I am getting sick and tired of dreaming about food.

I mean, it is so damned stereotypical. Fat guy dreams about food, ha ha ha. He probably dreams of eating a giant marshmallow then wakes up and his pillow is gone!

Har de har har har. Sheesh.

In the latest food-filled dream, I was circulating at some party in someone’s ranch-style house. It seemed like a furry event in a vague sort of way. There were a few local furs that I know there.

(Hi Marzi! Thanks for visiting!)

And admittedly, the dream was not entirely about food. There was some stuff in there about trying to watch a movie with people but the movie didn’t make any sense to me and nobody would explain what was going on to me.

In fact, in general, in this dream, I was not “getting on” too well. I was doing my best to use my charm on people but I was largely getting the cold shoulder. I remember thinking, in the dream, “Oh, they will get used to me eventually and then I will more welcome.”

That might sound sad, or ravingly egotistical for that matter, but that is generally how it has worked for me in the past. I am a fairly unique guy with a big personality, and people often do not quite know how to handle me at first.

But eventually, they realize that I am a sweet, funny guy who is just a little weird, and at the same time I sort of tune in to the local frequency, so to speak, and so we meet in the middle and get along.

Anyhow, the dream had non-food content in it, but a hell of a lot was just me browsing all the food, and there was tons of food. There were big bowls of various snack type foods pretty much everywhere, plus the kitchen area had a big buffet going in it, so there was plenty to sample.

Of particular note : a huge bowl of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I have to admit, if I came across one of those at a party, I would be fairly impressed at this ghetto largess.

So I am wandering around the party and stuffing my face with all the sorts of things I can’t eat in the real world. It really says something about the power of sugar over our psyches that just giving up that potent high-reward food can haunt our dreams.

Then I wake up from the dream, and for those first confusing minutes in the hypnagogic twilight between sleep and wakefulness, and I get that stab of loss that normally I feel a few hours after having been at something that was all you can eat or buffet state where I suddenly wish I was still there.

Yup. For a fat guy like me, leaving a buffet is like losing a loved one. Sad, innit?

And of course, I wake up very hungry. Granted, it was past suppertime when I woke up, so I would have been hungry anyhow. Presumably my blood sugar goes down as I sleep and when it gets low enough, suddenly my dreams are all about the munchables.

But it just seems so sad. I could do anything in my dreams! I could have my dream job! I could have my dream life! I could have amazing sex! And what do I do?

I eat. How tragically small-minded!

Oh, another odd thing about the dream : as the dream progressed, the food started to disappear, as if I was arriving really late to the party. Bowls and chafing dishes were becoming empty and I started becoming more frantic as I looked around for stuff that was not all gone yet.

Even though I had already eaten enough for like, five people. Oy.

And so that is when the dream turned from pleasant to anxious, and guilty. Guilty because I became fixated on the idea that I had arrived at 8:30 pm and that is why everything was gone. I had been late!

So I guess that meant I deserved there to be no more food? Or maybe my dream was getting me ready to wake up and go make my supper. I don’t know.

Seems kinda fucked up, anyhow.

What else. Oh hey, check out this trippy animated GIF.

Pretty eye-bending huh? But what is even more fun is what happens if you look at the image while blinking fast, like at least two blinks a second.

Then you just see individual frames of the animation and it looks like you are seeing a different “mandala” every time. Also trippy!

I put “mandala” in quotes because I don’t like the way stoner Buddhism throws around the word mandala like it is a specific sort of pattern that you can plaster on stuff and sell it in head shops.

A mandala is a very personal pattern that a certain kind of practitioner makes with sand inside a circle that represents their Self. The idea is that, just using a stick and colored sand, the practitioner turns the sand inside the circle into a symbolic representation of themselves, working and reworking it until it feels right, until it is perfect and there is nothing they would add or take away from it to make it better. It is them, in mandala form.

They then contemplate their mandala, becoming one with it so that the distinction between themselves and their mandala disappears, and the two are one in their minds.

Then, and only then, they erase the mandala completely. Thus, they overcome themselves and learn that all things are temporary, even that which they call themselves, and to let go of the material world and accept the way of the Buddha.

At least, that is the theory. I have not tried it, but it makes sense to me. It must take a lot of strength and determination to erase your first mandala, especially since serious practitioners will spend hours upon hours perfecting them before erasing them forever.

I would want to shellac that thing and keep it forever.

But we only truly own what we can give away freely. Otherwise, it owns us.

Again… that’s the theory.