The Carnival Barkers Dream – TRANSCRIPT September 4, 2024

It’s not only one of the longest dreams I’ve ever had—it went from September 4th to the 30th—but it was one of the loudest dreams I’ve ever had. The amount of background noise and stuff happening… if you see in the title, *Carnival Barker’s Dream*, it was like a carnival atmosphere. The noise level was loud, loud, loud, and so I’m just going to start reading it, and, uh, since it is long, we’re going to try to get through it in about an hour and see what happens with that.

Once again, September 4th–30th, 2024—it’s called *The Carnival Barker’s Dream*.

I was standing on the outskirts of a small, rural-type community, and there was a big wooden and hand-painted sign staked in the ground with just one stake that read, “Carnival Coming This Season.” The words were hard to read because the top of each letter was written in bright yellow paint, and the bottom of each letter was in orange paint. There were also fake flowers attached or stapled to the top of the sign, in that same bright yellow and orange.

I saw a long road into the community, lined with houses, farms, grain silos, and businesses—no sidewalks on the sides of the road, and the ground was dry, with no ditches either. If you’ve driven through southern Indiana rural areas, that’s what it looked like to me. There were people outside, sitting all the way along both sides of the road in those 70s-style lawn chairs with the straps that you would sit on. They were waiting on what seemed to me to be like a parade. The kids had buckets and things in their hands to catch candy. I grew up in an area where, during home parades, somebody’s always throwing candy, and kids put the stuff in the buckets. The kids had buckets and the adults were looking at their watches and adjusting their hats and sunglasses as the sun beat down. It felt like a summer day—it was hot.

On the horizon of the road, way down the way, two men came walking along. One was as skinny as a rail but sharply dressed; the other was very overweight and sloppy. I would use the word unkempt. The color of their suits, or their pants and things, was the same bright yellow I had seen on the sign. They had walking sticks in their right hands with deep, round orange stones set in rings on both hands. They carried their suit jackets over their left shoulders, and they were bright yellow as well. The suits resembled the best of the early 1900s season. There was a lot of throwback to the past in the dream, and each one of these men had black arm garters on each arm, right above their elbows.

These (arm garters) appeared to be very thick, like they were alive, moving while the men walked, you know they both had their  left arm with their jacket over their left shoulder and you could see this thing just moving back here on their arm like from here but they were moving. The people on both sides of the street stood up as these guys got close, like in most parades when the fire engine comes by. The first people stood, and as the men walked into town, everybody else kept standing beside them. Some in the crowd clapped, like they were glad to see the two men, but others looked at them very suspiciously. As the men walked by, they held single eyeglasses—if you think back to like the Germans during World War II, some of those guys had the one glass they’d look through. It wasn’t a monocular, just the one glass they’d look through. They were looking through these to see how far/close they were to town.

The people who had previously seen the men at the beginning of the parade were now following them about 15 feet back, eventually following them into town and right up to an area of tents and carnival activities in the center of town. As they got closer, new signs appeared in that same yellow and orange wording; it said this: “Loose Wild Animals” and “Magic Tricks and Sleight of Hand Up Close and Personal.” There were three tents, with a big tent in the middle. It was empty underneath, but both of the smaller tents on either side were full of people and all sorts of games. There were many carnival barkers and the arm garters and  also the yellow pants as the two men who had walked into town were wearing. The rest of these men didn’t have jackets, but they were barking and hollering at people to come under the smaller booth.

This is when things started getting loud in my head: “Hey you, hey this, hey that, you come here, try your luck!” Some of them were very aggressive, some even pulling people by the arm and sleeve up to their booths. Some of the crowds resisted, but some handed over money to play. They key was they only [accepted] $100 or $50 bills. So, they wanted people to pay big money to play these games.

There was a big ring toss game in the middle of one of the smaller tents that everybody was crowded around. The pegs seems to be about 2 feet off  the ground but they were connected to  miniature municipal structures resembling a city landscape. So imagine a pole and a house next to it. Imagine a pole in a hospital, kind of, you know. So, you’re going to be throwing rings over these things. Imagine a pole the size of that cane with that small miniature farm at its base. There was a bank, a hospital, a school, the word “Funeral Parlor.” There was a sign that said “Funeral Parlor,” which typically we don’t use that term. I have a friend who works in the agency, and he said “Funeral Parlor” went out in like the early 1990s, and it was just “Funeral Home,” but “Funeral Parlor” was what it said on there. There was a grocery store, a retail store, a figure of a locomotive engine, a truck with a city insignia, and a church. There was also a water office, a gas station, a farm store with square hay bales piled out front, and there was a library. So each of these little miniature buildings was near a pole in this big area with the ring toss.

The barkers were watching the two men who had walked into town and were getting signals from both men as to whom to bark at to step up. The two men were separated, but they were pointing at mostly men from behind them, like “That one, that one, get this guy over there, guy in the hat, guy in the hat,” that sort of thing. Okay, the kids were mostly in the background, but they were straining to see what would happen. So people are watching the game; they’re watching these people; they’re watching these two guys, or they’re watching the barkers, not the two guys. And then he spoke up, and he said, “Step right up, step right up and try your hand to see if you can outwit the man in the middle.” And as he said this, a big pole in the middle of the ring toss was uncovered, and on it was a very human-looking scarecrow that was moving and appeared to be talking. So it was almost like an AI robot. It was obvious this was not human, but it sure did look human. But it was not talking like normal humans speak; it was choppy and just—just creepy, not like in a Halloween way, but just creepy, like there was something not right about it. There were people moving around the eight to ten barkers in the game area, giving their money, which was slipped into glass jars secured at each corner of the game area. So imagine these large glass jars at all four corners of the game area. The barkers would take the money, and then they would pull their arm guard right off their arm and hand it to people. So the right hand would reach over, grab the arm guarder on their left arm, pull it off, and it would snap back together and harden. Then they would hand this ring to the people to throw those things out. So it was like a gel-formed ring, but once broken from the arm, it would reattach hard enough as it was handed to them and became a ring big enough to throw around the poles.

