what was wrong, and psychology failed as well, if the problem went from mild to mind crushingly disabling while I was in, and wasn't of the sort that those things could fix. Fair enough. Still, it didn't exist, so I went to college.
I could have gone to a number of places. Between grades, looks, physique, and a few other things minus wealth and social standing, I had a number of doors open that one, two, or even several of the others would not have allowed. It required everything and promises. I couldn't quite dance to the top tier, but I could go high and easy or just a bit higher but have to slave. It's not true that the higher, and highest, tiers are all that difficult, it's just that for some they are made difficult. The poor are forced to earn it, trouble-makers and anyone who creates a problem are filtered out through the fake complexity and academic reputation. With as many literal and figurative spawn of nobility and even royalty, trouble doesn't even need to be sought for most. I went in for hard work, but in a place I knew I would enjoy for the environment. Year round swimming. You could literally swim to classes, and back, or take a small paddle boat or such, or simply walk.
After my freshmen year, my eyes were open, fully. By this time, having survived most of the pitfalls for freshmen... social, academic, and other, I had shaken out as one of the poster boys for the less than elite at elite institutions. I ignored the eccentricities of those in attendance and dutifully stuck to the work, but inoffensively. I avoided the women, all of them pretty much wrong for me. The reverse, really. A really wrong one could end my scholastic efforts with a call, or an accident. I was on track to some mid-level entry, with some mild hope of a choice in my post. Research, non-academic, R&D, was my goal. At a time when a career path was real, and companies were looking for company men, that is where I hoped to start. Engineering, not business, but it all ends up the same or one gets stuck in a decent, functional, limited, career or moves on into the business circles. All that was too far down the line for me to ponder, then and there. And there was, at the time, a rare possibility... actual entrepreneurship. A dangerous thought. A wonderful thought.
As things turned out, the friends I did make were carefully selected. The minimum requirement for friendship, for my part, was that those I chose had some drive, some intent to be as good as they could be. Most realized they would get hired above their real paygrade, many knew they couldn't be fired when they got a job nor failed in school, so there was not always a great deal of interest. And yet there were a few who wanted to vest themselves into whatever career they were seeking. Engineers, as a group, were self-selecting for academic pain. And some really wouldn't make the cut but would sidle over to a simpler degree and still end up with an A or B. But C students would probably end up with a B, or even an A, average. Unless they were a quota, or allowance. I was the latter. I at least had a bit more flexibility in my... relationship with the school and community.
As to minorities, they were on a rotating basis. There always had to be enough in the community and in the school to satisfy the gate-keepers and bean-counters. Their actions were viewed and weighed, their scholastic success or failure was based almost entirely on whether they acted the part without stepping on toes. Most were no better, or worse, than the lazy of the elite, if the elite generally had more capacity if required. They had to act elite, but only to minorities not in the system, or other minorities lower on the totem pole within the system. They could date within their circles, or rarely among the lowest circles of whites, if rare exceptions were given for debutant quota flings, if her family allowed it, and so long as it stayed very simple. Mostly, though, they burned out on school and social expectations, the same thing for them for the most part. The honest best any given minority could do is to be dropped, but allowed to stay in the community as a worker of some sort, albeit with the same social limitations. That isn't much different than in any elite school today, from what I have seen. There is a system of minority studies to try to ensure more minorities on staff, and offer more minorities degrees, and graduations, as useless as those are, today. But it's just the same old thing, codified for more allowances.
In any case, I had met a young woman I liked. Merely social, for my part, for the time being. But I knew that was only partially respected. Young women, of any age, race, creed, or any other group, aren't who or what they seem or think themselves. Naive monsters, is how I put it. Some women in this school, for example, set out to trip up minorities, by flirting then letting them fall, or setting them up in other ways. To a degree, as a non-minority but required worker, I had more than one try to open things up simply to get me to crash. Women simply can't help but try to obtain what they can't have, and leave it to ruin. How much on purpose, and how much just their nature, I could never tell.
Still, I allowed her because it is good to have some female companionship, of the more stable variety. And I had been able to keep her in check, mostly. She knew the score, as well. Her parents were near, but not in, the highest orders of elite. Rich enough to rent congress, from time to time, not quite rich enough to own it. She was more than a debutant though, as depressing as that was. I held some hope that she wouldn't end up a career cat-lady. And, if things worked out well, I had some notion, after at least under-grad and licensure, seeing if I couldn't snaggle that puss for my own... if it all worked. But not until, unless, and all of it improbable. Keeping her family out of my career would be part of it. You go dead when you become a wealth quota, destined only for business. Money, money, money. Not my gig.
