31 DREAMERS

Dream Blog Wakes Up

2011-04-04T14:25:00.008-04:00

Two years ago I set out to unravel a month's worth of dreams, one per day, each dreamt by a different dreamer—31 Dreamers, to be exact.

Then I stopped. I stopped the unraveling and the blogging, largely because I'd stopped dreaming. All your dreams had supplanted mine.

Then, just now, someone sent me a dream, and so I've decided to shake the 31 Dreamer's awake. Why not? Let's find out...

This one comes from Jakey of New Jersey. Let see what Jakey's up to in Dreamland:

I had a dream this morning that involved late 1880's French aristocrats singing about how the rifle was the best invention ever, but the worst part of the dream involved walking by a farmers market on the Baltimore ave side of Clark Park, stopping to look at some beautiful dark green dinosaur kale and noticing that the woman had a skunk on the table. "A skunk!" I said, "May I pet it? It's fur looks so soft."

"That's not even the best part," she replied and proceeded to take a knife and slit it's skin from crotch to sternum and peel it's skin off to reveal a wet looking layer of dark brown fur with no stripe underneath. "Usually you can find skunk onions under here," she said, running her fingers through the damp fur and coming across a light beige circle that she gently worked out of the fur and revealed to be a mushroom. "Or mushrooms—they have a wonderful flavor when they grow in the needle fur." Needle fur was apparently the name of the underlayer.

She flipped the skunk over and commenced running her fingers through the fur on it's belly, looking for more vegetables. I was marvelling at how things can grow between layers of skin on a skunk as if they were in dirt when the skunk squirmed a little and made an unhappy noise. I was horrified. "It's not dead!" I exclaimed.

"No, I just knocked it out." she replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

"You just skinned a live animal!" I protested, loudly.

"No, it's fine, it can't feel it." she soothed.

"Yes! It can!" My horror grew with every second. "You have to put it out of it's misery! You skinned it!" I was still arguing with her when I woke up and I can't get the thought of that poor tortured skunk out of my mind.

What does it mean?!

Ah...springtime! An epoch of awakenings when we're treated to the return of birds chirping in the treetops and children laughing around the playground. 'Tis the season for planting seeds in the garden for a new crop of vegetables, and for waving hello to our favorite furry friends, freshly arisen from their slumbersome hibernations, prancing and scurrying about while wagging their tails at last after a long winter's nap. And let's not forget those tantalizing springtime smells—aromas banished to dormancy under a blanket of frost for some months, now waft on open air! Fragrant flowers and foodstuffs scatter their scents asunder, as do piles and heaps of dung and rubbish, festering and rotting in the warm, golden sun.

Now Jakey, I'm not too sure what your wakey life has been doing these past two years. We all know "skunk" as a noun, bringing to mind those plucky li'l mammals in all their distinctive don't-fuck-with-me nonchalance; their powerful perfume best smelled from a moving vehicle with roll-uppable windows; and of course the cartoonishly French (!) loverboy accent of Pepe Le Pew—no? As a verb, "skunk" is a cribbage term that's bled over into other card and board games, meaning one player kicked the other's arse by well over umpteen points, which, for the loser, is not unlike being skinned alive. And yeah, as an adjective, "skunk" means a cabbage you may or may not want to smoke and a weed you may or may not want to eat. Oh wait, I got that backwards. Whatever—on with the blog.

Jakey, you haven't been reading Derrick Jensen, have you? He's got this bit in his book A Language Older Than Words where he critiques the philosopher René Descartes (who happens to be—you guessed it—aristocratic and French!) for denying that animals are capable of suffering, simply because they are incapable of speaking or communicating on any recognizable human level. We've learned a lot about this since Descartes' day of circa 1645. Since then we humans have hepped bonobos on talkin' good English, done ASL with gorillas, and figured out how groundhogs alert each other as to what color shirt I've got on. Together we've come so far, and it is so good.

Linguistics aside, the Descartes/Jensen divide is one of ethics: how we treat other creatures defines how we treat our planet, our fellow humans, and yeah, ourselves. Is your little trip down Dream Street to the farmstand pointing at dietary/ethical choices in your awake life? And, by extension, do you query about the process by which said vittles arrive at mouth from merchant, from truck or trains or ocean trawler? And are them eats from farm or factory or some hybrid of the both? And what exactly went on in there—there, where your food sprung up from? Jakey, what are you eating and how did it get to you? Are you connected to that process and do you even want to be?

Perhaps your tale of gross skunk onion woe asks all of the above. Or perhaps it just beckons you to come on down to the farmers market on a nice spring day. There, a lady proffers up a mushroom, freshly picked from the dungheap. You examine it closely, and yes there's something (as many pronounce this next word) fur-miliar to you here. You can freak out and be overwhelmed by all circumstances that bring you and mushroom together in this moment. Or you can take a deep breath and then sigh the words, "It was only a dream."

A Waking Dream of Greater Vision

2010-01-01T01:02:00.003-05:00

Last January I stopped dreaming.

Largely because I was so taken by the dreams of others.

So I gave up my job as a dream-reader. And now I'm on a mission to make you make yourself see better.

(If you like.)

For the past decade I've been studying and using techniques for improving the vision—the interface between the eyes and the brain that makes up our sense of sight and portions of our other senses as well.

I'm posting an "eye exercise" each day for this month, just as I did with your dreams last year. Come February these will be compiled into a publication, available at the 6th Annual Fun-A-Day exhibition in Philadelphia.

Click here to check your eyes into a new blog that hopes to multiply your vision 15-fold.

31 Dreamers: Live in Vermont

2009-03-13T18:13:00.004-04:00

Yo Dreamers. While the blog takes a nap the dreams run rampant in the frozen wilds of the northeast. The 31 Dreams that saw the limelight of gallery life at Fun-A-Day 5 in Philly went at it again in a week-long residency at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. The connection: the dreams of Maggie, Trish, Jules and Bronwyn are the dreams of Goddard students and alums. Lindsay's dream was also featured as part of a public reading and received a whopping 9.6 on the laugh-o-meter. Thanks again to all 31 Dreamers for your participation.

Now, please send in your dreams for the next round of 31 Dreamers.

31 Dreamers at Fun-A-Day

2009-02-18T15:05:00.009-05:00

Philadelphia's 5th annual Fun-A-Day show happened at Studio 34 in Philadelphia on February 14th, 2009 and lemme tell you, that jawn was PACKED! I rolled in around 8:00 p.m. and there were literally hundreds of people looking at everything. With over 70 contributing artists who'd made or documented one thing per day for 31 days, there were over 2,100 things to look at. 31 of those things were your dreams.

Transferring your dreams from the web and into a onto paper, I realized how long some of them were and that the interpretations were even longer. I ended up abridging most of them and printing them out on cards, which were folded in half and placed on a table for people to peruse. Here's Jason with his "Lazy Laaaazzzzz" dream, a personal favorite of mine.

There were a lot of inquiries about whether or not 31 Dreamers would continue, and I told people, "As long as people interact act with the blog, the blog will interact back." That's a hint folks: leave your comments and send in your dreams! Maybe we're taking a little time off, but we can jump back into it with a little more 2-way traffic. Deal? Deal.

The Dream of the Drop

2009-02-06T16:22:00.009-05:00

Like the available flavors of ice cream at Baskin Robbins, 31 Dreamers began as a project to collect a dream a day from 31 different people around the world. 31 Dreamers had a time limit: the month of January 2009, and that time has expired. Your beloved dream-reader (that's me) is moving on to pen fables, carve blockprints, and tour with theatrical performances and workshops. Leave a comment here if you want info on any of this stuff, or if you want me to keep interpreting dreams. I cater to mob rule here.

It's time now for a re-cap of people's favorite dreams:

My Favorite Dreams You Sent In:

1. Choco Taco Thwarts Identity Theft
2. 2-for-1 Special
3. This Is The Grassroots Work I'm Gonna Do With You
4. The Oaten Exorcist
5. Giraffic Park

But really, they were all pretty great. What was your favorite dream? Your favorite interpretation? Leave a comment below and tell the world.

Hope to see some of you at Fun-A-Day events around the globe in the coming month. Until then, keep dreaming.

The Mad Crapper

2009-01-31T02:36:00.006-05:00

Dream dreamt in New Hampshire on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee by a final, unknown dreamer a few years back. Animation created by Darren Blondin. Interpretation embedded in video. Accompanying book of the day: The Humanure Handbook.

Thanks to all the dreamers out there for making this blog a success. If you're in Philly on February 8th, come to the Fun-A-Day show to see this and dozens of other amazing projects in the flesh. And keep sending in your dreams for the new weekly version of 31 DREAMERS!

Trepidatious Trainhopping

2009-01-30T23:11:00.013-05:00

We're down to the last two Dreamers on our daily oneirocritical excursion. So many of you have asked if 31 Dreamers will continue and the answer is yes, Beginning in February we switch to a weekly format. We might have to do some sort of Baskin Robbins promotional tie-in to justify the number "31" in the blog's name.

If you haven't checked out some of the other online Fun-A-Day antics, now's your chance. Round two of shout-outs goes to Karen's delectible Pie-A-Day, Timothy's economical Fake Poloroid-A-Day, P.Shaw's visionary Comic-A-Day (pictured here), Emma's toe-tapping 12-Bar-Blues Song-A-Day, Dee's frenetic Self-Portrait-A-Day, and Cait's do-it-yourself Batch of Vegan Muffins-A-Day (with recipes!) Acomplete list of other Fun-A-Day links can be found in the sidebar on the left.

Choosing today's dream has been a challenge (tomorrow's has been picked out for weeks...) So many of you have sent some really fabulous dreams, many of which are on file and may crop up on the new weekly version of this blog. The penultimate of these first 31 Dreamers (really 33 Dreamers, but we'll deal with that later), is fellow Fun-A-Day-ista Molly McIntyre, who dreamt thisin Oakland, California:

My friend Andrea and I were waiting for a train. We were waiting for a really long time. When the train finally came, I didn't have my stuff together. I grabbed my wallet and ran to the train, but the rest of my bags were still on the sidewalk. Andrea was already on the train, and I was holding on to the outside, like in a movie. I yelled, "I can't do it, I need to get my stuff!" and jumped off. Andrea jumped off too. Then we realized that we could get a ride from some people we knew, so it was okay that we didn't get the train.

Then I was sitting on a couch with this boy that I dated for a minute last fall. He was cracking jokes about something. His sister came in and she was beautiful. I thought to myself, "Damn, this guy is pretty weird looking, but his sister's so pretty—I bet we would've had really beautiful children—I should've hung onto him!"

Molly, are you the sort of person that's prepare the night before you embark on a trip? Or do you tend to be a maestrom of frantically teying to pull things together and throw them in bags right before it's time to head out the door? Regardless of how it is when you're awake, you're not ready, or even really willing, to take this train in this dream. You've been planning this trip with your friend for so long, but where is it going to take you? Maybe someplace permanent, some commitment ofr situation that you're not sure you're ready for. And then you have your Slumdog Millionaire moment, only the jerkface brother doesn't let go of your hand because Andrea isn't the jerkface brother—she's your friend and will stick by you no matter what you decide, so instead of letting you go, she goes with you.

Deciding to travel by car instead of by train means that you opt for more flexibility, both in deciding where you're headed and how long it takes you to get there. You visit one possible past-future—a prior abandoned train ride with "this boy." You question your decision to jump off of his train, thinking, "I could've just done this, gone further down the track with him, maybe to the very end." You see his sister and kinda wish he was his own sister (or that his sister were him), maybe finding more comfort and camaraderie in the company of females and wishing that the men in you life could be a little bit more like the women in your life. This boy would have never jumped off that train like Andrea did. He would've said, "What the fuck? Just get on the train!" and probably would've ended up going on without you.

Honestly Molly, my first thought when I finished reading your dream was, "Why not have children with the sister?" I'm casting all biological assumptions aside here, but anything is possible in dreams anyway . . .

––––– –– ––– –––––

. . . Speaking of anyway, for those of you who might go into withdrawal from not having at least one dream to gape at every 24 hours, there are lots of books to ogle out there. Today I actually took a gander at David Fontana's The Secret Language of Dreams and it's not too bad. But yes, it's no substitute for 31 Dreamers.

Papercuts at the top and bottom of this post by today's dreamer,

Molly McIntyre. See more art and stop-action moies on her

wonderful website. Or tell her how awesome she is here.

The Subconscious Songwriters Union

2009-01-29T22:45:00.012-05:00

This dream has a soundtrack. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I'll take suggestions from you if you have any. In the meantime, you can play either one or both of these:

Today we have another California Dreamer, third from the end of our 31 Dreamers lineup is Bronwyn, who writes:

I dreamt last night that a faerie-like girl was singing to me, she was singing the most beautiful song, and playing an unusual and vague instrument with strings that was otherworldly. She wrote a song for me, and I felt like I could take on anything, and I knew that I would never die as long as I was rooted in my will to live.

Sweet dream Bronwyn, and one that doesn't want too much interpretation. Some schools of dream-work take every component of a dream and equate each with a particular meaning. Others state that everything in the dream is an extension of the dreamer (which is true to the extent that the dreamer did make the whole thing up). Fans of 31 Dreamers may have figured out that this blog takes a different approach every day, with a little lean toward the politics of dreams plus a good book thrown in for good measure, for most good books are made up of dreams.

For this dream Bronwyn, you can probably see your own face in that of the færie girl and hear your own voice in her song. What was that song? Your "Bronwyn Kicks Ass" anthem. If you haven't taken up an instrument and written yourself a song yet, now may be the time. Or at least get in the habit of humming or whistling the theme to Fame wherever you go.

In a similar vein, I'd like to share with you some of Eduardo Galeano's imaginations for a future we might want in the upcoming millenium/century/year/hour. He's got a long list in the final chapter of his book Upside Down: a primer for the looking glass world (with woodcuts borrowed from J.G. Posada). Here are my top 10:

• People shall work for a living instead of living for work.
• No one shall die of hunger because no one shall die of overeating.
• Cooks shall not believe that lobsters love to be boiled alive.
• Histories shall not believe that countriees love to be invaded.
• In the streets cars shall be run over by dogs.

...and furthermore:

• People shall not be driven by cars,
• Or programmed by computers,
• Or bought by supermarkets,
• Or watched by televisions,
• And no one shall be taken seriously who can't make of fun of themselves.

Okay, dear dreamers, turn off your screens and start dreaming of those songs to make us feel like we can take on anything. We've got our work cut out for us.

Music (for now) by the Mystical Unionists. Submit your ideas for the song from Bronwyn's dream. The mixtape will appear in a future episode of 31 Dreamers.

The Long Arm of Gravity's Law

2009-01-28T17:05:00.015-05:00

What goes up, must come down, right?

Not necessarily in dreams.

Maybe.

The impossible can happen in our dreams. Readers to this blog have sent in all sorts of impossibilities that they've dreamt up, as far-fetched as brushing one's teeth with a killer whale, to snorting Allen Ginsberg up one's nose, to being a super hero in the form of a frozen novelty dessert. Weird stuff. On the simpler side a dreamer in Paris dreamt that she saw fish flying up into the sky, going off and away, never to be heard from again.

Maybe.

It is possible that things exiting one dream could return in another. It may even be possible that these items could leave the dream of one dreamer and enter the dreams of another. The odds of the happening might be greater than we think since we don't know what other people dream about most of the time. But 31 Dreamers is a place where dreams collide, overlap, run tandem to one another. And fishes flying out of France may just migrate to Montpelier, Vermont, where Trish dreamt this up during her afternoon siesta:

At a large family gathering I’m looking through the house for my childhood chest of drawers. My mother shows me all of her new cheap/modern but ornate furniture. Out the window I see a crowd of people gathering at the bottom of the hill the house is on. Trying to make sense of the scene from a distance, I grab my mom and some family members and we realize that a couple of police cars have crashed into the yard somehow. I burst out crying when I see people dragging an old man out of one of the cars. I assume he is dead. Two LOUD bangs like gunshots ring out and the crowd scatters or hits the ground, covering their heads. I run through the house and into the garage/front yard area to SHOUT over the noise of the party that there are gunshots and everyone should stay inside.

I run into the room where I’m staying to get dressed to go outside and scope the scene. Someone (a female cousin?) comes into the room to chat while I get dressed and distracts me. In my haste I put on an overly glamorous shirt (inappropriate for the situation) and only one very thin sock with the other foot bare inside pointy black snakeskin bootlets. They don't fit comfortably and it is snowy and wet outside.

I run out to the distraught crowd to find them gaily fixing the lawn where the grass got ripped up from the crash. They are gibber-gabbering about neighborly things and seem to be having quality community time together. A lady remarked that they thought someone had been shooting because she "saw a bottle (of alcohol) that was left in the deer hunting platform on her land across the street, but really the noises had happened because it had been RAINING FISH."

I was dumbstruck and began walking about in a daze, until I fell over a berm in my snakeskin boots. Stuck on the other side, I had to trudge through an irrigation ditch between the berm and the road. Sulking, I waded through the cold water trying to get to the highland of the driveway until I saw indeed—it had rained fish! There were huge, long, beautiful fish flopping out of puddles of water too small for them!

With glee I ran to the house urging my kid brothers to take my 5-year-old son down to the road to see/catch a fish. They walked down the hill to where others were catching fish as well. In my haste to find fish-catching gear, I tripped over a rocking chair and smashed a tiny hard-shelled egg under one of the rocking rails of the chair. I stayed in to resentfully clean this up while the boys excitedly tried to catch the fish with bare hands. As I walked downstairs to get a towel, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Looking back, I was horrified to see that the hand stayed on my shoulder as I continued to walk down the stairs. My stepmom stood stationary at the top of the stairs and her arm stretched like taffy down the whole length of the staircase—Ewww! I shooed off her freaky hand/arm and she just laughed. I had to laugh and smile too and I could hear the children splashing and laughing in the distance.