Okay, now, there were no prizes hanging from the ceiling, like you mostly see in carnivals, but there was a sign in the middle near the man that was the scarecrow, and it said: “Ring five and thrive, ring but four tempt no more, ring three and others will see.” And the biggest man of the two, the one who was very much overweight and unshaven, called for everybody to listen to him. He said that anyone ringing at least five of the goals in a row would win all the money collected in the jars. And now, everybody was approaching the barkers, handing over money hand over fist, just getting rings and throwing rings, and everyone was watching with intense eyes. So you had people—there’s noise and noise and noise—people watching, people watching, and you’ve got this scarecrow in the middle that’s just kind of watching everything, too. A few people would get one ring over a pole, and the crowd would hush and get really quiet, like they were watching and listening, like E.F. Hutton had said something. And then they would watch as they threw the next ring, and if they missed, the faces were like, “Oh man, can you believe that?” It was just frustration, but their hands would go back to their wallets, and they’d hand over remaining cash to try again. Then people were getting mad and screaming at the barkers, who just patiently listened. They were yelling and screaming, and the barkers just listened and didn’t make any facial expressions—basically, “Hey, you’re here to play the game or what?” That kind of attitude. But they just kept handing over the rings and taking the money. And once the rings went over a pole—so imagine you’ve got a pole like this, and a small, like, a house—the ring would go over, and then the ring would just crush it. It was like this thing was alive, and it would just squeeze and crush everything. It would destroy the school, the house, the library—whatever it was at the bottom, it would just get destroyed, because this thing would just jump in.

And even more than that, the scarecrow in the middle would start getting taller every time something like that happened. It would become more animated, and it would become more belligerent and more rude, and a light would go out at the top of that pole, basically putting that piece out of place. So now no one else could throw a ring over this one. So there were fewer and fewer rings now; the lights were off the poles, and there was darkness above the area where you could see the things illuminated. The light would go out at the top of the pole when it was rung, and then that piece was out of play. People began to complain that there was no way they could win if they had to get three in a row because more and more pieces kept becoming unplayable. None of the barkers seemed to be bothered by this at all. The big guy stood up and said, “Hey, we just enforce the rules; we didn’t create them,” and then he laughed so hard he fell on the floor and rolled in the dirt. So you’ve got this big guy rolling back and forth in yellow pants, a yellow jacket, silver, just yelling. He’s just laughing and laughing and laughing; he looks literally like a pig in the mud.

People started leaving, and the ones who had tossed the rings had a dirty ring around their wrists and even around their necks. People were pointing it out to them, and some were trying to wipe it away, but if they touched the dirt part, it was like it spread to them. Many of you probably got a spit bath from your mom before you went in somewhere, and you’re like, “No, get away, get away!” Every time these people were trying to get this dirt off their necks and wrists, it would jump onto them, almost like it was alive. They’d come from the rings. So it was like dirt jumping onto them. People were grumbling, complaining, and leaving, while the barkers at the game were emptying those glass jars into a barrel at the foot of the scarecrow in the middle. And as the people left, down the same road they walked in on, I saw the man I see in the dreams. He walked right by me, face straight ahead. He was not recognized or noticed by anybody else because everybody was caught up in getting this dirt off, or saying, “We’re going to go home,” “How much money did you lose,” all those comments you’d hear after a carnival or something like that. All these people were caught up in frustrations and angst, and the man I saw—he was just dressed like most of the crowd. He had on jeans and a t-shirt, just normal. He walked through the gate into the game area, and I, I told, I told Sheree—didn’t put this in the dream—but he just kind of put his hand on the side and hopped over. You know, nothing was going to stop him from getting inside.

So he hops over there, and he pokes that now very tall scarecrow in the middle. He just poked it in the middle, turned around, and this thing begins to deflate. And he’s looking at me, looking around at watching situations, but he waits until the whole thing is down below him. It finally hits the ground, and he starts to speak, saying, “Empty promises never change, especially if they come from the man in the middle. Your loss, their gain. They’re being squeezed as well, but they prefer you don’t know that. Those pursuing anything other than my will will always be angry at the world and blame me for their unprayed-about choices. Life will ring you and squeeze you and hold you; it will mold you into its own image and accept your soul as currency when you’re through in this world. My Church, you need to decide whether I’m the most important thing in your world, or you will lose me in your pursuits of everything else. It’s about your willingness to surrender to my will alone and nothing else, because nothing will satisfy me. The man in the middle is just a shallow and hollow example of who you are, built up on the traditions and ideals that don’t fulfill you spiritually. Sacrifices made to move you forward in your career or what your idea of success looks like… and it’s not even close. Close doesn’t count, and even though you know it, you remain unmoved and unfazed. But I am not. My standard has never changed and it won’t. Don’t be found wanting because now is when you cannot be found wanting. At this moment he bends down he picks up a rock, just a big rock like almost like a geode. If you’re from the Midwest you know probably know what a geode is; just a rock about the size of about a softball. He’s starting to get ready to walk off he just looks up he grabs this rock and he throws the rock way way up in the air and starts walking. He never turns around. He never looks back.  His face is like flint. He’s going down the same road he walked in on, the same road those two other guys came in on. He never turns around. I’m seeing the rock get bigger and bigger and finally it comes down and it cruqshes all three tents and that was the end of the dream that I had.