Cleansed of Christianity
12-20-1997
Within my dream, I'm asleep, and dreaming I'm with Reese. We're at some house, like my boss from the golf course's house. Every time I rest my hand on the floor, a tack gets stuck in my finger, it hurts, and I pull it out.
When I wake up, Reese is still there, and I tell him about the dream, but when I look down at my fingers, there's scars there as if I HAD been poked and bleeding.
I'm carrying a brick and being led by a rope down some steps. There's cult-like scribblings everywhere on the brick walls. The guy leading me looks like the monk from 3x3 Eyes Part II...tan, bald, thin, no shirt, no wrinkles. We walk forever down dimly lit hallways of brick and concrete. I wonder how this place never got noticed by the University. We come to a nicer room...rich-looking, in fact, with one of those stand-alone bathtubs. There's other people here, too. I find that I'm in my robe. The main man, a father-like figure, says that all except one person has to turn around as I take off my robe and get into the tub. Some other monk-lookin guy volunteers. Everyone turns around (there's a couple females there, too...everyone is Asian), and I take off my robe. Some type of expression crosses the guy's face, I get into the tub, and everyone else turns their attention to me again. I turn over onto my stomach and put my head in my arms (since this is what I did in REAL life in my sleep). One of the girls is absolutely shocked by this, but the main man shrugs and gestures for the guy to wash my back. As he does so, I sit back up, realizing it'll make the job easier. One of the other girls comes to the tub, cups bath water into her hands, and sips it. The main man comes over and says something like, "Now your soul has been cleansed of Christianity..." and made as if to say something else, but didn't, as someone else made a sign for him to not say anything else because at that moment I felt/looked rather confused. The girl was still sipping water from the tub, but the guy was done washing my back. Someone signaled for her to stop, and she did.
I put my robe back on, and they gave me some slippers...special slippers that the object of this ritual is supposed to wear. Then Aslum appeared, and we sat down on a couch, and I suddenly remembered how he went through this only a year ago, even though other people in his family did it when they were very young. One of the older men commented on how they were sparing me some embarrassment, since normally they do a song and dance of some sort at this part of the ritual, but since I was a foreigner, they didn't bother.
posted by Phlegm at 11/24/2003