Trish, for a short nap you can really pack it in. Here's what I got:

You are trying to go back to finding what you value. Your mother doesn't share your values and in the face of disaster you take the lead. The reality is that there are bad things happening and people dying all the time while a lot of us just eat cheese and crackers with pinkies akimbo like folks aren't being shot right in our own front yards. For the others in your dream, what happens outside the window might as well be on the other side of the world. For you it doesn't matter where it's happening—it's real and the people that it's happening to are real. You want to respond to these situations, to save the world and get those closest to you to give a shit about something for once, but you also just want to play dress-up and have fun and not worry about this stuff. In the dream the interface of these two desires makes for some uncomfortable attire while your neighbors blab about nothing and patch problems up as if they'd never existed. Meanwhile you're flummoxed to the point of being dizzy, feeling aimless, unsupported and stuck in a rut and looking like a glam-rock has-been to boot. Its a bad place to be.

But Trish—there's hope! The world is full of wonderful and spectacular things! Did you know that it actually can rain fish? Yep. Small fish, frogs, squids and other aquatic creatures sometimes get sucked into the air by tornadoes and gale-force storms. Up they go, and down they come! (Really—read this BBC article about it). But in the midst of this fantasticness you put family first, sending your son to catch fish while you contend with a household where you always feel like your walking on eggshells, unable to fully be yourself. Your stepmom seems to be the law in this place and she mandates you be a certain way from her position above you. Meanwhile your brothers are free to do whatever they want—y'know, guy stuff. You want your son to be independent and do the things that he wants to do, but will he turn out like them in the process?

That's what I got. That and a little pocket-sized book called Pond Life: A Guide to Common Plants and Animals of North American Ponds and Lakes by George K. Reid. Sometimes when things are a little tense there's nothing better than looking at colorful illustrations of plants, insects and fishes and learning fun facts about the way ponds are formed. It can take one's mind off of the trivialities of the human world, diving instead into the real wonders found in nature. Then, when we're done reading, we might look up and see that everything's gonna be alright. I myself read this book on election day. It worked.

"Raining Fish" illustration at the top of this post by Brett Ryder. More photos of this commoner-than-you'd-think phenomenon can be found in Wikipedia's article "Raining Animals."

Providence...POSSESSED! Part 3: Puppy Uprising

2009-01-27T13:33:00.008-05:00

What Cheer, 31 Dreamers? We round out our trilogy of spirited dreams from Rhode Island's "Beehive of Industry" with a final tale of possession—this time not by sorcery or soap opera stars, but by none other than a cute raggedy puppy. Hee is Gillian's dream:

I dreamt that I found this really cute raggedy puppy on my roof. I let him in and he jumped into my arms. My cat was freaked out and ran under the bed. I started walking the streets asking if he belonged to anyone, and then I realized that he had a tag with his address on it and it was very far away. I brought him to the address on his tag (drove with him on my lap, curled into a ball) and the man who answered the door said that he was not their dog, that he had never seen the dog before. I kept showing him the tag but he was dead set against taking the dog inside. I held the puppy up and said, "I guess we're stuck with each other."

What could this possibly MEAN?

Good question. Before attempting an answer, we need to make a little point about people's feelings for dogs:

During the Vietnam War the populace of the United States was divided even-Steven as to whether or not its military (i.e. teenage boys, fresh out of high school) should be in southeast Asia killing and being killed based on the ideologies that nations thrust unto their people. College campuses were hotbeds of this schism, as all students were exempt from the draft and some felt exempt from the politics behind it as well. Others felt that it was their responsibility to stop the war, no matter what. On one particular campus whose scales were tipped more toward an angle of apathy, some activists circulated a letterhead with a press release stating that they'd be holding a demonstration where they would be napalming a dog in protest of the war. People were outraged—not because thousands of human families were being burned alive by napalm that their tax dollars were paying for, but because a dog—one dog—would be so cruelly murdered in their own city. Huge crowds showed up to protest the protest. People brought their own dogs, and nine veterinary ambulances were on site to respond to any potential of an animal being hurt. No "activists" or napalm were anywhere to be seen, but a flyer, printed on the same letterhead as the earlier press release, was circulated to the crowd, congratulating everyone for making the event the largest anti-war protest the city had ever seen. "You saved the life of a dog. Now, how about saving the lives of tens of thousands of people in Vietnam."

People get so attached to dogs, don't they Gillian? Yet in your dream no one wants anything to do with the cute raggedy puppy. This puppy is an abandoned idea, rain-soaked and neglected like a stray sock on your roof. He could be an old idea, but relatively speaking an idea that has tremendous potential for growth if cared for properly. But who will care for this cute raggedy puppy of an idea? You kind of like this idea but (as your cat would explain) you can't really take it on as your own. You need to find the right place for this idea and so you take temporary responsibility. But no one else will pick up the slack, not even (especially not) the originators of this cute raggedy puppet of an idea. So you resign yourself, feeling "stuck" with the follow-through, but also seeing the beauty and vulnerability in this little inkling that could grow into something wonderful. But getting to that point will likely be a pain in the ass.

Gillian, you strike me as a person who's willing to ask for help but independent enough to take whatever comes your way and swallow it whole. Do you really want to swallow this cute raggedy puppy? If you truly must adopt him—whatever he is—you might want to look for a co-parent, a collaborator to share the duties of whatever it is you're jumping into. Remember also: the puppy has possessed you, but you also possess the puppy. You are "stuck with each other." What does it mean? You're the dreamer of the dream, so you probably know best. If you care to share it with rest of the class, drop a note in the comment box for 31 Dreamers.

––––– –– ––– –––––

Our book of the day is The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. Read this book, dear Providence. Dispossess yourselves. And get some rest.

Cute raggedy puppy photos from Sharon's Puppy Uprising website. Sharon has appeared previously on 31 Dreamers as Choco Taco: Super Hero.

Providence...POSSESSED! Part 2: You'll Bee Back

2009-01-26T20:17:00.021-05:00

Our second exciting episode from the haunted city in The Biggest-Little-State-In-The-Union comes from Yvette, who dreamt:

I was in an open marketplace, kind of nondescript, but it looked like a marketplace from a movie about New York City. It was a bright, stark day and there was good fall sunlight throughout the open area. I was looking for these 2 Chilean women my sister had told me about. They could make you feel every "spirit" or other kind of subtle presence that follows you. I was standing with my back to this crowd of people in the market, and unknowingly stood between the women.

First, I felt like one of the women had touched my back, and I turned around to look at her but she wasn't looking at me—she didn't even seem to notice me. I turned around, and felt scratching on my back, first lightly then progressively stronger. The sensations increased, my body was jerking then repeatedly kicked in the air. I was screaming for help, and terrified. There was this electrical buzzing throughout my entire upper back, punctuated by a sensation of being kicked into the air by an invisible foot that hit me between my scapulae.

I woke because my boyfriend heard me grunting and it frightened him. There was a buzzing in my upper back . . .

Yvette, you may want to give your fellow Rhode Islander Jo Dery a call. She kicked ass in yesterday's dream and might be able to dispossess you of that haunted hornet's nest between your shoulder blades.

The physical effects experienced between your dreaming and wakeful states smack of polysensory hypnagogic experiences. There are long lists of interesting explanations for why these occur, both from the standpoint of Western clinical medicine and throughout international folklore. Since I am neither a doctor of neurology nor of witchery, I'll leave these hyperlinks open for you to navigate through the myriad of theories that they present. Reactions to this phenomena, known by so many gnarly names around the world, seems largely subject to cultural conditioning, which brings us back to the paraphrasal of Clive Barker's advice from yesterday's post: we can perceive alternate realities as being in conflict with the realities with which we are accustomed, or we can see all of these realities as a haunting and mysterious soup that may be worth exploring and tasting.

Shall we get out our sampling spoons?

You are passing through a place in your life where there are as many choices as there are stalls at an open-air bazaar, yet you have put almost all of the options behind you and are now at a point where you have chosen a specific goal. You have the support of your family (at least your sister—she can represent, right?) and your friends have your back, but what lies beyond this goal is something of a mystery. The knowledge that you seek can not be found in the trinkets and chachkas of daily diversions (the exception being this blog), but through serious mentorship that requires a great deal of trust on your part—not just in your teachers, but in yourself. You grow to feel the impact of your path's history and it's wisdom, first just a touch, then more penetrating, and eventually overwhelming you with your own fear. Is the fear in your dream a fear of not being ready to inherit this history? A fear that you have the will but not the wisdom? Or is your fear of (pardon the cliché) fear itself?

Yvette, my guess is that any anxiety that you might have is not great enough to make you grunt and twitch and jerk like a gremlin in the sunshine. At the risk of coming off as a new-agey dipshit (or did I already blow my cool on that one with this dream-blog thingy?) I'm going to play a wild card and say that you are affected by a lot of excess energy in your daily life. I'm not talking about big power plants or wind farms, I'm talking about life energy: prana, qi, mojo, The Force, whatever you want to call it. I'm gonna out myself here and say, "Yeah, I've felt it too," and so have millions of others, or else that list on Wikipedia wouldn't cover 29 different world cultures spanning thousands of years.

Which brings us back to that autoethnographical question: Do we fear it and try to overthrow it? Or observe it and swim in its sensations?

One thing you can try is to create an intentional buzz in your back while you're awake. You can do this by practiving a yoga prāņāyāma called bhramarī (sometimes spelled bhamari or bramari). According to B.K.S. Iyengar, "Bhamarī means a large black bee." It is also the name of the Hindu goddess of black bees (pictured at the top of this post). In practicing Bhramarī one inhales deeply and then hums like a bee on the exhale. The effect is a vibrating of the chest and back, the position of which can be adjusted by altering the tone of the buzz. The lower the pitch, the lower in your body the vibration. Raise the pitch to move the vibration up the torso. You can also place one hand on your sternum and the other on your back while practicing Bramarī to feel the exact point of vibration. In Iyengar's book Light On Yoga he writes, "The humming sound in Bhamarī Prāņāyāma is helpful in cases of insomnia." Neat, huh?

Outing myself again here: the instances I most frequently feel a buzzing in my own back—sometimes (if I'm lucky) accompanied by a jerking sensation that sends me flying about a foot into the air—is when I'm receiving acupuncture. The state that one is often in during an acupuncture treatment is somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, a.k.a. hypnagogia, the same phenomenon linked to possession by hags, devils, ghosts, witches and neurologists in some 29 different cultures. Why is this considered a curse in these contexts but a force for healing in another? I cannot provide you with the answer here, only a question. But if you discover any hints en route to your goal, do clue us in at 31 Dreamers.

Providence...POSSESSED! Part 1: The Oaten Exorcist

2009-01-25T21:03:00.015-05:00

As promised in an earlier post, we will be putting a dent in our backlog of dreams pouring in from Providence, Rhode Island, most of which (witch?) concern being possessed by demons, spirits, puppy dogs, and characters from soap operas. Possession is no light matter for a dreamworker to be meddling with, so I've sought some professional advice: The Sandman comics written by Neil Gaiman. The most solid trade secret I've found comes not from Gaiman, but in Clive Barker's introduction to one of the volumes, where Barker explains that there are "two kinds of fantastic fiction." In one kind, an existing reality is invaded by another reality and must be "exorcised" to maintain the established order. In the second kind, Barker explains, "the whole world is haunted and mysterious . . . a series of relative realities." These are good things to think about when one lays one's head down to sleep, perchance to dream. Will our dreams be struggles to maintain what we perceive to be our reality? Our can we simply roll with it and let reality shift as our dreamworlds see fit?

Today's dream comes from someone who I think does a good job at balancing these two perspectives. I'll use her whole name here because she makes beautiful comics, silkscreen prints and animated movies (all of which I'm shamelessly plugging by scattering around this post) and any reader of this blog would be smart to seek out her stuff. Please welcome the dream of Jo Dery:

I dreamed that I performed an exorcism on an unknown figure, lying in a hospital bed. I had to stand over the figure with a bowl of oatmeal, with raisins in it, and to chant continuously. I had my eyes closed. There came a moment when I felt the exorcism had worked, and so I opened my eyes. In front of me, next to the bed, stood a man who looked like "Sonny" from General Hospital in the mid 90's, or "Richard" from LOST. When I saw him I turned to him and began to yell: "Get out! Get out!" I walked toward him, out of the room and down hallway after hallway. It now felt like we were in a school, like a middle school. By the end of the dream, I had chased him out.

Jo, demonic possession by fictional TV personae is one of the most difficult exorcisms to perform. You did remarkably well and could perhaps give some tips to Lauri regarding the undercurrent of yesterday's dream. And maybe you can help me stop the Gilligan's Island theme from playing on a continuous loop in my brain. But seriously . . .

You perform this exorcism on an unknown figure and that figure is (drum roll please) you, Jo, but in a past state where you were not as strong or as healthy as you are now.

You have been eating your oatmeal every morning, nourishing yourself with its warm comforts and the self-love that it embodies. Now you channel this power to chase out the bogey men in your brain once and for all. The hospital/school that you're in is also an extension of you. You've managed to pull this Sonny/Richard man out of your body, but he not out of you completely—he is still in your life. And so you chase him out, down and out one corridor, and then another and another, further and further away from the prone, vulnerable version of you still lying back in that hospital bed. Something about this task feels like the petty bullshit you had to put up with when you were 13. Aren't we a little old to be dealing with things like that? Anyway, congrats on chasing him out. Maybe you've already accomplished this in your awake life and this dream is a celebration of that feat. If not, go get yourself a piping hot bowl of oatmeal and maybe give Sonny/Richard the option of which orifice he'd like to eat it with. Maybe.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's exciting episode of Providence...POSSESSED! on 31 Dreamers.

When The Cat Flips The Bird

2009-01-24T02:00:00.018-05:00

It's here, finally: a dream from "Middle America" . . . sort of. Chicago might not be the cornfield you were hoping for. But Lauri, our dreamer from the City of Big Shoulders, has sent in not one but four dreams. It's been a tough choice between surrealist banana dramas, overpriced bagel nightmares, and an all too realistic dream about coming home to find that people have broken in, helped themselves to the facilities, and are barely reprimanded when confronted by the cops. Sounds pretty much like my six-month stint in the Windy City. "My kind of town" my ass.

Here's Lauri's star-studded winner of a dream:

Madonna's fluffy, "$1 million" cat was stalking me throughout a home right next to a chicken stand in western Pennsylvania. It was a chicken stand that actually existed, and there used to be a happy, smiling little chick on the sign, kind of waving his hand/wing as if to say, "Come on in and grab you some chicken." The cat was scratchy-bitey.

There was also a reference made to Jessica Simpson's "revived career."

Lauri, this dream runs thick with some pejorative female imagery. It's nothing compared to the orgy of rampant sexism that pervades the Interweb, but it is possible that maybe—maybe—some images from the American media could have seeped into your dream here. Shocking, I know—is nothing sacred? Aren't dreams supposed to be communiqués from another realm more akin to mystique and magic than crass commercialism? Having tabloid gossip about Jessica Simpson in one's dreams is like having a neon Pepsi billboard orbiting the earth and a Nike Swoosh etched into the surface of the moon (which would be a Newport Cigarette logo for our compañeras in the Southern Hemisphere). But I digress.

The Madonnas and the Jessica Simpsons of the world serve as icons of a specific feminine ideal attainable by relatively few women. The highest standards of feminine glamor and beauty seem to be defined by the Marilyn Monroesque qualities of: 1. Blond hair, 2. Large breasts, 3. Hips to match, 4. Skimpy clothing, and 5. Accessorized facial features such as long lashes, luscious lips, and/or a distinguishing "beauty mark" that one hopes isn't cancerous. That these standards exclude the 98% of the world's women whose ancestry cannot be traced to Northern Europe is a statistic that would have made a smug Adolph Hitler say, "I told you so." That the remaining 2% of qualifying Arayan female stock must then conform to certain ranges of measurements and characteristics not within the natural register of most human bodies sets many up for feelings of inadequacy and resulting struggle. The socialization of some women into this scheme has fostered a stereotype of the competitive (or "catty") female persona and yes, she appears in this dream not as the Blonde Madonna, but as Madonna's precious cat.

That this catty cat is terroizing you Lauri, even in the supposed sanctity of one's dream-home, shows there these concepts are capable of hunting and haunting a person no matter what. And what sanctity is there with a greasy fricken chicken joint stinking up the house from next door? And the chicken—the "chick," the "bird," the flesh emblem of this meat market of femininity, cloyingly gesturing to the men in their pickup trucks: "Come-n-grab-it boys!" Finger-lickin good, right?

Maybe this stuff isn't actually an issue for you Lauri, but some inkling of it is swimming around in your brain as it is in mine (and anyone reading this via the internet, a medium that nets $3 billion a year worth of porn sales in the U.S. alone). What's to be done? I personally take cues from the first celebrity I ever had a crush on. No, it wasn't a member of The Brady Bunch, it was Laurie Anderson. She was one of the few weird music-makers to pop up on TV when I was a kid and she rocked some awesome androgyny that my budding 10-year-old brain found perplexingly cool. Years later I'd find a copy of Roselee Goldberg's massive retrospective on Anderson (for 50¢!) and when I read about her early art projects where she exhibited photos of every man who harassed her on the street I knew why I'd been drawn to this person: her dreams would somehow mix with mine and now I nudge them up against yours Lauri.