Further, I knew beside a wife, a main love, in those times, as a secular, there would have been more. As it was on the other path. I was what I was. I simply had to learn the dance, know the codes, find the limits, and then see what was available for the feast without threat of noose or loss. That was fast approaching. Part of the trick was to keep one woman clean, so as to be a wife, and sully myself elsewhere and privately. A trick I had learned at a very tender age, even to having a virgin girlfriend as a front, when that was possible. You had to be very good at being very bad to do so. No, I don't suspect you understand. I like this vid. The blood... hers, in the end his, is the blood, and sin, spilled in the process of ensuring life. Many mistakes can, and by some have to be, made, along that path. The blood, on him, in the end... is a satisfying price. I believe it means he has become a father... along with the mask, which covers his truth to allow him to be a husband. The cold is reality, the owl a traditional notion of wisdom, outside of us and... watching over us. Even in the cold. Secular notions. One a good Christian already bears, understands, and finds cleansing from, but a life separate from, as well. In either case, there must be some blood, and some covering, and changes. A holy, or terrible, thing. Simply better than the options, even for the secular, if more weakly. I have seen both ways and made my choice. Holy, if even this can be quite ugly. Never mind.
We, she and I, were out one day. There is always some blow-back, socially, when it looks like someone of the non-elite is mingling with the elite. If that interaction is seen as cozy, in the right ways, or simply social and light, it is allowed. But eyes follow, brows furrow, and word gets around. Yeah, engineers, especially those who have been fighters, warriors really, know. And I knew. It really was me in the dream, only on a different track. Probably the track I would have gone if health hadn't already been a bit of a milder problem. As I have mentioned, I was warrior born. Anything else, here, there, in the dream, or otherwise, couldn't change that.
It was a day off, Saturday most likely. The campus hum changed from pseudo-academic to lightly to heavily social. Everything from elite marriage negotiations, proposals and counter-proposals, to tier assessment and testing among the elites, to more what she and I were doing, mostly... light socializing... for the time. We went paddling, on our own crafts, earlier in the morning. Out to sea a bit, but mostly chasing down channels on campus one or the other of us had meant to explore, but hadn't had leave from other demands, to point, to explore. A light lunch at one of renowned bistros, a new one to both of us. The first thing we were hit with was the notion that we were allowed, but on tentative permission. Even the workers, off campus, knew and enforced, fraternization codes of conduct. After that, a mild afternoon hike on one of the groomed paths into the groomed wilds. Then a visit with her family at an estate they maintained so as to be near. They had an estate near each of their children, a rare thing for an elite family to have four children.
Of course, at the estate, if anything, the fraternization rules were not only in play, but even less subtly enforced. Not a problem, due to my own limits and disinterest. I had already learned not to endear the matron of such clans, for many reasons. If she took a liking to a young man, for example, she might well ensure a wedding or ruination. Keep it simply civil and uninteresting. Husbands, as a general rule, were hands-off. But matrons were a serious danger. In any case, I was a little safer with this matron. She had her eye on the son of another elite, if mostly just for simple status quo reasons. Hints were left in the open, such as a picture of the man in question, highlighting his manliness, left in the commons bathroom, right across from the toilet, and the wording of some things, with direction and instruction included, along with emotional temperature. Warm and hot for right, cold as space for wrong.
Yeah... I am so glad, actually, that I went into the Navy. I had never quite looked at the civilian world, if for more reasons than what I suggest. Health wasn't the complete reason, or even fully a conscious thing. Just being around teachers who, when I did what they wanted, was considered some kind of messiah, and when I didn't I was considered evil, knowing their whole morality system was wrapped in doing things their way, and seeing that as bottomless darkness, and understanding the psycho-social ways of normals, of which I wasn't a part... knowing far too much on too many subjects, to believe in... anything... at least until I explored a bit more, left me looking for a place where... I could find my own way.
As cynical as the dream was, I know it was true, or would have been had I gone that way. At least in my time, that is how it really was. The grand old empire? Something. Long gone, these days, mostly. It makes me thank God, every day, for having struck me down. It saved me from my own intentions, of the time. A sort of non-linear climb to a type of greatness that terrifies some, and should. Or the option, the type of climb that all will make. Even when that is right, and good generally, as rare as that is, it is all about things that aren't all that important. There isn't a soft area, a middle ground, a nice way, or even a kind way. Even in my capacity, to some degree, I am stuck with it. I can just slow things down, now, and... choose more carefully, wisely, rightly. And, when I can't act, I can often think, pray, and I do.
Crazy dream. Women are crazy, naive, hungry, monstrous. And men? The world? Nasty place, but there is hope. So small. So fragile. But as big as heaven if sought. Big enough for us, and more. But also always, and only, in it's place. Faith and charity seem even more distant, and yet potentially even larger. Even in such a world. Terrifying. No wonder nightmares are more comforting. I wish I could stick with those. Those I can handle, easily, handily, and even when I lose, more happily than this dream.
I wasn't quite ready to wake, but woke anyway, just to put this down. It's not important, really. I just... I wanted, for myself, to remember the dream, what happened, think about it and feel things... Mostly just for my own reasons. There it is.
Later.
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