Folly of the Faithful Canine

One of the dreams we’re most likely to have
Involves going to school in the buff—
Or should I say already being at school?
Well, whichever, it’s ludicrous stuff.

You’d have to be more than a little asleep
Not to notice before you arrived.
That’s not just forgetful; that’s practically numb
And peripheral vision-deprived,

And surely some others would see you in time
And react in an audible way,
Unless they’re as drowsy as you must have been
When you left the house nude as a jay.

(It happens that I had this dream at age seven,
Wherein I stood up on a chair
To announce to the class what they surely could see:
That my body was totally bare.)

Down the country road we drove
Until we finally arrove
At an eerie cottage long forgotten.
Would this visit be regrotten?
With the tools that we had bought,
We then ensured the lock was prought.
Moving softly, no one spoke.
I pushed the door; it slightly croke.
Upon our tiptoes, in we crept
And into every corner pept.
Was this the place for what we sought?
We didn’t see when first we pought,
But soon we had a candle lit;
We looked around and were delit:
A treasure chest on which was written,
“For the poor”? We felt invitten!
Opening the chest, we found
A hundred coins that nearly blound
Us with a golden light that shone
Like no plain ore that’s ever mone!
We didn’t know how that was made
But didn’t care; our claims were stade—
Alas, for that was when we heard
A booming voice whose words we feard:
“You thieves who’ve broken in and stolen
From the poor will now be dolen
Harshly with before you’re slain.
I think I’ll have you scorched and flain.”
To put it mildly, we were shaken:
Such effects aren’t eas’ly faken.
Once the shock wore off, I ran
Outside, jumped in the truck and gan
The engine, but my friends had fallen
On the ground. I was appallen.
Suddenly, where they had lain,
The ground was vacant! Had they dain?
From the truck seat I had risen
(What I did is ill-advisen).
Could I help? No, I was caught!
My greatest nightmare had been maught!
…In fact, I had the whole thing dreamt,
And none of us was getting creamt.
I guess if there’s a lesson taught,
It’s that some loot must not be raught.

I see a pattern to my dreams of late: tour buses and prescience.

Last week I dreamed I bused to an apparent cage-free zoo full of surreal animals, such as bark-covered bears and snakes that resembled Aspen. (Somehow I thought that someone had made them as a tribute, but how would that work?) I returned later in the dream to find that the animals had grown significantly, which was worrisome, but they remained benign.

After I awoke, my mom, whom I had not told yet, suggested that we jog around the National Zoo, which we did.

Two nights later, I was on another tour. I don't recall any recurring theme except that we kept eating cheap, McDonald's-style burgers. It was good to wake up and put a better taste in my mouth.

That day, I went to a cookout. Yes, I had some advance warning, but it hadn't occurred to me before that I would be in a place where burgers formed the main food.

If I find myself on another bus, I'll attempt lucid dreaming and see if I can alter my destiny.

Nice to finish reading a novel in only two weeks for a change! This one was G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. My previous readings of Chesterton were the theosophical lectures of Heretics and Orthodoxy and the biography Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox, all good (especially Orthodoxy) but far from novels.

My first exposure to TMWWT was an early passage excerpted in the brilliant PC game Deus Ex. Appropriately for the game as well as the book, it pertained to an extreme anarchist's manifesto. (Given this and Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, were bomb-throwing anarchists a major concern a century ago?) I didn't know the source was real until I saw it listed among Chesterton's works. When I learned that the webcomic "Little Tales" alternated between original stories and a retelling of TMWWT, I resolved to read the latter someday.

It figures that my high expectations weren't quite fulfilled. For one thing, Chesterton is suspected to have had Asperger's, and it kinda shows in his wordiness and lack of separate "voices" for characters. There's only one noted female, and her fleeting role is either trivial or obscurely symbolic. More importantly, it feels a bit like three stories of different moods strewn together. I definitely like the first of these the best; it manages to be the most plainly intelligent, most credible, and funniest. The second part is sometimes exciting, but it's not a good sign when a book for grown-ups has the reader catching on faster than so-called detectives with just as much information. The third part answers preexisting questions in a whimsical yet preachy manner (if Tolkien hated Narnia, he'd surely hate this) but raises more, assuming you even care at that point of surreality. In a follow-up letter, Chesterton complains that too many people ignored the subtitle in their interpretation; even so, I'm not sure of everything he meant.