I think you Lauri(e)s have some things to discuss. Maybe find an old record of hers (and get yourself some Yoko Ono and June Tyson while you're at it). Hopefully their tuneful tones will chase away the busty blonde denizens that lurk in the recesses of your mind. And should you make music and art and action in some badass fashion, send it along to 31 Dreamers.

Pictured on this post, top to bottom: Madonna, $1 Million Cat, Katie Price/André (a.k.a. "Jordan"), Jessica Simpson, Judy Jetson, Foghorn Leghorn, Avril Lavigne, and a video of Laurie Anderson as an antidote.

Брокколи

2009-01-23T15:15:00.013-05:00

I owe the 31 Dreamers an apology. Yesterday's entry was totally unhealthy and perhaps a little heavy-handed when it comes to advocating certain ways of eating. So, taking inspiration from sensible dietary politic of The Omnivore's Dilemma as well as the new leaf recently turned over by Cookie Monster, we bring you a much more healthful Dream of the Day. But first, Cookie Monster:

Now, the dream, described as, "one of those morning ones when you keep waking up and then falling back to sleep," dreamt by Jules in Arcata, California:

In the dream I am at a grocery store in Russia, trying to buy a bunch of broccoli. The cashier at the checkout counter—a young, good-looking guy with dark hair and eyes—is speaking to me in Russian. In reality, I don't really know what Russian sounds like, but in the dream I can hear all these beautiful shhh and zhhh sort of sounds somersaulting over each other when he talks. However, I have no idea what he's saying, and I think, this guy does not speak English. I wonder if he knows that I am an American and that I don't speak Russian, and consider asking him if he speaks English, but decide just to roll with it. I slide my card through the machine, glancing at the broccoli that awaits.

Wow Jules, your dream has me blushing. Do you not find this interaction as seductive as I do? The glistening green broccoli, that handsome cashier and his sexy Russian consonants—and let's not forget the way that you slid your card through his machine. Maybe I'm reading too much into this but hey, that's my job. And this is more of a romance dream than a sex fantasy, beginning with you walking right up to a total stranger with some flowers. Yeah I know, the bouquet is in the form of broccoli and you don't exactly give it to the guy, but you let him know that they're there (flowers, broccoli, whatever). And you're there too, Jules, about to go back to wherever you're staying, to prepare this mouthwateringly delectable brassicas, light some candles, and dine. And maybe he can imagine (in sexy Russian of course) an empty chair at that table whose seat is moulded to perfectly contain his young, good-looking derrière.

But seriously Jules.

This cashier is somebody you'd like to know better (and not necessarily in a romantic kinda way) but there are things standing in your way. In the dream there's the obvious language barrier, and also the physical/social barrier of the checkout counter—Mr. Dark-Hair-and-Eyes is on one side doing his job-job, you're on the other buying your produce. The most substantial interaction that you share comes from the swiping of a plastic card and the pushing of plastic buttons. It's not just him that you feel estranged from, but the whole damn way of doing things—almost like you're a stranger in a strange land, speaking a different language and possessing a differing set of customs altogether. Does this cashier understand you? He might in time Jules. You just have to keep going back.

23 Dreamers down, 8 more to go. Stay tuned.

Costco Cookies & Melamine Milk

2009-01-22T15:00:00.015-05:00

Let's break from the news of the Dream World for a moment to look at some headlines in the Awake World.

Two men were sentenced to death by the Chinese government today for producing milk containing melamine, a chemical used in making plastics and fire retarders. The milk was fed to young children, resulting in at least six fatalities with some 300,000 more children becoming ill form the tainted milk. The condemned men, Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, are alleged to have added the melamine to the formula milk to make it appear to have a higher protein content. Another collaborator, Zhang Yanzhang, was also given a sentence of life in prison for her participation in the process, and three others have been handed jail sentences of 5 to 15 years with more awaiting trial.

Makes you angry, doesn't it? That a group chemical and food manufacturers would come up with a scheme to falsely beef up infant formula to satisfy government nutrition guidelines. What makes me angry is that the same government that created these guidelines is the same government that ran Sanlu Group, the company that produced the milk. They are also the same government that put the Sanlu employees on trial and they are same government that will pull the trigger when it is time for Zhang Yujun and Geng Jiping to die.

Here in the West, we are often quick to criticize China. In this respect the media has had a year of field-days with China's inept handling of the Sichuan earthquake last May, government repression of protests against the country's continued occupation of Tibet leading up to the Summer Olympics, and then there was hubbub around Chinese-made lead-tainted toys just before the holiday shopping season. Now this thing with the milk and we in the West shake our heads.

But the West is certainly no stranger to messing with milk. There are of course the recent problems with rBGH, Monsanto's genetically engineered hormone that's been banned in Europe but is fed to dairy cows (and, by extension, to people) in the United States. Back in the 1970s there was an uproar against the multinational food giant Nestlé for marketing infant formula to women in developing nations, purporting it to be superior to a mother's own breast milk. The switch to Nestlé's formula resulted in a spike in infant mortality rates all over Africa. A consumer boycott ensued but did little to hold the corporation accountable and three decades later it's still in effect. Nestlé also had its own recent melamine milk scandal in China, which is reported to have sickened over 90,000 people. You can read a Chinese news story about that here.

I'll get to our dream in a sec. I just want to know: what will killing Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping do to rectify the situation? How does killing two men teach China, and the rest us, that killing is wrong? And who will hold the Chinese government—and all the world's governments and the corporations that share their status—accountable for the actions that have killed far more than six infants and poisoned not thousands, but millions of people?

All of this could have been avoided if we humans admitted that we were mammals and actually breast fed our kids like we're supposed to. But enough about milk—let's clear our pallets with some cookies! This dream comes from Paolo in Philadelphia:

I was wandering through a vast warehouse, the size of a Costco, but of a more pallid gray color, and dimmer. Each aisle rack was several stories high, and each shelf was filled with boxes and clear plastic bins of vegan cookies. There were chocolate cookies, hazelnut cookies, vanilla cookies, sugar cookies, big cookies with designated icing packs, frosting kits, add-ons of every sugary candy imaginable, all labeled with their ingredients next to the price. As I struggled to comprehend the sheer volume of cookies, I picked out individual bulk bin cookies and put them in my hand-held shopping basket (red). On the ends of the aisles were pre-made, unrefrigerated vegan pizzas, in pizza display boxes (white cardboard with cellophane cut outs to show texture), and 22oz bottles of dark beer. Various other shoppers came in (most seemed to have some fraternity or sorority affiliation via hoodies, caps, etc) and picked out cookies, pizza, and beer. I checked out, and as I walked out of the store I woke up. I jumped out of bed (for real) and immediately ate 2 cookies. It was good.

Paolo, do you have a utopian dietary vision for society? If you do, then your dream would seem to situate you in a post-utopian future where you have worked hard to fulfill your desires and yet they have been co-opted by consumer culture. Now everyone wants eggless macaroons and dairyless pizza enough to warrant big box stores that carry nothing but the stuff. The ingredient list has changed, but the culture of consuming it (frat boys and beer) is still the same. You seem to be cool with that—less work for you in fighting the vegan revolution, right? I could be wrong. Anyway, when you finally woke up and ate those cookies, I cheered for you. I even went and ate a cookie myself. Was it vegan? You bet! ¡Viva la revolución!

––––– –– ––– –––––

Book of the day: Vive le vegan! Simple, Delectable Recipes For the Everyday Vegan Family. It has recipes for the cookies you want right now.

Ren Faire Nightmare

2009-01-21T17:00:00.018-05:00

We're finally getting around to one of those castle dreams that have been so en vogue these days. Don't forget that you can see what people tend to dream about most often in the "browse dreams by subject" section in the sidebar on the left. This dream puts bathrooms neck-and-neck with mothers, who have been tailgating houses for a while now. But I predict that possession (you know. by witches, ghosts, demons, etc) is about to be all the rage.

Dream blog #21 brings us Sarah from Alabama, who writes:

We are at the opening of a new Barnes and Noble-type bookstore, in Alabama I think. It is faux castle style. There are lavish food spreads—cured fish, herbed butter balls whose melted moat we sop up with fluffy bread. There is velour on the walls and fur lining the bookshelves. We walk down a very long hall where there are many doors. It was all obviously expensive to make but also the drywall is barely masked. We go into a room. There is a fireplace and many levels of shelves. The books are big and elaborate but also gimmicky and fake, like Pirates of the Caribbean pop-up guides and big other kinds of guides with fake leather spines. We go back into the main room and I see a small man sitting in a cut-away space high in the wall. He is smoking a pipe and surveying the scene. His front is flickeringly lit, which I note must be the light of his faux fireplace. I go to the bathroom, which is incidentally divided from the food by only a partition and when I come out three women in "castle period" dress follow me to tell me a "prophecy." I edge away from them thinking it a sham and at this point wake up.

What is this world coming to Sarah? You can't just go to an old-fashioned neighborhood bookstore anymore. Everywhere you look it's big towering chain outfits the size of palaces that net people in with fancy food and slick decor. When folks go shopping nowadays, nothing less than Disney World will do. And just like The Magic Kingdom, if one takes a peek behind the scenes, one can see the peeling plaster, the shoddy workmanship, the sweatshop child labor, and the empty ideology whose fetid odor is only perceptible to a sharp and inquiring mind. That's where you come in, Sarah. You're open, but skeptical. In your dream you eat the food and marvel at the decor, but see it for the fluff that it is. They've given you so many choices: books to read, shelves to peruse, doors to open, but it's more amusing than tempting because you know that it's all just substanceless cardboard.

Sarah, you don't trust anyone in this establishment, nor do you jive with those who hang about the bookstore/castle's institutional equivalent in your awake life. What that place is and who these assholes are you know better than I. Like this illuminated little man peering down from above—he can watch you if he wants to, maybe gaze into your mind and judge your ideas, even listen to you taking a tinkle in that joke of a restroom. But his power is as ersatz and petty as the cheap Little Golden Books he peddles. Outside of this place his reign is but a figment. Others have bought into his scheme, like the three renny-faire wenches who accost you with their take on reality. And you want so little to do with them Sarah, that you leave the dream world entirely.

Sara, whatever this place is and whomever its denizens of authority and placid conformity may be, I see a couple of paths for you to take. Not via the doorways in your Barnes-and-Disney-Magic-Castle place—you know those all lead to the same end. No, you can either leave this place, or you can eat your butter balls and bear it. Leaving seems like an eventuality for you, so it might be "eat your butter balls, bear it, and then kiss its ass goodbye." But where will you go? The dream you've created makes a strong case for a version of things you don't want, so then what's the version of things you do want? Dreaming that is tough enough, actualizing it is another matter altogether.

Despite their effed-up history and relationship to warfare, castles are pretty cool. When I was a kid I hung out at my neighborhood bookstore. There were lots of 'em back before Amazon and other online outfits usurped people's desire to rummage the dusty shelves of second-hand shops, or to chance a mom'n'pop having a certain title in stock. Anyway, the children's book author David Macaulay was doing a book signing right in that little bookstore in my neighborhood! Macaulay wrote and illustrated all these great books (including one called Castle) that explain the relationship between architecture and civilization, how each shapes the other, and how human beings create the version of things they want. What that too often looks like is, "how human beings with money and power and corporate backing create their version of things they want." But even though we see the phallic remains of some great big military castle, and not the humble ghosts of the homes that stood in its shadow, those homes and the lives they embodied still had a substance and a richness that was far warmer than the cold ramparts of some embattled tower.

Dear Sarah of Alabama, I hereby knight thee. Go forth from thine dream and hence endeavor to erect your own "castle," be it of stone or or paper, of butter balls or of dreams. Make thy realm in thine own architectural image. Then, send the blueprints to 31 Dreamers.

U2...Can Be President

2009-01-20T10:04:00.023-05:00

20 days in with 11 to go on our parade of 31 Dreamers from around the globe. Our Inauguration Day special kicks off with a little sound clip for you play. Just click on this player to begin:

Today's dreamer is Aoife from the tiny town of Cobh in County Cork, Ireland. Aoife's dream goes like this:

I was in a record store with Wes, in Oslo or somewhere like that. It was a bright, northern place. The store was a long rectangular room with a counter and smooth surfaces of stone and wood. It turns out it was the U2 Center of Music and Production. Wes was at one end of the room talking to the guy behind the counter. He was talking really loudly, and in a joking way he started giving a long speech. It was a famous speech that U2 had given at a concert. The speech had complicated formulas at the end that would have been hard to learn by heart.

I was at the other end of the room and noticed that U2's guitarist, The Edge, came in from a door in the wall. He stood near me listening to Wes, who was not aware that he had an audience. Then Wes went off somewhere, and I went into a large white courtyard with The Edge and lots of people. The people were young and in a really good mood. It was like we were on a tour of the facilities. There were big square buildings surrounding the courtyard—modern, white squares. It was sunny and bright.

Suddenly Wes appeared at the top of one of the buildings. Some people pointed and someone shouted out, "Give us the speech!" Wes came out to the edge of the building, like he was on a U2 stage, and gave a repeat of the U2 speech he had given earlier, only this time with his hands outstretched and getting really into it. The crowd cheered and clapped, and The Edge, who was still standing beside me, was smiling.

Suddenly though, three men who looked like bouncers, and were dressed in Scottish kilts, ran towards Wes and grabbed him. They lifted him off the ground and held him horizontally. They brought him to the edge of the building and hung him over, and swung him as if they were going to throw him down into the yard, but then pulled him back. Then they pulled a kilt on over his jeans, and pulled down his jeans, and then put him standing again. Then they gave him tickets and things in bags.

After this, Wes put his hands out and saluted the crowd.

(I really hope that everyone reading this pressed play on the sound clip at the top of this entry. If you didn't, now's a good time to do it.)

For the past three decades U2 have been the world's reigning Irish rock band and they're enjoying extra prominence at the moment in their chumminess with new U.S. president Barack Obama (that's the guy whispering in Bono's ear in the pic at the very top of this post). U2 just played at his inauguration shebang in Washington D.C. (picured here) along with a slew of other musical superstars. In your dream, Aoife, all the components of the inaugural festivities are present. You've got cold weather, big buildings, enthusiastic crowds, tight security, U2 plus a mix of other music, swelling anticipation, and speeches that contain alleged formulas to solve the world's problems—you're either psychic or you're keeping tabs on these proceedings from the other side of the Atlantic. The only thing missing is your president elect—your Obama—and you've cast Wes into that role. Like Obama, Wes is a smart guy with charisma and a sense of humor who suddenly finds himself at the top, giving speeches to crowds of adoring whippersnappers. U2's "The Edge" (with whom you stand throughout your dream) seams to be a sort of David Axelrod figure to Wes's Bono/Obama routine, providing both the guitar riffs and the campaign strategy that are the driving force behind speeches and lyrics alike. It's a brilliant commentary to usher in this new era of a president who has cultivated a status akin to that of a rock star.

Then there are those men in kilts, the mutinous Scottish Secret Service who are going to turn Wes/Bono/Obama into something else. That's what an ascent to fame and power are bound to do. There are things that a person has to give up in the process, bits of one's personality and integrity. So on goes the kilt and off come the jeans. Your president/idol/Wes still professes his loyalty to his people/fans/Aoife and he salutes you. But you saw that struggle—the threat of Wes being dashed to bits in the courtyard below. What sort of deal did he have to make? Will he really be true to his word? Where will those tickets take him and what's in those bags? So many unanswered questions . . .

Aoife, Wes must be quite a guy to serve as the Obama/Bono ("O-Bono?") stunt double of your dreams. Clearly you think the world of him, perhaps so much so that you sometimes find yourself on the fringes of his limelight. You may also perceive him dealing with a lot of pressures that are beyond his control. Many people are sipping from a similar cocktail of excitement and trepidation regarding the new U.S. president. Will he really be the superhero we've made him out to be? Will he be able to fix the messes left to the world by the past 43 regimes? We're told that there's one way to find out: to wait and see. But we can do more than just wait, we can take action ourselves! What that looks like for each American citizen, or for you, Aofie, is not for me to say. But I can point to something that someone else did as a source of potential inspiration. And it involves the band U2.

In 1991 U2's hit single "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" was remixed with commentary from American Top 40 DJ Casey Kasem and released as a new single, sinmply titled "U2" and attributed to the San Francisco-based group Negativland. At the top of this post is the "A Cappella Mix." Here is the slightly more controversial "Special Edit Radio Mix"...

Negativland was sued by U2's record company who thought that Negativland was trying to cheat U2 fans into thinking they were buying a new U2 single (look at the record cover below—it clearly says "Negativland" at the bottom!) Negativland were also screwed by their own label and Casey Kasem was none too pleased (no Top 40 for Negativland—boo-hoo!) It was U2's The Edge who was Negativland's first ally, publicly recognizing the mash-up as a clever piece of art in its own right. Negativland documented the whole episode in their book Fair Use: The Story Of The Letter U And The Numeral 2 and as a result of these efforts, we are able to listen to the above MP3s on this blog today.

Aoife, I invite you over there in Ireland to stand on this fine day with the American people and with our beloved Negativland: honor and respect the talents and achievements of the Obamas, the Bonos and the Wesses of the world, but be not afeared to strive for your own limelight. Even if you don't get to be president or make the Top 40, be thankful that no one is dangling you off the side of a tall building. Whatever you do, document it somehow and send it on back to 31 Dreamers.

