divine dreams

Will Landschulz
Am Lit. Per. 2
Mrs. LaMagdeleine

...Oh...kay.  That was the most surreal chapter I've ever read.  Talking to dead people, getting on a train with them, jumping out of the train destined to kill all those aboard and then collapsing at Jesus' feet?  Who has been playing blackjack with them and accompanying them on their trip to the afterlife?  Yet another reason why we shouldn't do drugs.  Anyway, all sorts of logic is thrown out the window the moment "morphine" is mentioned, I'll take a stab at this dream.  Joe, after falling into a drug-induced coma, finds himself in a Train station lounge, playing blackjack with soldiers about to die.  A soldier is heralded by the calls of his mother, pleading for them to let him return to her.  Fairly innocuous.  But Joe calls him Christ, for reasons I can't figure out right now.  Anyway, the morphine throws that in and brings the Christ soldier into the room with Joe and the other future casualties.  Who then starts playing blackjack with them.  Bwuh?  I guess Christ likes games of chance.  However, this has a basis in the earlier readings, where Joe stated that he had the one-in-a-million chance by staying alive and wished he'd lost it.  By why does Christ play it with them?  Maybe because he can make sure they all win or lose, as he demonstrates by giving everyone a drink?  No, he loses the next round, because he "can never hit on a twelve."  If he is powerful enough to create several shots of whiskey, with the glasses, out of thin air, the dye on a playing card should be small potatoes.  But no, he loses, maybe because there are some things even Christ can't do, or won't do.   Like return a man's body to him, while living or after death.  The train blows its whistle, which everyone notices and which Christ calls "the music of death."  This makes more sense, as all the players, except for Joe and Christ, are due to die during the war and the train is taking them to their final resting place.  But everyone notices Joe as being not due to die and basically ask him what gives.  Joe tells them.  They all think they've got the better end of the deal, and allow Joe to come along with them.  Joe goes along at first, like he did before the book started by going to the bunker where the bomb blew up, by going to war.  But he does not arrive at the destination, he jumps out halfway with the force of a bomb, to lie on the sand like he lies on the bed, a live mind in a dead body.  Christ, by this time, has jumped up on top of the train and overpowered the whistle of the train with his yelling, and then teleported into the desert, like a faraway mirage.  Joe runs to him for mercy, all those numberless miles to fall at Christ's feet for mercy, which is where the drug trip, sorry, the dream ends.  Because Joe wakes up, this implies that the mercy he asked for from Christ didn't occur.  He's still in his limbo, not quite dead, not alive at all.  What does this tell us?  DON'T DO DRUGS! 

PS.  I'm sorry, I thought the blog on being a martyr was yesterday's blog.