Still, I'm glad I read it. It taught me a few words, gave me some new philosophical takes on things, reminded me how some things were in Europe in 1908, brought me close to laughter on occasion, and readied me for "Little Tales." I plan to pick up another Chesterton novel someday, probably a Father Brown mystery.

In the meantime, I want to try something else for a while: Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Hey, I liked "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."

Wow, my nightmare of last night was one of my scariest ever. I was actually reluctant to go back to sleep afterward (well before dawn). Funny thing is, I didn't have a sense of danger for myself or anyone I knew this time. It felt like I'd been watching a pseudo-documentary horror movie in IMAX. To be precise, body horror. Think I'll spare you the details I've retained.

Why did I have it? I rarely watch horror, and the last time was quite a while ago. Sure, I've thought back on The Thing and some werewolf movies in the last month, but not so intensely. Heck, they barely chilled me the first time. And I haven't been having anxiety over my body image or anyone else's. Or anything else, really.

There's just no accounting for dreams.

This morning presented another first for the dreams I can remember: the incorporation of my alarm clock.

I was playing a supporting role in what was supposed to be a production of Oliver!, with little regard to casting (was that gray-bearded man one of Fagin's gang? No wonder the audience chuckled). Then the alarm sounded. I recognized the sound right away, but for some reason I thought it was supposed to happen in the play. Strange: Not only would it require an updated version, but none of the onstage characters were in bed or anywhere close to it.

As the alarm continued, I and everyone else became concerned that the tech crew had missed their cue to turn it off. I actually left the stage to look for whoever was responsible, to no avail.

Finally I awoke -- and made a couple of interesting observations that highlight how incompatible Inception is with my experience. First, my alarm had been going for 13 minutes, but it felt like less than 2 minutes in the dream. Second, the alarm sounded exactly the same, only... quieter when I awoke. Maybe it automatically gets quieter after a while, but that would mean unlikely coincidence.

Oh, and don't worry: I got out the door at my usual time without skipping part of my routine. Maybe I should set my clock differently.

Saw Inception on Saturday. I give it a solid 4 out of 5. Sorry, but when there's more than one interpretation and the director won't tell us, I'm obliged to deduct a point to spite him.

( Cut for length, not spoilers )

Just as interesting to me as the movie itself is how exactly I took the most interest. It wasn't the sci-fi focus, the action, or the special effects. It was the relationship of Cobb and his wife: Few stories assemble that much love, fear, and betrayal to my liking. Not only does it suggest that Inception has something for everybody, but this preference may be a sign of my maturity.

Or just my feminine side, which appears stronger than most straight men's. I did enjoy Pretty Woman last night.

Another milestone dream over the weekend. Normally in my dreams, I'm focused on whatever's in front of me (or chasing me). This time I was thinking about something completely unrelated to the situation. I was daydreaming in a night dream. I can't remember where I was or what I was thinking, but I woke up right afterward, and it seemed to my newly awake self that my thoughts had been no less sane or intelligent than in my usual wakefulness.

Is dream daydreaming possible only for bright minds... or really distractible minds? I know for sure I have the latter.

I won't say much about my dream last night, because it was ultimately disgusting and mortifying. But it marks a first in my experience: I dreamt that I awoke from a dream. Wasn't even sure that ever happened outside of fiction.

Now I feel like creating a checklist of things to have done in dreams. I'd have plenty of check marks by now.

Last night I had a dream that's a stretch for "weird" but decidedly not realistic either. I was in a restaurant with my parents. The waiter was politely treating us like any other customers, but something seemed awry. After a long time -- possibly after the meal -- I realized that I had taken off my shirt and sandals. I was impressed at the permissiveness of the establishment, but not wishing to push my luck, I started to put them back on. My parents, smiling, commented that it looked as tho I wouldn't "break the record" after all.

Viable interpretations:

1. I'm too casual.

2. I'm prone to disregarding common rules and conventions.

3. Other people are overly lenient with me.

4. I was cold enough last night to feel like I wasn't wearing a shirt. (I know I was when I woke up.)

5. Sometimes a shirtless, shoeless guy in a restaurant is just a shirtless, shoeless guy in a restaurant.