Empty Tents & Barrel Rolls: A 20-Year Dream

2009-01-19T11:09:00.018-05:00

The third Monday in January is a day honoring the life and labor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., African-American civil rights leader and proponent of non-violent direct action. The 31 Dreamers have much in common with the late Dr. King in that we are known for kicking things off with the words, "I Have A Dream." Thank you MLK for making this blog (among other things) possible.

A couple weeks back, a dreamer named Megan sent in this dream from her childhood in Michigan:

As a kid I had a recurring nightmare
about this vast, open, desolate field,
horizon to horizon—no hills, no trees,
nothing grew as far as my eyes could see.
There were huge, hulking, rotting windmills
spinning so slowly in the breeze.
There was also a giant white circus tent,
glowing yellowish white.
Inside there was nothing,
just empty space.

I told Megan that dreams from a long time ago are difficult to read and asked that she send a more recent dream. The other day she submitted this one, dreamt in Philadelphia:

I'm in a airplane with my sister and my mom
and a bunch of other people I don't know.
It has seats but no overhead luggage compartments,
So it has a high rounded ceiling.
The plane slowly turns upside down
kind of like an amusement park ride.
Folks are strapped into their seats
but I slip out and am hanging upside down,
holding onto the armrest. I'm not scared.
The plane rights itself. I settle back into my seat.
I'm sitting next to my sister, but she is 9 years old—
the age she was when I moved out (in reality she is 22).
We are both wearing oversized white t-shirts as dresses,
like you would wear to the beach.
I've got a protective arm around her.
Oh yeah . . . my mom is much younger too.

Two dreams from one dreamer, dreamt decades apart. They are very different from each other but also have a lot in common, being from someone who has grown and changed over time. If a person's waking life is one continuous story, interrupted by dreams, then isn't a person's dreaming life one continuous story, interrupted by periods of being awake? Y'all can weigh in on the comments section. I need to talk to our dreamer for a minute.

Megan, your recurring childhood dream didn't present many options on what looks like the flat, Midwestern cornfield without the corn. You were a child, and the apparatuses of the world seemed so huge and mechanical and ponderous in their workings. In the middle of these doldrums sat a beacon of hope—a place to explore where marvelous things would be happening. But when you get there it was empty. Bummer. No circus today. No circus tomorrow. Maybe never any circus ever. But that was long ago. Since then you've learned that if you want a circus to happen, sometimes you just need to make your own.

As a kid that dream felt like a nightmare because the empty tent presented you with a question: "Well?" And you didn't know the answer. Years later you'd learn that an empty circus tent presents endless opportunities. But no time for that now because you're on a plane, flying high above and away from the bleak horizons of your childhood, moving through life with your fam and that anonymous throng we so often meet in dreams. Everyone's strapped in but you just hang loose (quite literally) when the pilot decides to show off his aerial stuntology. You're cool with that. I sense that everyone else made themselves so snug in their seats because if they went all topsy-turvy without a safety belt, they'd freak the heck out. But not you. You're used to life's upsets and can settle back into a normal routine more easily.

However, this aeriel spin is a mixed metaphor and there you are looking at your mother and sister of 13 years ago, from a time of transition when you set forth in the world to leave the windmills and circus tents of childhood behind. You and little sis are unified in your youth, wearing the generic attire sported by so many youngsters (newsflash Megan: giant white T's aren't just for beaches anymore!) You're arm around her is you saying, "It's okay. Sometimes life spins you around but if you just relax and take in stride, nothing can set you back. Look at me: I made this far." She's lucky that she has you to look to. Maybe you wish you'd had that when you were 9 or 18 or 22 or whatever your age is now. Moms are no substitute for the wisdom of big sisters.

I'm noticing a couple of subtle threads running throughout your dreams. One is a circular theme: the windmills and airplane spinning, the circus tent being presumably circular, and the cycle of repetition in your recurring nightmare bends time itself into a circle. It gives your whole dreamworld a carnivalesque feel with its pavillions and plane stunts that are "like an amusement park ride." I even imagine that a little carpentry could turn the windmills of yore could ferris wheels. Another theme is the sky as a prominent fixture in these dreams, as an expansive and intimidating backdrop in one, and something that you travel through in the other.

Our human relationship to the skies has also had a carny sort of spin to it for centuries. I was reading this book called The Invention of Clouds that tells of early ballooneers and parachutists who drew crowds of tens of thousands with their nutty stunts—stuff so death-defying and made only more remarkable in that no one had ever done them before. Even the ground-bound amateur science buffs ran lectures like grandiose sideshows that had people gasping flabbergastedly on the edge of their seats. Can you imagine? A lecture about clouds receiving that sort of reaction from people today? Megan, I think it should. The world is such a vast and wonderful place. And next time you enter into an empty circus tent, you'll know just what to do.

That Wriggled and Wiggled and Jiggled Inside Her

2009-01-18T14:46:00.007-05:00

It's been a remarkable week for the 31 Dreamers. Many of you have responded to this blog with gushing feedback, which I've taken liberties to re-post as comments at the bottom of individual posts. One dreamer even went so far as to actualize the pierogies of another dreamer's dreams and then sent them my way. I am feasting on them right now with a side of sauerkraut are they are good.

Our dream of the day narrowly skirts around the culinary marvels of her part of the world: India. Runa had time to jot this down and send it along from an internet café in the town of Dharamsala in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, perhaps best known as the home of the Dalai Lama and seat of the exiled Tibetan government. It may prove furtive ground for dreams. Here's Runa's:

I am in my grandmother’s kitchen, which she has just thoroughly cleaned. I somehow manage to drop a big pile of cinnamon and dust on top of her kitchen cupboard. Trying to clean it I take a towel from the sink, but since it is wet it just makes everything more dirty. Suddenly I realize there is something inside the pile, something that moves. It is a big (hand size) black spider, and because of me and the towel, it is now divided in two, but still alive. It makes me panic to see I have hurt it, so I sweat, my hair stands on end and I feel desperate and don’t know what to do. When I make a sudden movement I cause one of the halves of the spider to fly through the air and land in the sink. It falls into the drain but tries to get out of there. I’m panicking completely. I feel I should kill it to finish its suffering, so I try to flush it down. The spider tries to get out all the time but I flush and flush while I cry and cry and finally it disappears. I feel horrible. I think I should maybe also kill the other part of the spider that is still on top of the cupboard but I just can't do it. I decide to leave it be and hope everything will be alright without me interfering.

Runa, this dream can be read as many ways as a spider has legs. You're left at the end in a place of total anxiety, but you enter it in comfort—a safe space in your life that's an orderly idea of the past—the way things were and therefore ought to be. Then you go and make a bit of a mess of that place. Had it just been cinnamon that you'd spilled, no problem, you could've just swept most of it back into the jar. But that dust is a problem. You'd like to organize it all in your head, but the stale bits remain inseparable from exciting experiences and they just become more muddled together in your haphazard cleanup attempt.

In the midst of all this emerges something really big and scary. Your relationship to this thing is difficult. You fear it, yet you lament its debilitation. You want to flush it away, but feel guilty about this desire. You kill off half of it, and save the other half—for what? For dinner? To be eaten with a sprinkling of dust and cinnamon? No Runa, that would be cannibalism, because this dissected arachnid is part of you—some portion of your inner soul that you don't want to see. But there it is, wiggling around in the dusty masala of your troubles, injured and immobilized. To kill it off completely would be like slicing off a piece of your own psyche—a partial suicide that could inadvertently damage the good things in an attempt to eradicate the bad.

Both in dreams and out, spiders signify many things. Danger and protection. Beauty and ugliness. Mobility and entrapment. Intelligence and fear. Your spider is severed from the start, as if her dual nature could be separated. But to divvy up these qualities would be as unlikely as extracting dust from ground cinnamon.

Runa, perhaps the most telling thing is your word choice at the end of this narrative: Interfering. You see all this as your own doing, your own fault. Though your self-blame seems a little harsh, there is some wisdom there. Could we rewind this dream back to when you make your first mess in the kitchen, maybe you begin not by acting, but by thinking. What would be the best method to clean up this dust? A broom? A vacuum? A shovel? Maybe while you pondered this you'd see a stirring in the pile. What is that? A mouse? A rat? No, a spider! And then what you'd do with this spider might require a little more study. Is the spider poisonous? Malevolent? Or will she catch harmful insects, clean up this pile of dust and wash the dishes as well? Your dream has you making bigger messes out of smaller ones because you're frantic, fearful, and freaked out. Take this as a suggestion to meditate on things a bit more, to not mistaking responsibility for emergency. In this way you may be able to face challenges in their entirety instead of washing one piece down the drain and leaving another to writhe painfully in the spicy dirt of your nightmares.

––––– –– ––– –––––

The book of the day: A Concise History of India by Barbara D. and Thomas R. Metcalf. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

A Worm's-Eye View of the World

2009-01-17T09:49:00.021-05:00

The 31 Dreamers apparently like to do their dream-work on on a Friday night. Yesterday around 9:00 p.m. the dreams stated rolling in. There were a couple about castles that I wanted to feature but I need to think about them a little more. Then Maggie from Massachusetts sent in this one:

I was at an important business meeting, and having some kind of discussion with people in a small group, sitting in a circle on the floor. They asked us to make room for another person in the discussion, who was not a person at all but a small purple worm in a plastic bag. The worm couldn't talk, but seemed interested in the conversation. We tried to include the worm in the discussion without acting like there was anything strange about it, but had to be really careful not to step on it if we moved to change our seat.

Eventually, the worm wiggled away. We were all looking for it and my friend Rudy realized it had wiggled up a Christmas tree, still in its plastic bag. He picked it up and told me he wanted to open it. I was trying to convince him not to, I was afraid something bad would happen to it. I thought that if he took it out of the bag, it would turn in to a person and die on the floor.

Then we got into a conversation about evil witches and I said ,"Everybody thinks they turned me into this, but I don't remember any interactions with evil witches or warlocks." Then I laughed.

Rudy said, "You're not evil, you're just tiny."

Then I woke up.

Maggie, I'll make a deal with you: I'll join you in the business meeting in your dream if you'll just come with me into my own childhood (not a dream) for a minute. Cool? Okay, let's go:

So we're at this big school assembly, sitting near the back of the auditorium. Some nondescript guest speaker is trying to get us to talk about our anger. "What makes you angry?" he asks. There's a pause and then one kid's hand goes up. He stands and says, "I hate it when you're eating spaghetti and people come up to you and start talking about worms." The nondescript speaker is perplexed.

Okay Maggie, now I'm sitting next to you in your dream.

Maggie, worms are so different from we humans. It is this difference that gets so many people freaked out. The worm in here is the "other"—that person who doesn't fit the mold in any given situation for whatever reason. The meeting that we're in professes to be compassionate with it's circle-on-the-floor and it's "let's-make-room-for-so-and-so" vibe, but it's still a business meeting and these touchy-feely aesthetics tend to mask what people really think. Then the "other" comes in and that other is not only of a different species, but of an entirely different phylum. Which one? We don't know, some kind of worm. And as if that weren't enough this worm also differs foom the rest of us in color (purple), size (tiny), ability (can't talk), and third-person pronoun usage ("it"). We all say that we want to include this worm, to treat this worm like one of the gang, but that just isn't possible. This is a puny, purple, genderless, mute invertebrate, wriggling safely inside a plastic bag where we all can observe it without it ever actually (ugh!) touching us.

You're not sure why the worm made a B-line for that Christmas tree—the worm can't talk and probably has a totally different set of cultural values than the rest of us, right? Yet she (oops! excuse me: it) wants to interact with the rest of us and so heads toward one of our culture's most celebrated icons. Rudy wants to free it from the baggie, but that worries you—you want to protect it (the worm, not Rudy—or do you want to protect Rudy too? Yourself? The rest of the proceedings and the entire framework they represent?) Rudy's taking things too far, maybe even trying to stir up trouble. You get nervous and try to change the subject, but the subject that you change isn't the subject of the worm itself, but who the worm is. Here you reveal your fear of being like the worm—becoming the "other." The worm is speaking through your mouth now and you empathize with the worm, apologizing and make excuses for your other-ness, trying to blame it on some sorcerer's hex. But Rudy says, "Maggie, it's cool. I would still be your friend you no matter what. Even if you were a puny, purple, genderless, mute worm with no spine."

Maggie, many of us have been in both the position of being the other and not being the other at different times and spaces in our lives. In those times when we have the privilege to not be the other, we inevitably come in contact with those who are the others. When we first meet the other, we don't understand the other and might even be kinda grossed out by the other. If we can get over that, we fear the penalties of being associated with the other should we choose to get closer with the other. We also secretly feel like we might be like the other in the other's other-ness, and some say that this is the real root of other-o-phobia. And even when we do become all tight and chummy with the other, we still say, "Oh but I'm not an other," and simultaneously show we're hip with, "Some of my best friends are others." Then when we sit on the floor in some hippy-dippy group hug and suddenly the other slinks in, is that other ever really going to feel—or truly be—included?

Oddly enough, an unlikely subset of others in our society has another association with purple worms entirely. In the 1970s a dedicated group of fantasy nerds assembled piles of meticulous notes and published it as a unique blend of storytelling and gaming. The first role-playing game—dubbed "Dungeons & Dragons"—was born. The game was really just a set of half-baked (or maybe totally baked) whims dreamt up by a cadre of Tolkien geeks who were into elves and orcs and hacking things to pieces with swords and spells without ever leaving the dining room table. They made up some crazy-ass monsters (seriously—click that last link and see) for their wizards and warriors to fight. There were icky puddles of slime that ranged in color from green to black to ochre, hulking beasts that were more likely umber than sienna, and yes, a 50-foot long purple worm. that seemed to like the taste of human flesh (or dwarf or elf or whatever).

Last week a geeky friend dragged me to a gaming shop in the suburbs and there they were—the others, young and old, playing all sorts of newfangled fantasy games on big tables in the middle of the store. And there I was, an other among others, on the fringes of their realm, unable to fully understand and participate in what was going on. And now I am other-ing myself here by publicly admitting that I would enter such an establishment. It was awesome. Maggie, you've got to go to one of these places! Go in there and find a copy of The Monster Manual in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons section. Flip through its pages and look at all the monsters. Cool, huh? Notice how you feel when you walk in, when you ask the guy at the coounter a question, when you look at all those tomes of came lore, and then when you finally cross the line and crack one open to read about Gygax's Purple Worm in public. Then you have to walk past all the clerks and 12-year-old boys and out of the store. Maybe someone you know will run into you on the street. "Hey Maggie! What's up?" It's an experience worth undertaking. If you do, write a note about it and pass it along to 31 Dreamers.

Suspendered Sentence

2009-01-16T10:17:00.010-05:00

We are at the midway point of featuring a dream-a-day for the month of January. If we could compress an entire month into a single day, it would be noon—lunch time. I'm reading your dreams over a bowl full of noodles with kimchi, or a steaming platter of gnocchi in marinara sauce, and it's no wonder that dreams of food attract my fancy. I've been trying to keep the geography of these dreams dispersed, but so many of you have sent in dreams from Providence, Rhode Island that I think we need to take a few off the shelf. This one's from Sara:

So. I had a dream just the other night that I was my teenage self (awkward and self-conscious), hanging out with a group of friends (also teenagers) on the sidewalk in front of a Polish Recreation Center. We were goofing around, just generally loitering, when an old friend of mine walked up to me, and took my hand. He then asked me to marry him. I shrugged, and said "okay." We walked into the rec. center, still holding hands, and got ourselves some very large potato pierogies to eat. We walked around the rec. center, eating our pierogies, looked at all this different gymnastic equipment, jumped around on a big mat, like a trampoline, and then discovered a photobooth machine. We got really excited to get our pictures taken and jumped down from the mat and ran over to the photobooth, but a big, old man wearing suspenders stepped in front of us just as we were about to get in to the booth, pierogies still in hand. He started yelling at us that we couldn't get our pictures taken, that we weren't allowed to use the photobooth and we got into a screaming match with him. That's when I woke up.

Sara, I hate it when that happens. Why does "the man" always try to bust our music? You were having such a nice time! Yeah, it was awkward at first with you making a life commitment on the fly like that, but it seemed like things would be okay. You both managed to respect tradition—ethnospecific or otherwise—by indulging in your own manner of making it fun without making fun of it. You settled into the furnishings of society and claimed them for yourselves, bouncing and rolling around on them in your own way. All of this nourished you and it was delicious. Then when you wanted to capture this moment, to make it permanent as if burned onto a quaint four-paneled strip of photographic paper, Mr. Suspenders put his effing foot down and ruined your whole shebazz. What is this, junior high detention? Can't he see that y'all are adults? I mean, yeah you were loitering outside the establishment for a minute there and then just came in for the food and to jump on gym mats, but you are here now, doing stuff like getting married and shaping your own future—a different future than being some old grump with his pants pulled up to his nipples. Why can't throwbacks like Mr. Suspenders understand you and let you do what you wanna do?

Sara, I find so much delight in this dream—not the crappy ending, but where it was headed. And yes, it made me hungry. I ran out to my local food co-op and looked for a book of Polish recipies, but they didn't have one, so instead I picked up The Lowfat Jewish Vegetarian Cookbook. Boring title, exciting recipes. Sara, there is no better way to feel secure in one's space and to shape one's own future than to indulge in the craft of cookery. I'll be making a Turkish tangerine salad, Polish apple blintzes with mushroom-walnut paté, plus peppers and okra stuffed with apricots and almonts, spiced with Hungarian paprika. You might want to take at crack at making some pierogies. You can invite all your friends over and carry the steaming pot full of pierogies out to the nearest photobooth. Pile inside—all of you—and get your pictures taken eating the pierogies. Then send the photos to 31 Dreamers.

