Dream Journal
April 27, 2024
I’m watching this rote of an American Football play. My perspective is from above. It’s a running play where everyone is crowded into the middle. From this mob, a single black man springs out and jumps over the line for a touchdown. The odd thing is he’s all brown, head to toe. My mind is trying to figure out why this is weird. “Oh! He’s not wearing his jersey!” I realize. I reasoned that someone must have pulled it off as he was running through the crowd of players. But that doesn’t explain it entirely. Something is still off . . . and then it comes to me: he’s entirely naked! I rewatch the scene and this time I see it for what it is. As the scene continues, the announcers slowly catch on. The viewpoint begins rapidly shifting between blurry moving scenes, before settling on a scene of the entire team in a crowd and they’ve taken off their clothes in solidarity. Their wives are there, fully dressed, and one player tries to get his wife to take off her clothes, too, but she’s having none of it.
This is hilarious. I have to tell Rebecca. I exit the rote and go to her. She’s by a small swing set in a forested area with roads. I tell her (in words) about the naked touchdown. As I do, I see the scenes again in my mind. A guy walks by who reminds me of a park ranger. He overhears and starts talking about the scene, too, saying his sister told him about it. I listen, then continue telling Rebecca the story. Now I’m wondering if his penis was visible (it wasn’t in the original — he was face down). This time as he jumps over the touchdown line, his lower body is twisted around and it was visible.
How flexible a rote is, that you can change how it plays out just by wondering.
Sharing Stories: The rote is so funny that I have to share it. I exit it and go to Rebecca. I’m telling her about it with words, but watching it as I do. It’s likely my playing of the rote as I describe it is showing it to her at the same time, just as it would in a movie — the scene would blur and we’d enter the story. My playing of the rote must have been public enough that the park ranger walking by could see it, too.
This is a sharing of a rote, experienced as much as possible in physical terms.
You Have to See This: This rote is so popular in the dream world at this time that someone walking by recognizes it.
I Wonder: How flexible a rote is, that you can change how it plays out just by wondering.
My wondering about something within a rote makes it so. I’m looking for it, and so I project it into the scene, just like in the astral world at large. In fact, rotes are experienced at the same frequencies of consciousness as the world around us, and so they follow the same rules within as without, with a few minor differences (such as the possibility of character inhabitation in a rote).
Since our memories are rotes, this shows how easy it is to alter a memory.
Something Is Amiss: This sports rote is clearly something only my waking self would understand. But notice how long it takes me to understand what’s going on. At first, I just notice that something is odd, and then it takes me two different realizations before I understand what I’m looking at. When I think it’s just his jersey missing, I rationalize an explanation for it. When I notice he’s entirely naked, then it’s just too wild to rationalize away. Instead, it’s hilarious.
Later On: After the naked touchdown, the rote seems to speed past some scenes to the next interesting moment — the whole team getting naked. This seems to be a part of the “standard edit”, reinforced by where people’s attention goes in previous viewings. I bet you could watch the boring parts if you wanted.