Jumpy

I had a dream last night. And in it, I had done something wrong. I think it was a _An Invitation to a Beheading_ kind of thing; I remember asking one of my interrogators whether it was ok to even ask him if he believed concieving of an epistemological shift was even possible, and I think he said it was ok to ask, but dangerous to think about.

I was being tortured to death for whatever I'd done. For a bit, I was okish with this. The more vivid part was when I asked the above question. The interrogator's assistant had a plastic slip knot around my right elbow, and every time I was asked a question, he tightened it. After that, I was to be flayed or something, and then punctured by a thousand yard-long needles, thrown by a guy on some sort of giant lizard (I don't really understand that part...).

I started to argue with the interrogator to the effect that, since they're going to kill me, torture isn't really that necessary; they weren't asking me questions for information, but to educate me about what I was doing wrong. He didn't seem to think it was a good idea to forego the torture.

The weird part is that I then thought about making a break for it. The whole thing was hypothetical. Did I think I could make it to that cliff over there (we were in an open courtyard with quite a few people strolling around, minding their own businesses) before they caught up with me? I thought it through and was caught. So I imagined what I would have done if I had made it. Would I have jumped? What would that have looked/felt like? Turns out it felt pretty exhilarating (I knew it would!). At each step, as soon as I thought about the possibility, even if my exploration convinced me of immediate failure, it followed that I had tried and succeeded simply by hypothesizing.

The water at the bottom of the cliff was pretty shallow. Clear as far as you could see (I was on an island on the sea), with medium-sized sandstone rocks covering the immediate floor. The impact hurt, but that was ok, because I could immediately go through the falling process for as long as that diverted me. I thought with a mixture of mirth and horror about the people swimming near where I impacted.

But then I went on to the afterlife for reincarnation. I wandered aimlessly through the crowded rooms for a while, before getting over my usual trepidation at approaching someone I don't know for directions that I'm convinced will turn out to have been already obvious.

"Go see the woman in section BB about your reincarnation. But be careful. If she doesn't think you're cute, you'll be stuck in red tape for months." That's not exactly what he said, but as close as I can recall. He didn't say "red tape." he had a different expression that escapes me now. (And for some reason it's this part of the dream that embarrasses me.)

I see the woman in section BV (right next to BB), and am informed of my mistake. Fortunately, BB is the next desk to the right. She sees me, and I put on what charm I can muster. She looks through her computer for a bit, and, after asking me a few terse clarifying questions, she produces a slightly oversized yellow sticky note with writing the color between red and orange. This she affixes to my face. It's painful to pull off my dry lips, but it's good news.