You'll Sleep With The Fishes: a double dreamer feature

2009-01-15T13:20:00.024-05:00

Part two of our two-day delphine dream special begins with a break from our usual fare of dead puppies, gun-toting priests, and people brushing their teeth with Brillo Pads and killer whales. We'll get to all that in a minute. But first, Natalie in Paris, France has this as her entry to the 31 Dreamers:

On New Year’s Eve I dreamed about dolphins and about fishes which fly in the blue sky, like a migration of birds but with dolphins.

It was very beautiful. I was a little surprised, but in my dream I said to myself that I was lucky.

It's my dream!

Natalie, your dream is one of those special ones that is so awe-inspiring that I'm reticent to even pontificate on it beyond saying, "Wow, you are lucky!" Dreams of dolphins are often very light and magical. Dolphins have an intelligence equal to but different from our own—perhaps like the intelligence we possess in dreams. They act as guides (and in your dream they appear to be escorting a school of fish) taking us safely through our dream worlds and showing us interesting things along the way. To dream of dolphins and fish (who are perhaps being led by the dolphins) flying through the air signifies your mystical perception of the year to come. Perhaps you have experienced some inspiring things recently and these experiences are leading you to reach new heights in the very near future.

Now we juxtapose Natalie's dream with that of a possible kindred spirit (pictures right). On this Ides of January we return to the location of the first of the 31 Dreamers—not just to the town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, but to the very same house where our inaugural dream was dreamt! Some readers of this blog may remember Neily's dream from January first (and if you don't you can read it here). Neily's housemate Anthony sent a two-part dream a while back and now is the moment for it to leap out of the ocean of dreams and onto this page. Anthony's dream:

A new student was coming to the school I work at whose name I recognized from a school for kids with autism where I'd taught in Berkeley. I knew this student was severely disabled but there was no mention of it and I told nobody. The student's mother contacted me for a lead on housing in her move from Berkeley to Ann Arbor. My uncle’s house (owned by my grandfather, where my mom and her siblings grew up and where my uncle still lives in real life) needed a tenant, so we went to the house to see it—but I forgot the key. We were trying to jimmy the lock when the door opened and my cousin (the daughter of the uncle who lives there) was curious about us looking at the house . . . Things get fuzzy here.. . .

The house was now occupied by myself and [my current roommate/former partner] Kiran's family (mom, dad, siblings, her). It was located on the ocean—beachfront. We were sitting in a porch-like room discussing orca whales—someone said that the tide was high now and thus it was a good time to see them. We went out onto the outdoor portion of the porch and overlooked the sea. An orca leapt spraying water all over us. I was the only one who stayed outdoors as pods of dolphins and orcas leapt within feet of us. I was knocked down. A school of smaller fish leapt onto the platform where I sat. Some swam down my shirt and pantlegs. Eels also flew onto the platform wriggling around me and through my clothes. I stood and pulled the fish and eel from my clothing and went inside. I explained all that had happened and all that I had seen. Kiran was upset that she missed it, she couldn't see with all the spray on her glasses and the darkness outside. There was a knock from the side door. Some elderly neighbors wanted to invite us to a meal. I said my parents had gone to visit other relatives—could we do it another time? Fuzzy again . . .

Two dreams, dreamt by two dreamers in two different parts of the world, both sharing some common elements along with yesterday's featured dream. What's with all the dolphins and killer whales flying through the air? It brings to mind Douglas Adams' well-known Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels that divulge the banal creation and asinine destruction of the universe. In Adams' story Earth's 2nd most intelligent lifeform (the dolphin) up and leaves the planet right before it's blown to smithereens to make way for an interstellar expressway. The dolphins leave a note for the race of 3rd most intelligent lifeforms (Homo sapiens) saying "So long and thanks for all the fish," (see video at the bottom of this post). The phrase has been adopted by environmentalists to draw attention to the plight of dwindling dolphin populations; by amateur photographers to cutely caption their holiday shots of porpoises leaping into the air' and by SF geeks as a verbose way of saying, "See ya later." But it has little to do with either Anthony's or Natalie's dreams.

Anthony, you seem like the type who ignores the "splash zone" warnings at the sea mammal show and sits in the front row. Your dreamy delphine friends are a bit more mixed in their meaning than Natalie's are. There's playfulness in them dolphins, but the orcas toss in a little treachery just for kicks. You're game though, and stay on deck and get sprayed, first with water, then with fish, and eventually eels (ew!) What seemed like fun at first got a little out of hand. This is a trend in your dream overall. When someone comes to you with special needs you're the only one who lets yourself support them. Next thing you know you're offering up the largest of your family heirlooms to give them what they need and the burden has suddenly spilled over into the lives of others. Anthony, you're offering things that are not fully yours to give.

Then there's Kiran and her peeps moving in, plus the exodus of your own kin and others in and out of houses in general. Your concept of "home" and "household" are bit jostled here, with a trepidatious blend of stability and instability. Your relationship with Kiran is complicated, and your perception is that she hears about your life and its challenges, but she doesn't always witness what's going on with you first-hand. Maybe she's not always there when you need her. Complicated. Yet you remain cordial to the end, even as you thrash around on the ground with eels up your armpits, balancing the responsibilities of work and relationships and helping people and trying to figure out what "home" is an with whom, and then the neighbors come a knockin' and instead of saying, "CAN"T YOU PEOPLE SEE I'M FREAKING BUSY?!?" you're just like, "Um, mother and father have stepped out for the moment—would you accept a rain check?"

Anthony, it doesn't have to be that complicated. Look at Natalie's dream—isn't it nice? You can have all that sense of wonder and adventure without dealing with so many complexities. Yes I know, there is bound to be the occasional killer whale mixed in with the dolphins. In an emergency, you can always turn to Beth Nixon's famously amazing Palindrome Calendar for advice (excerpted at the very top of this post) though you may need to hone some serious tightrope skills before attempting this—no better place than in your dreams!

Teenage Ninja Brushes With Killer Whale

2009-01-14T23:00:00.014-05:00

Patterns are emerging.

At one dream a day, the patterns in these dreams might not be so evident. But we also have a backlog of dreams. I can tell you: Your subconscious minds really like houses and roads and puppies, bicycles and blankets and bathrooms. Several recent submissions are about the transition from teenage angst to adult anxiety, about possession by and exorcism of malevolent spirits, about the multifaceted nuances found in Japanese culture, and about Delphinidae—orcas, dolphins, pilot whales, etc. This subject of marine mammals seems extremely pressing. Why? Let's find out.

Today's delphine dream is from Isaac in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We'll have two (yes, two) more such dreams tomorrow. But for now, Issac's contribution to the 31 Dreamers:

I wake up in a room filled with lotuses and ankle-high water.
This room turns out to be my room but bent out of shape, longer and taller.
I get up, my pajamas being soaked, and open my door.
The water floods out into my hallway as I turn and go into the bathroom.
I look at myself in the mirror.
It turns out I'm Naruto from an anime show that I have never watched in my life.
I see that the faucet is running and the sink overflowing onto the floor.
I laugh.
I am then transported through the dream world into an airport bathroom.
It's totally grey.
The walls, floor, light bulbs—everything has been painted over in a boring grey.
I pick up a toothbrush . . .
. . . who happens to be Shamu the killer whale.
I put toothpaste on Shamu.
I look in the mirror and I'm still Naruto.
I brush my teeth with Shamu.
I wake up.

In typical playground-conversation-at-recess-time fashion, I'll ask our readers: In a fight between Naruto the hot-tempered adolescent anime ninja, and Shamu the eight-ton killer whale, who do you think would win?

One kid immediately shouts, "Naruto! He's a super-ninja with the power of a nine-tailed demon fox! He can shadow-clone himself and shoot energy balls and summon giant toads!"

Then another kid says, "Yeah but if the fight were in the ocean Shamu would win. He'd just swallow Naruto whole. Definitely Shamu."

A third kid pipes up, "Yeah but Naruto can use his powers to make a whirlpool! Even in the ocean he'd kick Shamu's ass!" And the kids bicker a bit. bringing up every argument from, "Well Naruto's just a cartoon," to "Well Shamu is just a marketing scheme for Sea World," until finally the most media-savvy of the bunch chucks in her two cents worth of wisdom:

"None of that really matters. What really counts is which one rules it in cyberspace."

The kids run to the school library to Google™ the two contenders and look at the number of matching searches. The score:

Shamu: 881,000 entries.

Not bad for a whale.

Naruto: 109,000,000.

That's right—one-hundred-an-nine million G-hits.

More than 120 times that of Shamu.

No contest.

Isaac, your dream shows that you are facing some growth, change, and also fear—mostly a fear of being bored. You're in your room, which is an extension of yourself, wracked and disfigured by growing pains. It's a homey room with all that foliage, but the slowly rising flood waters are telling you that maybe it's time to move out. Time for a change of scenery. But there is some fear in that water. Your hallway gives you passage into a place of contemplation: the bathroom. In that contemplation is the source of your fear, running nonchalantly like water from a tap but flowing past your comfort zone. And you are not quite yourself. You think all this is funny? Or are you laughing because you're a little uneasy?

Your contemplation carries you to a future place: another bathroom, beyond which are all the different directions you can go in life—airlines which await your patronage, ready to take you anywhere you want to go. But for now, in the future before your flight, you stand soggy-ankled in that boring grey bathroom. You have to go through this tedium and all the rituals that come with it before you get to even figure out which direction you're headed in.

What else Isaac? Oh yeah—you're Naruto, blond-haired, blue-eyed, Japanese animation superstar whom you've never actually seen in action. Does that kid ever smile? The only times you can find him not looking totally pissed off is when he's sucking face with some anime babe, and even then he doesn't seem quite satisfied. There's a fury in this character and you can see it in his big ol' manga-fied peepers looking back at you from the mirror. That reflection of yourself is ready to explode. But you don't want that Isaac. So you try to keep it together and do your duty in this boring-ass bathroom. And that duty? To brush your pearly anime teeth. But the instrument that you reach for has its own teeth. Worse than that, its breath stinks like raw seal meat. But you just maintain your cool and do your thing, and that thing is to squeeze minty gel on the orca and stick it in your mouth, blocking out the flavor of rotting fish.

Isaac, when I put myself into your pajamas I want to laugh too. I also want to lighten up, wipe that serious expression off my face and relax. But I'm not in your pajamas, Isaac, you are. Are you in a position where you can walk down the hall, turn off the faucet, find a mop and clean up this mess that you're in? Or is the best thing you can do to keep moving through life in a slightly soggy state and keep putting Colgate on a killer whale?

While you think about this question, why not hop on the Blue Line and go spend an afternoon at the New England Aquarium? Walk up that spiraling ramp, stopping to look at all the little tanks along the way. When you reach the top, stick your hands into the water where you can pet the starfish and the horseshoe crabs. Look into the eyes of the fishes and listen to what they have to say to you. Spend some time waddling with the penguins and get a seat for the dolphin show. Maybe there will be a killer whale there, if not the dolphins will do. Inhale deeply—can you smell their breath? Get back on the subway and on the way home, stop somewhere and pick up the book of the day: the manga version of Naruto. When you read it in your room late at night, compare Naruto's path through life with that of a marine mammal. Then, find your own.

This Is The Grassroots Work I'm Gonna Do With You

2009-01-13T14:15:00.013-05:00

Today we flip from from winter to summer. While we in the Northern Hemisphere shiver haplessly in the dark, the days are long and hot in São Paulo, Brazil where this just came in from Frederico, our latest member of the 31 Dreamers' dream team:

I'm in a southeastern Brazilian country house in the rainforest. Maybe I’m a teenager on vacation from school. With me are three other teens. Our routine is to wait for the bus from the city, which stops on the dirt road uphill, and take it back and forth from our country house to the city. In the house is a priest—a left wing priest from the days when Liberation Theology used to be more common in South America. It's always nighttime. I'm thirsty.

It's our last day at the house and we walk to the dirt road to take the bus back home. We wait for hours and I'm still thirsty. The bus is late. The priest reminds us that we should bring our bags to the bus stop. I know that the bus is nearby, I see it coming down the road, but the road is so curvy that its headlights fall outside the curves instead of lighting the road ahead. I'm relaxed though, because I know I'm one step ahead of my friends—my stuff is already packed.

I go to my room to get my backpack and my camcorder case (I’ve never owned a camcorder in real life). I go to the kitchen to drink a cup of water from the terra-cotta container and I see a lot of posters hanging on the green wall. All of them have anti-racist messages. There’s one with an Afro-Brazilian woman wearing a dress and a hat, and another paired with it depicting a female chimp with the same hair and dress. These images were extracted from government propaganda, and they were put side by side on the posters to denounce the racism of the military dictatorship. Then I notice I'm in the 1970s and that the house is a clandestine school where the priests teach the local population. I realize that both the priest and I are Afro-Brazilians.

The priest is also in the kitchen, hanging some posters, when a third Afro-Brazilian guy steps in the room looking for the priest. He's has an afro and a beige 70s-style suit. He tells the priest that he’s doing very well with his grassroots work there and wants to invite him to do the same thing on the coast. The guy invites the priest to the living room to meet some friends: a guy of Japanese ancestry with long hair, a mustache and grey 70s-style suit, and a fat white guy wearing Ray Ban glasses, his hairy chest poking out of his half-open shirt. It's clearly a set up—these guys are cops and they’ve come to arrest the priest. Suddenly the priest draws his gun and shoots the Japanese-Brazilian in the heart. The fat guy shoots the priest in the leg and the priest shoots back, killing the fat guy. All this happens as if in a kung fu movie, with those zoom-ins and close-takes in slow motion. Finally, the priest grabs the afro guy before he can get to his gun. The priest chokes the afro guy and points his gun at the other guy's head, and says: "This is the grassroots work I'm gonna do with you."

I wake up sweating because it was a really hot night. I go to the kitchen and finally drink my glass of water.

Frederico, you've been watching a lot of movies, haven't you?

Your dream is also rife with a few subtle and noteworthy cultural items that I'd like to draw attention to:

1. São Paulo (a.k.a. Sampa) is the largest city in South America, third-largest in the world, surrounded by Brazil's biggest industrial park, beyond which is a vast expanse of fertile farmland.

2. Japanese Brazilians are a huge ethnic group, constituting the largest sector of the Japanese Diaspora. There are more people of Japanese descent living in São Paulo than in any other city outside of Japan.

3. Afro-Brazilians account for more than half of all people of African descent living outside of Africa and make up over half of Brazil's population.

4. Brazil's Military Dictatorship was supported by the U.S. to oust a democratically elected leftist president. The junta ruled the nation from 1964 to 1985.

5. Liberation Theology is an activist movement created by Brazilian Catholic Marxists in the 1950s and 60s who officially recognized capitalism as a sin.

Now that we've cleared up these fun facts for our non-Brazilian dreamers, we can move on.

Frederico, I'm guessing that you lead a compartmentalized life. Your dream has you commuting between the tranquil country and your home in the bustling city, making this trip every day (or night actually—it's always night in your dream) without ever really seeing the path in between. This can reflect the dichotomy between any number of situations: home, work, school, friends, family, loved ones, hobbies, responsibilities—pick any two. You are comfortable in both places and, unlike your peers, you're prepared to transition from one to the other. But they remain separate parts of your life. Are you worried about that? Not really. You just grab your bag and go. However you are thirsty—there is something that you want that you're not getting, and you go looking for it before you leave this place (or situation) for the last time, possibly to never return.

When trying to find this desired thing and you are faced with a "corrected" version of the past. In the dream it's a commentary on racist aspects of your country's junta, outside the dream it is likely that it's you, noticing something about yourself, some way that you used to be that has fallen out of favor. You face this thing, simultaneously wanting to highlight it and to wipe it out—so much so that you assert an identity (Afro-Brazilian, in the dream) that erases any possibility of complicity with flawed past notions (represented by racism in the dream). You are beside yourself—the lefty priest is there and he is you as a liberator, a corrector of flawed ideas and corrupt actions. And the show is about to begin.

In they come: the cops in your head—rivaling the fuzzy racial rainbow coalition from Barney Miller—each a different aspect of your personality that your internal warrior-priest must defeat. The first one seems cool—he looks like you and your priest and seems to share your ideas, your values. But really he is all talk. The next cop could be alright with his long hair, but that third one—no way! He oozes sketchiness like the chest hair oozing out between the buttons of his polyester shirt. Your priest calls the shots and you just watch. This isn't quite the cold glass of water that you'd hoped for. Then that soliloquy (pictured at the top of this post) . . . is the kind of action you really wanted to take?

Frederico, there might me millions of approaches to tackling whatever "the grassroots work" is that you're dealing with here. I'll put two in the crosshairs of your metaphorical viewfinder:

The first is the Super Fly Approach, as epitomized by the 1972 film of the same name (left). The protagonist in this film (whose name, coincidentally, was "Priest"), eschewed the grassroot SNCC/Black Panther types for the simpler politics of the gun. The problem with this tactic when dealing with "cops in your head" is that they aren't like your average city cops, they're more like ghosts. Bullets—even metaphorical ones—go right through them and they will always come back to haunt you.

The second approach is one actually called "Cop In The Head," as described in the book Rainbow of Desire by Brazilian theater artist/ex-politician (and survivor of torture at the hands of the military dictatorship) Augusto Boal (yeah, I tend to plug Boal a lot). The Cop In The Head technique, put simply, invites you to take these cops out of your head and put them on stage in front of you. Recognize them, name them, and deal with them.

