Nocturnal Suspicions

“Did you do it for the blood or the banana?”

This was the first thought I had coming into consciousness this morning. It didn’t mean anything; it was merely the afterbirth of my sleeping state, the little last bit of dream placenta slithering out of my subconscious and into the waking world.

I repeated the phrase several times in my head as I came to; reciting it like it was some kind of epic statement.

“Did you do it for the blood or the banana?”

For a brief moment it seemed like it meant so much, as if I were a warrior-poet standing atop the corpses of my vanquished foes, asking myself what motivated me toward my ultimate and bloody goal.

In the waking morning, however, the curtain was pulled back just to reveal how absolutely random and silly it all was, but that’s how my dreams have always been, impossibly epic and uncomfortably silly.

Every night when I sleep I wake up in worlds of wonder and insanity. Worlds populated with robot panda transsexuals and fish Popes. Worlds of beautiful mountain ranges housing philosophical flowers and and ships that ferry humans from one stage of evolution to the next.

I have also seen the heart of darkness. I have wandered endlessly through underground labyrinth laboratories, each corner promising something more terrifying then the next. I have watched bombs fall turning humans into (literal) popsicles. In my dreams, I have seen Eat Pray Love….the horror.

Through it all I have been everybody. I have been standing atop a futuristic tower of Babel as aliens rained down. I have been a man-made robot-god, and a lonely man in a desert. I have been Wolverine, Solid Snake, John Constantine, Superman, a knight, a space warrior, a slut, an opera singer, a cook, both Mario and Luigi at the same time…the list goes on.

Fuck it.

When I wake, all of that slowly fades and again I am Zack Taylor. Everything else slides back into the abyss. Most of it is forgotten and what I can remember falls under the category of “just a dream.”

Sometimes, however, in my quieter moments (which are rare) I wonder, if only for a brief instant.

“Did I do it for the blood…or the banana?”