{"id":25797,"date":"2024-07-13T00:51:49","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T18:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/fivefoldlaw\/?p=25797"},"modified":"2024-07-13T03:48:15","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T21:48:15","slug":"a-midsommar-nights-dream-or-disco-inferno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/fivefoldlaw\/2024\/07\/13\/a-midsommar-nights-dream-or-disco-inferno\/","title":{"rendered":"A Midsommar Night\u2019s Dream (Or, Disco Inferno)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The nightmare was not prophetic<\/a> as far as I could tell, but it was traumatically realistic enough that upon waking, I knew my day was pretty much ruined. In the dream, this guy\u2026<\/p>\n

Oh. Wait. I should tell you about the guy. Whom we\u2019re just going to call Guy, because I do not have the wherewithal to give him a name.<\/p>\n

For about two years, Guy and I had an intimate friendship, the details of which we agreed not to bring to the attention of our mutual acquaintances. We didn\u2019t meet up very often \u2014 once every other month or so \u2014 but our encounters were equal parts passion and affection, and I always looked forward to the next (usually promised but rarely pre-scheduled) tryst.<\/p>\n

Over time, though, I picked up on a pattern. Guy would call out of the blue and suggest we get together, and when I accepted, he\u2019d be like, \u201cGreat! So listen, I need a favor\u2026\u201d And more and more often, once the favor was granted, any plans we\u2019d made would get cancelled. (\u201cOh, no, something\u2019s unexpectedly come up. Again.\u201d) The last time we were supposed to see each other, he called an hour beforehand to let me know that arrangements had changed: Instead of coming to my place, he was on his way to the suburbs to spend his weekend with someone else. Who, apropos of nothing, had offered to take him to dinner and loan him a few bucks.<\/p>\n

I promise this post has a happy ending. Much like Midsommar<\/em><\/a>. (Image courtesy of Snugg LePup<\/a>.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n*
** I spent about three days after that wallowing in devastation, then announced to myself, \u201cFuck this noise,\u201d and did my very best to put him out of my mind and pretend we\u2019d never met. But even though I haven\u2019t seen Guy in close to a year, bits of him are apparently still embedded in my subconscious, which happily provided a whole hallucinogenic narrative to thoroughly demolish last evening\u2019s sleep.<\/p>\n
** In the dream, I was in Alaska (your guess is as good as mine), where Guy and I were going to rendezvous. However, I learned somehow that Guy had opted instead to go adventuring with a group of other friends. And while I attempted to process yet another of his abandonments, those same friends appeared at the door (of my hotel room, I think).<\/p>\n
** \u201dGuy\u2019s dead,\u201d one of them said, without sentiment. And then he handed me a box of ashes, which I promptly fumbled and spilled.<\/p>\n
** *At the bottom of the box was a jumble of charred bone slivers. One of them was shaped like a comma, and I carefully shook it loose from the rest and thought, \u201cThis is all I\u2019m keeping.\u201d<\/p>\n

At which point I woke up and was like, \u201cWelp. Let\u2019s get ready for work and go take this mood out on some customers<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately for my overall well-being, the first person to walk into the store<\/a> was Sarah<\/a>, clutching a canary yellow cardboard box.<\/p>\n

\u201dI know your birthday isn\u2019t until September,\u201d she said, grinning. \u201cBut I found something perfect<\/em> for you, and my options were either give it to you now, or put it in the closet where I keep birthday presents and forget about it for 15 months. So here you go!\u201d<\/p>\n

Momentarily setting my woes aside, I opened the package, and\u2026 holy Mu Chao<\/a>, y\u2019all. Sarah was correct<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Agonized screams not included.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I thanked Sarah profusely, and my temperament remained upbeat for most of the afternoon. Right up until one of my employees<\/a> came in for his shift and was like, \u201cUgh, I slept awfully last night.\u201d And I was like, \u201cYeah, me, too\u2026\u201d at which point memories of the dream came roiling back in full force. I spent the rest of the workday vacillating between depression and wrath, finally settling on spartan resentment as my default mental state.<\/p>\n

But as I was driving home and fighting post-Beryl<\/a> traffic, a realization hit. At the end of Midsommar<\/em>, Dani allows the H\u00e5rga to sacrifice her jerk of a<\/del> boyfriend by burning him alive in their seasonal temple, which culminates in her spiritual and emotional freedom. (At least, that\u2019s what I got out of it; she also may have just legitimately gone crazy.) And here I was, with a miniature replica of said temple on my passenger seat, along with a tin of complimentary incense cones and images of fantasy cremains sliding around behind my eyes.<\/p>\n

Maybe the dream was instructional rather than oracular: I certainly didn\u2019t want Guy actually unalived, but what if I were to put my new incense burner to analogous use and incinerate him out of my psyche? It felt workable, if not a little out there. Then again, Chaos Magic leans heavily into pop culture<\/a>, so reworking the Internet\u2019s favorite Good For Her<\/a> moment into an act of liberational witchcraft wouldn\u2019t go against any principles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Plus the whole operation gave off a whiff of Discordianism, like, \u201cYou snub<\/a> me, I trash your wedding. Fair is fair.\u201d In fact, it wouldn\u2019t have surprised me at all if Eris, knowing that Sarah was going to visit, had planted the dream in my head \u2014 I mean, she\u2019d certainly found weirder ways<\/a> to communicate<\/a> in the past<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s what I was mulling over as I wandered into the grocery store down the street from my apartment to figure out something for dinner. This particular store has an inexplicable rack of Christian-themed self-help and daily affirmation books next to the restrooms, which happened to land in my line of sight as I rounded a corner, and confirmation smacked me in the face so hard that I had no choice but to pull out my phone and record it for posterity.<\/p>\n

Well placed, Eris. Well placed indeed. Thanks for not sending cockroaches<\/a> this time.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

The little temple is currently sitting on my altar<\/a>, with mildly pungent<\/a> smoke wafting peacefully from its tiny window and doorway. Whether or not the spell will succeed remains to be seen: Wounds only heal overnight in the movies, and the vestiges of the dream \u2014 coupled with memories of Guy in general \u2014 are still casting shade on my outlook. But I took some kind of action, and that feels a lot healthier than passively waiting for the pain to show itself out.<\/p>\n

And even if freedom isn\u2019t immediately revealed, I still have the temple: a thoughtful gift from a lifelong friend. And gentle evidence that the people in my life who truly care about me vastly outnumber the scant Guys who don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Like what you\u2019ve read? You ca<\/em><\/span>n<\/span> buy me a coffee<\/a><\/span> about it. (CashApp<\/a><\/span> and Venmo<\/span><\/a> are always options as well.)<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h3>\nOh, more discord, you say? But of course! Follow Thumper Forge on Amazon<\/a><\/span>, Bluesky<\/a><\/span>, <\/span><\/em><\/span>Etsy<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/a>, <\/em><\/span>Facebook<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/span>, <\/span><\/em><\/span>Instagram<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/span>, Threads<\/a><\/span>, and <\/span><\/em><\/span>TikTok<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/em><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n*The exit is right through the gift shop<\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"*******
** *******It’s certainly not the weirdest way Eris has ever reached out to me. And hey, at least there weren’t roaches this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4491,"featured_media":25851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,81,353],"tags":[13,5471,521,7149],"class_list":["post-25797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chaos-magic","category-discordianism","category-gender-and-sexual-minorities","tag-eris","tag-midsommar","tag-sarah-l-crowder","tag-snugg-lepup"],"yoast_head":"\nA Midsommar Night\u2019s Dream (Or, Disco Inferno)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It's certainly not the weirdest way Eris has ever reached out to me. 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