Frederico, whether you read this aforementioned book or not, you can meditate on its idea. In the meantime, I advise you to invest in a camcorder—you obviously have a cinematographic mind. And always have a glass of water ready at your bedside. It may come in handy.

Unite And Take Rover

2009-01-12T10:23:00.012-05:00

Here's a dream from a little further south. Federica works as an artist and puppeteer in Mexico, and we welcome her to the 31 Dreamers as today's contributor. Federica writes:

There was a dog, a big dog, a not dark color. It was dead on the floor, and next to the dog three or four puppies, all dead. I was looking at the mama and I could see something moving and I get closer and I can see there is a heart beating inside her belly—another puppy was alive inside the dead mama. I took a knife—I didn’t know what else to do—and I started taking off the skin in layers, basically peeling away layers, and I could see more and more clearly the shape of the little creature inside, and I think I remember that was a tiny little baby, a little face . . . but I'm not so sure . . . and it felt very strange, what I was doing. But it felt the only thing to do.

I don't remember if I took the little thing out.

But yes, I clearly remember a little face under a thinner layer of skin.

What do you think?

Federica, I don't know how it is in Mexico, but dogs in the U.S. are insane.

I mean, wouldn't you be if you had no freedom?

I'd always wondered what things would be like if we just undid all the leashes and opened all the cages and let the dogs run free. Probably a lot of bad stuff to be sure. Someone who's been locked down in captive servitude for his or her whole life has little practice at being free. Dogs would die, get hit by cars, contract rabies from feral lagomorphs, attack people and each other—in short, a massive mess of absolute canine chaos. Then things would settle down and the dogs would sort thngs out though their intelligence and cooperative instinct—they are pack animals, after all. The learning curve would be slow, but they'd get there eventually. And then what?

I was recently in a place where dogs run free: Kolkata (also called Calcutta) in the Bengali part of India. There the dogs share the city with humans in a tenuous nocturnal/diurnal arrangement. By day we humans overrun things with our hustle and bustle, making enough noise and garbage and pollution to satisfy the needs of 15 million people, while the dogs sleep in curled-up crescents on almost every sidewalk. At night the humans go to bed and the dogs run things, going through our hominid detritus and refuse and scavenging what they need before we humans wake up and take over again. My favorite of times were those crepuscular moments—early mornings when the chai and poori and vegetable sellers were just setting up shop and the dogs held quiet conferences on street corners, just standing around calmly, bidding each other "good morning" before retiring for the day. These were not American dogs, and admittedly their lives are much harder than the well-groomed poodles of the West. Mange is common, as is canine pregnancy and abandoned pups. But these dogs get to be dogs, to be with each other as is the nature of dogs to do.

Federica, I am no expert on what's best for dogs, but I do know that the dogs in your dream have seen better days. You have come into their lives a little too late—too late for all but one of them who has not yet even been exposed to the air and all of beauty and horror which wafts upon it. It's too late for the rest but not for this one. Yet what can you do—a mere artist—to save the lives of future generations who are destined to just be miserable and neglected anyway? The wisdom and protection of their elders could not save them, so how can you? Like any resourceful artist, you use the tools and skills that you've got and give it the old college try. But for every problem that you peel away, more layers of problems are revealed. Will you ever be able to save this itty bitty puppy, let alone the entire canine and human races? Can the work that you do really change anything or save anyone?

I was looking for some books on Indian art at the local branch of my library and another book caught my eye: a retrospective of "masterworks" from the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) in Dedham, Massachusetts. MOBA's collection is made up mostly of pieces that people didn't want. They are culled from the curbside trash heaps, thrift stores and flea markets of the world. I took this book home thinking, "How bad can this art really be?" Then I saw the portraits that people had made of their dogs (like Erin Rothgeb's, pictured here). It made me think about the art that I make, and how sometimes it is truly bad. But I keep making it, and sometimes it's pretty good. The fact that it has the power to make others feel good isn't totally coincidental—I mean, that's part of what we artists are trying to achieve, right? We just can't force people to feel good with our art, it just has to happen. We can try and try and try and it might not work, Then we might not try and *bing!* Incidental magic happens. One person's trash has the power to be another's treasure, like at MOBA, or on the streets of Kolkata and anyplace else in the world.

As far as the power of art to change the world is concerned, we just gotta keep doing what we do, Federica, even with the circumstances of dogs dying and people living "like dogs" all around us in every corner of the earth. Whether or not we can clearly make out their faces and uncover all the problems that put them in their desperate situations, the people and the problems are still there. We cannot fix all of it with art alone, but art can be an integral part of an ultimate victory.

Your dream is telling you to persevere through these trials, to listen for and seek the beating hearts of others, even in what seems to be the most hopeless of situations, and to continuously expose the truth by peeling away layer after layer of injustices with your craft. It may feel unreachable, even disgusting at times, but we must persevere, freeing each other from the subtle kennels and dead bellies that keep us locked away from the world and from each other. One day we will peel back that last layer and all finally breathe the same air together. Joyous. United. Free.

From The Fleece Of An Iron Sheep

2009-01-11T20:11:00.027-05:00

I'm a little obsessed. Just a little. Ever since fellow Fun-A-Day blog-o-phile Stevie Steven Esteban Tadeo Lance Kelly (nee "Patrick") hipped me to the sites Strange Maps and Very Small Array, I've had my designs on delving into my own franchise of niche cartography. I managed to go back in time and make a map documenting gentrification street art in a neighborhood with a disputed moniker, somewhere in the wilds of the northeastern U.S. And then today I started mapping the 31 Dreamers (a cartogram that I haven't been able to figure out how to post just yet) so that we could see where exactly our dreams were coming in from. There's one from Texas, one from the Pacific Northwest, one from Japan, and then a whole mess from the northeastern U.S. and neighboring Quebec. Some statisticians might analyze this data and exclaim to those living outside of this concentrated dream region, "Come on people! Wake up! What are you, sleeping?" But at 31 Dreamers, we worry that the contrary is true and instead advise you, dear reader, in the most soothing of tones: "Please, get some rest. And if you remember your dreams, send them our way."

In 1968, science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick asked the world, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" The query was the title of a book, best known as the basis for the film Blade Runner. The backstory of today's dream pushes P.K. Dick's question a bit further (as does, in typical Kwang-tse/John Cage fashion, the cover image of a Japanese edition of the book pictured left: "Do electric sheep dream of androids?") Too bad someone already wrote three sequels to Dick's original book and boringly named them Blade Runner 2, Blade Runner 3 and (drum roll please) Blade Runner 4. Maybe we can insert the dream-of-the-day somewhere in the mix like those animated side-dish movies they made to supplement The Matrix and Star Wars sagas. It'll have to wait till when the 31 Dreamers swell to 31 Million Dreamers. Then we can make a pitch to Time-Warner.

Today's dream was dreamt in a cabin at the dawn of the New Year near Gualala, California (finally—some California dreamin!) Its dreamer is someone whose full name is so fabulous I gotta break ranks and use both first and last: Kestrel Plump, come on down! You're the next contestant on 31 Dreamers! Kestrel's dream:

I’m walking around some co-op house in my neighborhood. All these people I know are there, including my roommate Graeme. The house is amazing and sort of looks like the Mütter Museum of Medical Oddities in Philadelphia. There's a big staircase and a balcony with a wooden railing. We’re all there to see some kind of art show. The rooms are all filled with bizarre and incredible art.

At some point I go into a basement and I start messing around with steel wool, trying to make or fix something. I hold a piece of the steel wool in my mouth. It starts to fill up my mouth, almost like I’m winding a bobbin that I’m holding in my mouth. My mouth is getting full—soon the steel wool will cut me, but I tell myself that I have to finish whatever it is I’m doing and press on until my mouth is completely packed. The steel wool cuts into the roof of my mouth, cuts into my cheeks, starts to go down my throat. I am scared, but I calm myself and tell myself that I can pull it all out and I’ll be okay. I pull it out in clumps. It’s so tightly packed that it rips like a cotton ball being ripped in half when I try and pull it out.

I wander around the house, looking for a bathroom or someone to help me. There are people about, but they don't help me and obviously I can’t ask for help with my mouth so full. No one really even sees me, they just move past me. I keep pulling on the steel wool. It’s stuck into the roof of my mouth, but if I pull hard enough it comes out. It feels so good to dislodge it form my flesh, and it leaves cuts that don't bleed. I begin to worry if there is any of that weird blue soap stuff that is on Brillo Pads in my mouth, because, I think to myself, that could make me really sick. I find a little bit of it on some of the steel wool from the very back of my throat, but not very much.

The left side of my mouth is free of the wool now, but it hurts. The right side is still full. I find Chris, my partner, washing dishes. I show him my mouth. He acknowledges it, but keeps washing the dishes. I stand next to him and keep pulling the wool out, pulling out a piece that is very far back that has bits of lung and blood vessels and other tissue on it. It looks like algae that grows on rocks in the ocean. I show it to Chris. He absentmindedly says it is gross, then gets really upset, saying that a shard of the wool flew into his eye while I was pulling it out. He is really mad and leaves. I wake up.

I lay there in bed, realizing it was a dream. I run my tongue over my mouth in relief. I thought, in the dream, that my mouth would hurt for the rest of my life. But it won't. I am mildly comforted by this thought, but still disturbed by the dream and it's implications. I fall back asleep.

Kestrel, I'm less disturbed by the implications in this dream than I am by the canker sores that suddenly sprang to life in my own mouth while I was reading it. (This happen to anyone else? Leave me a comment and let me know.) The loose network of cooperative houses that annexed certain neighborhoods around the U.S. in the 1970s have gone through many phases and some remain a bustling bastion of counter-culture today. What goes on in your dream doesn't really seem that out of the ordinary for what really happens in the day-to-day in such places. Pay a visit to certain urban localities (and some rural ones too) and you'll find ad-hoc collectives who are always having art shows in grandiose Victorian group houses replete with a majestic balestrade here, a mahogany-rimmed veranda there, and enough oddball junk cluttering the whole damn place to give Philadelphia's Mütter and Mummers' museums a run for their under-funded money (though I don't think the punk palaces can a hold a candle to Philly's Masonic Temple—that jawn is or-nate!) I personally have been to the art show in your dream several times (our own beloved Fun-A-Day began in just such a place) and yeah, it was awesome with everyone there having had made something totally unique and beautifully strange.

But amongst all of the lavish wonder of innovative art, one may feel overwhelmed and even question one's own worth. "What am I doing? How am I contributing?" A person may need to get to the bottom of things . . . or hide from the other people around them . . . or go where all the useful junk and loud musical equipment and power tools are kept. Whatever the specifics, we rally ourselves to the basement where all of items of a utilitarian bent have been conglomerated into one abrasive fibrous mass. You know what I'm talking about: those fine, metallic hairs, shorn and spun from the fleecy coat of an iron sheep (pictured at the very top of this entry). Yes, I am of course referring to that substance of substances known to humans as steel wool.

Some little-known facts about steel wool, not found anywhere on the internet until now: Steel wool's texture, density and coarseness may vary. Sometimes it is found in thicker, looser, more wiry fibres that form a sort of mesh ball. These are usually from the fleece of a wooly steel mountain goat, the product of many generations of billies and nannies whose diet has consisted primarily of tin [sic—they're actually mostly steel] cans. These animals' digestive tracts have become so developed that they can actually absorb the steel and convert it directly into steel wool. The finer, denser steel wool "pad" is derived from the iron alpaca, and the "weird blue soap stuff" (mentioned in the dream) is, in fact, the lanolin secreted from this animal. Purveyors of this product assure us that this "blue stuff" is perfectly harmless, though some have a sensitivity to it.

Okay Kestrel, enough sheep shit. Whether or not this is a credible creation myth for steel wool, the question remains: why the fuck are you putting that crap in your mouth? There are echoes of the timeless threat that we allegedly heard when we were wee kiddies: "Say that again and I'm gonna wash your mouth out with..." With what? Most commercial soap is made from cow fat (cloaked on the label by its chemical compound name "sodium tallowate") unfit only for vegans and Hindus—hardly a punishment for any beef-eating American girl. Something stronger is called for, but bleach or ammonia or Drain-O or sulphuric acid might lead to your parents/teachers/nuns/whosoevers having a handful of lawsuits to play out. Nope, it has to be the steel wool, only this time you're doing it to your own offending maw—not in self-punishment for something that you actually said, but for fear of something that you might say. You're censoring yourself, spinning this wool of steel into a massive ball of dense, entangled yarn, like a mouthful of mega-mineral-fortified cotton candy that—oops!—won't melt in your mouth. And as you indulge in this act of self-silencing mental censorship, you simultaneously regret it. But the damage is done—you are injured and unable to speak as you once had.

Realizing that you're in dire oral straits, you turn to your peers, friends, neighbors, housemates for help. But they don't bloody fathom, or care about, or even recognize the problem. These others are so wrapped up in their own quagmire of self-absorption that you turn to the one person with whom you are closest: your partner. But he's too distracted by his own work to take you seriously. And when you show him the gorey bits he finds your internal complexities too icky and disturbing to even truly look at you. It isn't until your problems interfere with his own comfort that he pays attention. But instead of helping he throws a hissy fit and stamps off. I mean, how dare you flick your own innards in his blessed eyes? And mixed with the blasted fur a metal llama no less? The nerve of some people!

Kestrel, I might be as abrasive as the steel wool of your dreams here, but your story raises some issues that deserve a little consideration and confrontation. So I'll ask: Whatever did you say—or not say—that made you decide to scour your words and debilitate your ability to speak? Are the ears of your peers so sensitive to the ideas that might spurt from your lips that you feel that your oral cavity must be scraped clean to such a degree that you become both injured and silenced in the process? What kind of cult . . . er . . . "community" are you part of exactly that would allow this to happen? And who is this "partner" of yours anyway? Do you two run a law firm? A detective agency? A line-dancing studio? Whatever the arrangement,do you find the relationship to be truly equal? Or is he fixated on the dishpan-handed challenges implicit in domesticity while you are literally spilling your guts out?

Kestrel, everything that happens to you in your dream is an invitation to do the opposite. Try taking some individual space that affords you the room to be independent. Spend time with people who really see you and listen to you rather than dis and de-prioritize you. And, most of all, open your mouth and let the words flow freely from it. Don't be afraid to create and agitate. You can leave the steel wool where it belongs: on the coat of an iron sheep.

Let Sleeping Dreams Lie

2009-01-10T10:40:00.018-05:00

We're nearly a third of the way along our curvaceous Fun-A-Day road of dreams and dreamers. There are so many other awesome Fun-A-Day projects brewing right now and you can find links to a few of them in the sidebar on the left. A few that I must draw your attention to are: Ivan Boothe's sexy word clouds, Jonathan Mann's heavenly songwriting, Nick Lally's diligent photographs and sketches, Stevie Esteban Tadeo Lance Kelly's fervent mapping of blackness, and the passionate gay video cataloguing of Chris Vargas. Most of these people have new offerings of fun every day, and many more will strut it in full touchable, tastable glory at the actual Fun-A-Day shows happening in various cities the February.

Today's dream comes from one of these felow Fun-A-Dayistas. Jenn in Pittsburgh has been borrowing someone's camera every day and taking a picture with it, which she then throws online. Jenn also has dream-reading in her blood. "My father has done extensive dream-work related things all my life," she says. "Sharing my dreams every morning is almost as routine as coffee and newspaper for me." Same goes for me Jenn!Only this month it's taking up a little more of my time . . .

Jenn's dream:

I had a dream this morning, it was one of those quick almost awake morning dreams.

In my dream I had just come back from the bathroom (right around the corner from my bed) and stood at the edge of the bed and saw myself and my partner sleeping as we really were in real life. Stretched out in slumber under our warm, comfortable blankets we slumbered on. On top of our blankets was a layer of freshly fallen snow, about two or three inches or so. It was white, fluffy, beautiful. I knew it was fresh and could also see several small tracks in the snow. I woke up feeling good, rolled over, and happily spooned my partner.

And then Jenn adds:

I actually wandered about today doing errands hoping I would catch a picture of someone's discarded mattress or bed out for trash that had been covered with the most recent snow-fall so I could make my dream a little more real, but alas, no mattress . . .

Jenn, this is another one of those dreams that I'm tempted to leave in its bed (especially with your veteran dream analyst father looking over my shoulder). It is so perfect, the image and the sensation that it leaves us with is divine—why blemish its pristine visage with the words of a compulsive dream-blogger? Anything that I say may just be a muddy bootprint that disturbs your gilded somnambulance. Readers might hesitate here and envision themselves under that blanket of perfect, fluffy water crystals before reading onward.

Lately I've been having conversations about theater (I'm a theater-maker in my other life) and articulating that theater can be approached in two different ways: character-based theater, where the focus of a play is on its characters and what they do (like in Shakespeare), or image-based theater, where scenes are strung together more by the visual tableaus that they create (like in the work of the Bread & Puppet Theater, pictured above). This idea can also be applied to cinema, whose scholars and buffs may use the term "movies" for the character-driven Hollywood product that favors formulaic plots, and "film" for more artistic work whose elements of mis en scene and montage are given with greater attention. A play or film can of course have elements of both (e.g. Bertolt Brecht or Orson Welles), as can a dream.

Jenn, in your dream the characters and their actions (you and your partner sleeping) carry great significance for you. As an outsider, I see this dream as an image: you step away from the routine duty of slumber and into the ritual of (ahem) powdering your nose, and return to arrive at a place of stillness that arrests your eyes like a painting—or a photograph. With one of your goals for this wintry month being to capture and publish a photograph every day, your dream fits you like a mitten—you are a photograph. You and your sweetie are so still and unmovable that the snow is in tact. Animals even scurry right over you and you two still don't budge. You maintain the image and your relationship, unshaken by the elements around you. It is supremely lovely.

In winter we tend to do so many things out of necessity. We insulate our windows to reduce fuel expenditure, we ingest ginger and echinacea to keep from getting sick, we shovel and salt our sidewalks to keep ourselves and others from slipping and breaking a tailbone or two, and we bundle up and make hot soup to keep warm. With all the extra efforts that the coldest months bring, it's important for us to maintain our equilibrium by just letting things be—to fully breathe into enjoyment of the world around us. Jenn, I've seen your photos and I think that you're doing this already. You can run your errands and keep looking for that mattress in the snow, but the pictures that you take in the shadow of its absence are just as poignant without that effort. Try applying this meditative serendipity to the other areas of your life, if you haven't already, and your dreams will keep telling you: "Yes Jenn. Keep doing what you do."

––––– –– ––– –––––

For a more detailed explanation on the concept of Image Theater, skim through Augusto Boal's book Games for Actors and Non-Actors.

2-for-1 Special

2009-01-09T11:07:00.017-05:00

Today we feature not one but two dreamers. We'll see how that affects our count up to 31 Dreamers at the end of the month.

The first dream comes from Stacey from Boston's Debo Band. Debo pay tribute to the Ethiopian jazz greats of the early 1970s. Here are two fine samples of Debo's music:

"Man Yawqal Yèbétén," originally sung by Hirut Beqele

"Gedamay," an instrumental originally by Getatchew Mekuria

Debo Band is preparing to leave the frigid climate of Boston to tour the sunny motherland of their music's birth. Stacey had heard that I'd just returned from a voyage abroad myself, and she sent me the following dream:

I was on the plane to Ethiopia and I realized I forgot to bring underwear! I had none but the ones on my butt. And I was frantically calling to my bandmate Kaethe (who is not leaving until 2 days after me) to go to my house and go get some underwear from my drawer and bring it to Ethiopia.

I suppose that doesn't need any interpretation, it's just a straight up anxiety dream.

But it reminded me. . .

How was India?

Yup Stacey, that's a straight-up anxiety dream about not being prepared for an upcoming trip. What you didn't know was that I myself had forgotten to pack one very important thing on my recent trip to India: my underwear. I had none but the ones on my butt.

(For real.)

Our second dream comes from yet another Philadelphian, (it is a dreamy city, after all), but dreamt while the dreamer was visiting Austin, Texas. Jason, our dreamer, had gone to Austin to officiate an atheist wedding and to visit friends and family. Jason's dream:

So it was Halloween and I was asked what I was dressed as and my reply to this person was—and I said it like Flava Flav from Public Enemy introduces himself: "I'm Lazy Laaazzz. "

My costume consisted of my wearing a sweat suit, sunglasses, and a rapper’s stance, and a big gold chain with a throw pillow attached to it so I could, at any time, rest my head and just be lazy.

Then I woke up thinking, "Wow. That was cool," and fell back asleep.

Well Jason, I guess you know what you'll be for Halloween next year. But your dream is asking you, "Why wait?" You don't need the occasion of a holiday or a wedding to show your flair and panache for being an outstanding and memorable personality in any social situation, be it with friends or family or whomever. Put yourself out there in all your charismatic glory! You have time to do this and to relax whenever you want. Do this and you're headed for the glamorous lifestyle of your dreams.

Great dreams y'all. Keep 'em coming.

––––– –– ––– –––––

Today's (utterly obscure) book: The Bulletin Year Book and Almanac 1926, issued by Philadelphia's Evening Bulletin newspaper. Regional ephemera, cool maps.

This Little Light of Mines

2009-01-08T11:00:00.020-05:00

Do an internet image search for "kids with guns" and you will discover many things about our world and how different people choose to perceive it. The bulk of the links you'll see topping the page demonize the Arab world by depicting Palestinian and Iraqi children wielding either toy or live weapons. A little further down the thread you'll find photos of child soldiers in Africa, or youth from inner cities—that is, the poorest, most desperate regions of the globe—toting automatic rifles and pistols. Finally, by flipping through a few more pages on Google, you'll strike American paydirt: a land of mom and apple pie where boys and girls (pictured above) are free to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms at an early age.

With what's been happening in Israel and Gaza lately, I feel that its my responsibility as a blogger (and as a citizen of the country that funds Israel's military) to say something about it here, and about the hype around kids with guns. I want to say something, but this isn't a blog about politics, it's a blog about dreams and dreamers—31 Dreamers to be exact. Today we'll get to both dreams and guns in a story about a father, a kid, and their relationship to violence and to each other.

We break from the dreams of our city-slicker contributors to visit a cabin in Eaton, New York, from where Jean-Paul, the eighth of the 31 Dreamers, writes this:

I had a dream about my son Jude. He has been really obsessed with weapons lately. It is very strange because I am very peaceful in my politics and never have talked of gun-play or sword-play. I have encouraged wrestling but whenever Jude shows interest in hurting or plays in some malicious or vicious fashion, I stop the game. We have tried to veer Jude's interest in guns to hunting and have said that guns are a tool only for hunting, done responsibly and with care. We got him a pop-gun for Christmas and have invited him to play hunt, etc. We also got him a bow and arrow. Anyway, the dream:

I dreamed that Jude, as an adult, had hurt someone. He had done something that he could not take back, perhaps killed a person. The dream was about a conversation that Jude and I had after the fact. He was remorseful. I was devastated. I felt that I had not done my duty as his parent to prepare him. I had failed in teaching him to control his anger so that he would not hurt someone. In the dream, Jude was me as I could have been. He felt denial. He was confused. Unable to control his unguided anger, he went too far—so much so that there was no turning back. Jail, death perhaps.

I woke with this fear. Jude is a jeweled light. He is a sweet loving boy and yet he has this natural interest in things that kill. I don't get it. It's like psychological DNA or past lives, who knows. It is strange. Jude is such a strong independent character. I feel like he needs guidance to grow into a responsible, peaceful parent. Perhaps I am worrying too much. . .

Quite a heavy dream, Jean-Paul, and full of a beautiful love for your son. There is no doubt that you worry, but the quantity and quality of that worry is a matter of conjecture. Are you worrying too much? I cannot say. Perhaps you begin your day with a little healthy, parental worry. Next you worry that you worry more than you should. Then it's onto worrying that you worry about over-worrying. It is at this point that I'd step in and say, "Yes, you may indeed be worrying too much." Your dream is a sped-up reality stuffed through the worry mill of the possible future. You're right to say that your dream posits the grown-up version of Jude as someone you could have been. I think that the dream-Jude is as much of a manifestation of you worrying for your own actions as a parent as it is your fear for what Jude may do today or later in life.

We make choices every day that take us in one direction or anouther, like the falling balls in Sir Francis Galton's quincunx (simulated on the right). Experiences can guide us to one side or another of a future decision, which leads us to another decision and then another, affecting the probability of where we eventually end up. But there is no absolute certainty. We may be raised piously with benign parentage in peaceful environs, and yet at some point experiment with decrepit behaviors—such as lying to our loved ones or shoplifting from local businesses and smoking cheap cigarettes with reckless abandon—before we develop into responsible persons who recognize that even the pettiest of actions may lead to a formidable consequence down the road. At the same time we might never indulge in the aforementioned vices of the world and then one day we might just suddenly snap and do something irreversibly horrid that I hesitate to mention to a occasionally worry-prone parent such as yourself.

For most, the quincunx of one's life is not a perilous minefield of hazards that is apt to send us down a path to explosion. Even for those whose way has been riddled by landmines—both real and figurative—there is still hope. I was just reading What Is The What, the autobiography of Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng as penned by American author Dave Eggers. Achak's experiences with childhood attraction to guns are a far cry from what Jude is exposed to. He grew up in a place where children are trained to be soldiers. Yet he has never turned to violence as a solution to the challenges he's faced throughout his trials in Sudan and the U.S. His story makes us understand the layered complexities that can lead to war and refugees and child soldiers. His words are weapons of peace that have the power to disarm evil.

Our United States, in its own way, is breeding child soldiers. Guns and war are glorified and marketed to young people via movies and toys and video games. By the time kids reach recruiting age, the idea of firing a real gun at a real target isn't so far-fetched. The U.S. propagates this culture of militarism in other places. Every Israeli teenager can thank Uncle Sam for providing him or her with the equipment needed to serve their compulsory two to three year term of military service (pictured above). Britain has sent soldiers under the age of 18 to fight in the war that George Bush has left us with in Iraq, and the average recruit to the U.S. Marines isn't much older. They're just kids. With guns.

Jean-Paul, in a society such as ours that rewards violence with promises of money for college, potential career opportunities, and all-out revenge on brown-skinned non-Christian people who allegedly resent the American lifestyle, peace-loving parents such as yourself are exemplary. I plead for your honesty with Jude, brutal as it may be: guns were not developed and advanced so that humans could shoot a moose more efficiently, but so that soldiers could render enemy armor completely useless, blasting holes in it like air bubbles in Swiss cheese. I'm not saying that you should be flashing Jude photos of what's going on in Gaza today, but at least let him know what's going on in the world outside your family cabin. Let him know what you think about things without trying to steer him one way or the other. As he grows, give him the agency and the responsibility to make his own decisions and figure out what he believes. He will grow up to be capable of avoiding the pitfalls and landmines in his own dreams, guided by his own jeweled light, shining from within.

Giraffic Park

2009-01-07T10:00:00.016-05:00

One week into this project and the dreams have grown from a trickle to a steady stream. We’re developing a rhythm that jumps around the map, slaloming between pipedreams and nightmares, epic narratives and anthropoems, fantasies and drudgeries around everything from bishops to blackface. Choosing the dream of the day is a bit of a balancing act. I was torn between some burglars from Chicago and a fœtal dog from Mexico, when this dream dropped in from Providence, Rhode Island, and I knew instantly that it was the pick for today. Our seventh of the 31 Dreamers is Xander, who dreamt:

This morning I knew that we had important business phone calls to make, but first I had to stop by the teahouse and everybody was talking about how exciting the show would be tonight. It was the first time in a long time that everywhere I went people were suddenly saying, “Have you heard about this band driving up from New York tonight; they’re really supposed to be interesting!” But I knew that I needed to talk to you first before I called the banker, so I decided to walk by the river.

Down by the river there were animals. One was a horse and one looked like a horse but actually it was a giraffe and it was wearing an orange floral hooked rug! Then I realized that there were a couple of giraffes and actually there were giant wood carvings of giraffes along the river and I realized that this was the city’s new tourism scheme—giraffe park! So I sat down next to a wooden giraffe and decided that I needed to call you so that we could talk before I called the banker. So I had made myself comfortable and was calling you when these two guys, one older, one younger, came over and laid down a blanket to picnic by me and the giraffe and I was like, “I was just about to make a phone call,” and they were like, “We don’t mind,” and I was like, “Well I mind,” but I didn’t say that because I am generally strategic about what kind of confrontation I am willing to engage in. So then I got up and walked a bit further and sat near this wild house with curious wind chimes and called you and we talked about what the next things to do would be!

Giraffes are the stuff that dreams are made of. In the book Zarafa: A Giraffe’s True Story, Michael Allin writes of the first giraffe to set hoof in western Europe. She was shipped by boat up the Nile and across the Mediterranean, and then had to walk across France to get to Charles X in Paris. She was a gift from the Viceroy of Egypt, who hoped the French would be so absorbed in this novelty that they wouldn’t notice when Egyptian forces suddenly invaded Greece. But that’s not really the point. The main thing is that when the French countryfolk saw this lengthy-legged, stretch-necked, hairy-horned, long-eyelashed creature all covered in spots ambling up the road, what do you suppose they did? They flipped their lids of course! And they followed her for miles—thousands of people, parading behind the lovely Zarafa, as far as her big, beautiful eyes could see.

Xander, we all know about the comforts and pitfalls of city life. How the founders had the foresight to build the world’s great metropolises on the banks of majestic harbors and serene rivers, only to have urban planners come along and screw it up by dropping highways everywhere. For many of us who dwell in such places, we enjoy the aromatic comforts of the neighborhood teahouse, the whimsical convenience of having rock bands and puppet shows practically appearing on our doorsteps, and the fluid social atmosphere that such fixtures afford us.

But the city taints our psyches with its stale bureaucracy—the business calls and the bankers whom we are obligated to oblige. Their routine shunts us into the cockamamie patterns of needing to do X, Y and Z before we can even think about A and B. We become so entrenched in the habit or juggling business with pleasure, that we can no longer distinguish the two—that which was pleasurable we now approach with businesslike concentration, and that which is business we seem to take perverted delight in doing. You do this in your dream by feeling burdened with the responsibility to chat with friends and see live music (activities that should be pleasurable) seeking instead an intimacy in the act of doing business, and so take refuge in a pretty place to make an urgent phone call.

The spot you find seems ideal—a veritable paradise—as if after all these years the city planners have realized that highways and shopping malls aren’t cool: the people want giraffes! You see that one giraffe—the one wearing the handmade rug—and you say, “This is for me!” It’s as if the heads of the departments of parks and tourism read your mind. But it’s not just for you, Xander. The city is a place that we all must share and all the coolest stuff eventually gets discovered and occupied by picnickers young and old. “Not fair!” you say, “I was here first!” But it’s not worth fighting about because you know that more people will arrive soon, spreading their blankets across the once virgin earth. And so you move on to the next untouched thing, from wooden giraffes to wild wind chimes, wanting to share the experience intimately with someone you love while simultaneously trying to get things done.

I wish I had the solutions to the dilemmas presented in this dream. How do we streamline our citified lives? How do we find solace and maintain spaces so that they remain the way we want them to be? The goals implied in these questions are sometimes at odds with each other. But it's bigger than you and me. The city plays Viceroy of Egypt with all of its structures and schemes that send us off on tangents like wild geese. We, like France, must be vigilant: to celebrate fabulousness without being distracted. Until we figure out how to do that, let us gather our orange yarn and take up our latch hooks to thread a floral rug by hand. When we are done, we will have at least a few square feet of space that cannot be altered by the winds of urban change. Come spring we may take our rugs out for a walk, laying them down wherever we please, sitting on them and preserving an area that is all our own. And when our giraffe finally comes ambling up the road, we will know just what to do.

Tandem to Camden

2009-01-06T00:00:00.009-05:00

Onto our sixth dreamer and our second dream about bikes and bridges. It’s not our first dream from a Philadelphian, though Lindsay is the first of the 31 Dreamers to submit a dream actually dreamt in Philadelphia. Lindsay writes:

I was riding on a tandem bicycle with another person (don't remember who). We were riding onto a tall, narrow bridge. The bike jumped into the air and I realized we weren't going to land on the bridge. I said, “flap your arms!” to try to keep us out of the water below. In spite of the flapping we fell into the river, near to the bank. A boat passed by—it was a tour boat or something like that, large with a lot of people on it. I treaded water and waved at them and yelled, trying to get them to stop and pick us up, but they just waved back, like I was just saying hi. My boyfriend shook me awake, saying I had started to yell "help" really loud in my sleep.

Bridges and bikes go together in dreams like toilets and alligators in the awake world. In a dream a bike is some sort of journey, a bridge is a transition along that journey. By “journey” I don’t necessarily mean an actual voyage that takes you from geographical point A to geographical point B, but any process by which we move through the world, be it real space or time, a particular project, career, relationship, or life in general. A tall, narrow bridge on that journey shows fear in the precariousness of the transition, though not always fear of what’s on the other side. I’m speaking somewhat generally here. Mainly, I see two fundamental ways to read this dream, based on a single factor:

Are you on the back of the tandem bicycle?

Or are you on the front of the tandem bicycle?

I’m guessing that you are riding in front, because if you were on the back and telling the person in front to flap their arms, then they would have to let go of the handlebars and lose control of the bicycle. Though if a bicycle is falling through the air, what good are handlebars anyway? You can’t steer yourself into falling this way or that. Of course this is a dream we’re talking about and in dreams the laws of physics, among other laws, are temporarily suspended until your boyfriend shakes you awake, right?

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s start at the beginning.

And you are on the front of this tandem bicycle.

And you are piloting this tandem bicycle with expert precision over that tall, narrow bridge, and you are in nigh total control.

“Nigh” means “nearly.” I say “nigh total control” because you are not in absolute total control. This is a tandem bicycle. Someone else shares your responsibility for maintaining balance and speed and pulling their own weight as well as the collective weight of the bicycle and its mission. Who is this other cyclist? You’re not sure. Could be anybody. Could be everybody. It could be any and every single person that you interact with on a regular basis—friends, family, people that you work with, the person who shakes you awake from your nightmares—everybody. And you rely on them to help you maintain a steady course and do their share of the work that needs to be done. But you are in front, gripping the handlebars, and you are in control. Nigh total control.

Then you lose that nigh total control and you need to rely on that person on the back seat a little more. Quite a bit more, actually. But unless they are a condor or a giant bat or a pteranodon, their pathetic arm-waggling will be of little use to keep you out of the river below. And thus you are all wet, trying to stay afloat, waving to a boatload of clueless tourists who’ve just paid $26 to gawk at the downtrodden residents of Camden, New Jersey like they were animals in a zoo—by far the most realistic part of this dream for anyone who lives in a city with a Duck Tour. “Yo!” you say, “Can’t yous see we’re drowning here?” But instead of them tossing you a lifesaver all you get is: “QUACK!”

Lindsay, your dream might be telling you to take a break from tandem bicycle riding for a minute. Don’t just take a back seat, take a vacation. Let other people do the steering and the pedaling altogether. Go for a walk alone in the woods. Sit and read a whimsical novel (perhaps Italo Calvino’s The Nonexistant Knight, our book of the day). Do something that does not involve other people. Let go of things for a day, a week, however long it takes to really allow the things that you feel responsible for to pack their bags and vacate your mind. Then think for a moment: What do I expect from others? What do others expect from me? Write these expectations down on some leaves that you picked up off the ground on your walk through the woods. Then, walk to a tall, narrow bridge, take a deep breath, and throw these leaves into the wind.

Or were you riding on the back of that tandem bicycle?

I thought so.

Yiddish From Rubbish

2009-01-05T08:57:00.027-05:00

The 5th of our 31 Dreamers is Rebecca, an amateur mushroom hunter from Bellingham, Washington. Rebecca sent me the following dream back in October and I thank her for waiting so patiently for an analysis. The dream:

I am outside in a garden.

I lift a brick and discover mycelium threads clinging to the brick.

I am surprised—the mycelium is Allen Ginsberg.

Small beautiful flower heads begin "fruiting" off the brick.

The flowers are his poem Kaddish.

I pick Allen's flower poem and begin to cut it up into a fine powder.

I snort it up my nose.

I think to myself what a beautiful gift.

I feel a deep love for Allen as mushroom and his flower poem Kaddish.

Then I start thinking in Yiddish.

(Sidenote: Kaddish is a poem Ginsberg wrote about his mother. It's a heavy poem.)

Beautiful dream Rebecca. So beautiful that I'm tempted to just leave it be. My expounding upon it will only break the spell of its poetry. I invite anyone reading this to stop here—to move on and turn to the dreams of others or, better yet, send in a dream of their own. The curious may proceed, for this dream packs in a rich loam of subject matter as well as cultural and mycological references that I must unpack a little bit. First the mycology:

Myceliae (plural of mycelium) are basically the "roots" of a fungus. They can range in size from microscopic threads to massive subterranean rhizomorphs that spread for miles. The world's largest known organism is an Armillaria ostoyae (the honey mushroom) in eastern Oregon whose myceliae span over 2,000 acres.

Fruiting bodies (pictured above) are like "flowers"— the fleshy, spore-producing parts of the fungus that poke up out of trees, logs and soil—the portion of the fungus that we generally refer to as "mushrooms."

Next, the (human) culture:

When poet Allen Ginsberg's mother died in 1956, the rabbi would not deliver the Mourner's Kaddish prayer at her funeral in the presence of Ginsberg's beatnik goyim friends. The poem Kaddish (our book of the day) is what he wrote in lieu of that—a memorial to his mother written in fits and starts while tripping on hallucinogenics, amphetamines, and (gasp!) jazz. It is as much a portrait of the Beat poet as it was of the woman who birthed him.

Rebecca, I take it you know all this. I'm just putting on the record for the rest of us. In your dream you look for something and you find it. You flip over a brick and there it is. It feeds you with beauty and knowledge and the process is so simple and direct, yet there is complexity in it. You crush this "heavy poem" into dust and shoot it up into your brain, but the reality is Kaddish isn't so easy to digest, nor is Yiddish so easy to learn—no language is! And yet you master both in one quick sniff. Ah, if only it were that easy when we're awake!

This dream is rife with cycles of birth, growth and death. Music composer John Cage—a practicing Buddhist, amateur mycologist and contemporary of Ginsberg's—wrote a lot about mushroom hunting and cuisine. In the final passage of his groundbreaking work Indeterminacy (1959), Cage tells of meeting a Buddhist art historian from Philadelphia who asks him about the symbolism in the Buddha's death from eating a mushroom. Cage writes:

I explained that I’d never been interested in symbolism; that I preferred just taking things as themselves, not as standing for other things. But then a few days later while rambling in the woods I got to thinking. I recalled the Indian concept of the relation of life and the seasons. Spring is Creation. Summer is Preservation. Fall is Destruction. Winter is Quiescence. Mushrooms grow most vigorously in the fall, the period of destruction, and the function of many of them is to bring about the final decay of rotting material. In fact, as I read somewhere, the world would be an impassible heap of old rubbish were it not for mushrooms and their capacity to get rid of it. So I wrote to the lady in Philadelphia. I said, “The function of mushrooms is to rid the world of old rubbish. The Buddha died a natural death.”

The life cycle of the mushroom parallels that of Allen Ginsberg and his mother: The young Yiddish-speaking Mrs. Ginsberg came to America, had to a son, Allen, and eventually died. Allen, in turn, birthed his poems, and he too died one day. For you, Recbecca, dreaming your dream last fall, "the period of destruction" when "mushrooms grow most vigorously" (and when, I presume, you do the bulk of your mushroom hunting) you dreamt of the poet as mycelium threads, taking the remains of his mother's life and turning it into a poem, which you in turn absorbed to gain the original knowledge that his mother possessed: the Yiddish language.

What does this dream say about the way you want to process other things? Take your own mother, just as an example—are there things that you'd like to know from her that, for whatever reason, are difficult to obtain? Would it be easier to simply write a poem about her when she's gone, grind it up, snort it up your nose and BANG!—everything you wanted to glean from your mom's mind is there without the parts you don't want—you know, the difficult parts that are painful to digest? I know I'd sometimes like to do this with regards to my own mother, among others. Sometimes.

In reality we have to deal with people holistically. We can't just suck the Yiddish from their brains and leave the rest to decay under the bricks in the garden. This is what your dream challenges you to do: to take Kaddish and the mothers of the world in all their beautiful and difficult entirety, for better and for worse, and realize the love presented in the whole picture. Only then will you unearth the truth that you seek.

Plea For A Rickshaw

2009-01-04T06:19:00.026-05:00

Many of you have sent in dreams about bicycles and it seems important that I feature at least one today. I myself have had recurring anxiety dreams about driving automobiles since I was a little kid. Today's dream is a hybrid of both—bike and car—and comes from Connor in Montreal, Quebec. The fourth of our 31 Dreamers writes:

I had a morning dream that was a little more intense than the usual half-asleep dream. I was leaving an anonymous workplace with some friends, the street was vaguely familiar; an ideal building and urban space—it might have been from [the Canadian TV series] Degrassi. Anyway, one of the friends was my buddy Rob, there was a faceless co-worker, and a tag-along who remained nameless but was of South Asian descent. After walking aimlessly we started talking about where I worked and what I did and how we were hiring youth workers. The tag-along expressed an interest in the job and it seemed like I was probably going to hire her—she was studying youth intervention. So finally we get to my car and decide to pile in. Once inside I ask Rob for the handlebars of his bike to replace my steering wheel, with no hesitation he hands them over (the entire bike and two people magically fit in my back seat for some reason). We start driving but I'm having a really hard time steering the car and this gets progressively harder as the dream goes on.

We are rolling around some nameless suburban landscape, looking for something, when all these friends from my past come rolling by on bicycles. We decide we'll catch up and join them. But because of the problems steering the car with the handlebars, we are losing them fast—in fact the roads are getting narrower and we are moving really slowly and the car has morphed into a gas-guzzling Buick from the 70s. Finally we see them and need to make a U-turn into a driveway. When we do, the car sinks into the gaps in the driveway. It’s a very unusual driveway and when we get out, we can't understand it—it's kind of a metal bridge that has lots of sections missing. If you looked at it from above it would look like this:

––––– –– ––– –––––

Anyway we're stuck in this gap and finally the old guy who lives there (and has his car parked ahead of ours) comes out and tells me that there should be no problem: "Just back right out."

The dream ends with me scratching my head.

Connor, I gather that the influence of the Degrassi television universe is a bit more pervasive in Canadian culture than in that of your yankee neighbors. Of its four TV serials, only Degrassi Junior High was afforded U.S. syndication and it was confined to the cult audience of Public Television. Thus Degrassi's tentacles of teenage drama are more likely to wrap themselves up in the Canuck subconscious spaces between Generations X and Y, and you, good sir, are no exception to this trend. But I digress (or is that "Degrass?"). Let's look at your dream:

Your dream puts you somewhere on the path between youth and adulthood. You begin as a person posited squarely in the adult world: you supervise young people; you have the power to hire others at your job; you own a car and you sit at its helm, deciding where it will take you and your friends. At the same time you want to retain your youthful identity and so replace your grown-up's steering wheel with the controls of a younger person's vehicle—bicycle handlebars.

Suddenly you find it difficult to master this combination of puerile spirit with adult responsibility. You are not in total control of your direction. You seek things without being sure what they are. This is when your youth passes you by (all your friends on bikes) and you suddenly feel yourself outmaneuvered—trapped in the Buick of behemoth maturity and trying to navigate life's paths, which have narrowed with age, affording you less mobility. You try to bang a U-ie back to your salad days, but find yourself snagged by the driveway of your predecessors who have settled in suburbia. You step out of your vehicle and see that you are in fact stuck on the bridge between your two worlds—young and old—unable to move. The old man "who has his car parked ahead of [y]ours" (a person who took your path years ago and ended up squarely on the adult side of things) takes one look at your situation and says, "Back up sonny. You're not ready for this yet." This is the advice that you left with at the end.

However, there is further advice encoded in the middle of this dream. Who is this nameless tag-along with the South Asian ancestry whom you're probably going to hire? Your dream shows your interest in who she is and what she says peaking at about 6½ on a scale of 1 to 10. She is the spirit of youth—not of your own fleeting youth, but of younger people from whom you and I have much to learn. She reminds us to not get so wrapped up in juvenile nostalgia that we overlook people who are actually younger than us. (And yes, I suddenly jumped into this part of your dream with you because I want to adopt its messages as well. You can call me "faceless co-worker" from now on.)

The other thing that's fascinating to me is that when you plunked those handlebars onto your dashboard, you inadvertently converted your car into an auto rickshaw (also called a tuk tuk, pictured above). Rickshaws are essentially 3-wheeled covered motorcycles and are used as taxis all over Asia. Compared to the 4-wheeled automobile, the rickshaw is easier to maneuver, uses less gas and takes up less space on the road. We in the West have much to learn from the auto rickshaw—imagine if half the taxicabs in New York were replaced by rickshaws! Traffic and pollution wouldn't be nearly as bad. In your dream, your jury-rigging of the handlebars into your car seems like a plea for something different. Something that can navigate the narrow lanes between youth and maturity. Something that is stable and yet can handle a 360º turn in tight spaces. Something that is both fun and practical and takes you where you want to go. Connor, what you need is a rickshaw. Both on the streets of Montreal and on your road to happiness in life.

––––– –– ––– –––––

Today's book is Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of Modern India by Gita Mehta. Sadly it makes no mention of the auto rickshaw, which, given the subject matter, is surprising.

Choco Taco Thwarts Identity Theft

2009-01-03T17:17:00.007-05:00

Day 3 and the dreams are trickling in—keep 'em coming!

I begin with a word to all you dream-writers out there about the art of dream-reading (alternately called dream interpretation, dream analysis, dream therapy or whatever you wish): It may be tempting to send in your "best" dream—one that made you feel great or is a truly spectacular story. While these dreams make for amusing online displays of what we're up to when we're sleeping, it might be better to submit a less thrilling yet more recent dream, the reason being that it's sometimes difficult to read a dream that doesn't bear relevance to a person's current situation and psyche. Of course I have no idea when you actually dreamt your dream, but experience has shown me that the fresher the dream, the better the dream-reading.

That said, I'm gonna be a good sport and take a whack at an older dream anyway. The third of the 31 Dreamers is Sharon who lives in Philadelphia, but she dreamt this off the coast of Massachusetts. And yes, it does give neighboring Nantucket's own Moby Dick a run for his money (...er, swim for his blubber) in its quality of epic storytelling. Here what was happening in Sharon's head:

In real life, I was on a totally amazing vacation with my sweetie Mike, and we were sleeping in a real, comfortable bed in an apartment on Martha's Vineyard. I should add that before the vacay we had gone to a cousin's wedding. The night before we had unsuccessfully shared a couch, so this bed really ruled. Anyway, I had this dream in the morning:  

In the beginning, I had to choose a frozen novelty dessert product (I had done this in real life earlier that day). I don't remember what I chose, but someone I was with chose the Choco Taco. Then, later, our desserts became our superhero identities.   

Then I was at a wedding. A mixture of friends and family were there. It was in a city, and I was on an outside porch on a high floor of the building, talking to the bride, when some sort of big fight broke out. I went inside to the ballroom and there was pandemonium. I think I was talking to my Uncle Paul, trying to figure out what was going on, when for some reason I became Choco Taco, Superhero. (Sometimes I was looking at myself, and yes, I was a giant Choco Taco with funny cartoon legs and face.)  

So then, (I saw this in a sort-of cartoony way, looking down from up above the room), these people come in and address the crowd. At first I thought they were from the hotel or whatever, trying to calm everyone down. Then their leader spoke, and I realized a sinister plot was afoot. She was a black, shiny, plastic, faceless, talking mannequin, wearing a wedding dress and veil/tiara. Her cohorts were also wearing wedding dresses but they looked more human. This is all I remember her saying but there was probably more: "Hey everybody! My name is Identity Theft! Let's all play a game!" Her voice was high and grating but trying to sound really friendly. 

Everyone was mesmerized by her and her gang and started doing whatever she wanted, although I don't know what that was, because I, Choco Taco, was trying to get my superhero friends to help me stop her evil plot. They were also staring at her, unsuspecting, until I spoke to them. There were about 5 or 7 of them all standing next to each other, and I said something like, "There you are, X Friends! I think this Identity Theft is up to no good! We have to stop her!" The only person I recognize now as being one of them was my friend Stevie—I think he was supporting my plan when a girl on the end, whose name i forget, said something like, "What do you mean? She's trying to help! Identity Theft is a nice person!" It was then I realized that this was an imposter speaking, not a real X Friend, so I pushed her out the window.

I wish I could remember what else happened exactly, but I know that the X Friends and I somehow worked together to vanquish Identity Theft and her band of evildoers. It involved a lot of dramatic jumping and falling out of windows, and saving innocent bystanders from harm. At the end I saw myself walking down the street with someone, maybe Stevie, who was dressed like Robin from the old Batman and Robin TV show, and I was starting to say something along the lines of "Well, we sure showed Identity Theft that she can't go around messing up our friends' weddings!" when I woke up.

Best superhero dream ever.

Sharon, even in Martha's Vineyard you manage to channel Philadelphia, birthplace not only of the Choco Taco, but also innumerable other American working class frozen dessert heroes such as Mister Softee and "wooder ice." Clearly you dreamt this up not in freezing January but in balmy August when ice cream is more like a super hero than a mere confectionary denizen lurking in the frigid nether regions of a large kitchen appliance. I however grew up in the region that consumes one third of the nation's ice cream (New England) where the locals tend to eat as much of it in winter as in summer, and your dream consequentially sent me on an arduous trek through the freezing cold to snap up a pint of KOV Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert.

But enough about my sweet tooth. Let's talk about your dream. Right after we talk about what you call "real life":

Weddings tend to fall into two realms. There are weddings of those who we choose to have in our lives (i.e. amigas, buddies, chums) and weddings of those people assigned to us at birth (you guessed it: family). My hunch is that your cousin's wedding wasn't the utopian stress-free love ceremony that you had hoped for, but something a little more taxing, laced with the occasional batch of friendly mandates delivered in high, grating tones. And you brought a date to such an affair? Well, that's just asking for it. The fam took one look at that guy in his Sunday best and—whether actually verbalized or not—popped the question on your behalf: "So, Sharon, when are you and Mike taking a one-way trip down this here aisle?" And is that really a path you want to take? Mm, maybe someday, but you'd rather have it your own way—not with the pomp and circumstance of a traditional church-and-priest thing, but with your own blasted pomp and the circumstance of your own damn choosing. Amen.

In the dream there you are, back at the wedding, and you've given yourself your just desserts and they are cool to the touch—a calm before the storm, selected carefully like a hors d'œuvre platter of magical weapons before the apocalypse. The internalized tension of the "real life" wedding becomes what you describe as "pandemonium" in your dream wedding (and for some reason I'm picturing the wedding reception scene from What the Bleep Do We Know? set in Bruce Wayne's penthouse fundraiser from last summer's Dark Knight movie). Everyone's emotions have risen to the surface. Then the pressure from your family materializes, manifested as a set of showroom dummies who seek to steal your identity—your individuality, right down to the features on your face! They want everyone to just play along with their game, to put on a dress and look pretty, even if what's underneath is just ersatz and plastic. They try to make you fall in line, Sharon, but little do they know that you have a super hero identity that cannot be stolen, and your odd number of freaky friends are there to back you up in your quest to resist! And way up on the tip-top floor of some fancy-pants high rise, your choices are either to just go with the flow, or to FIGHT!

There are those who would betray you—a 6th or 8th associate who is not in fact an X Friend but an ex-friend to you and your ideals and she must thus be defenestrated from your team. Then there are those who help you in your struggle for liberation, such as the campy Boy Wonder Stevie (who, as Robin, embodies the very antithesis of heteronormativity in our society) adding color commentary to Sharon Choco Taco's protagony of play-by-play narrative.

Now the burning question: Why "Choco Taco?" Well, of course you know that the term carries with it a variety of sexual connotations that I decline from exploring on this blog and, as a matter of principle, feel that resorting to innuendoes such as these is the cheapest way out of thorough dream reading. I prefer to think that the crammed couch-surf with your sweetie the previous night may have had some uncomfortable, yet intimate, taco-like quality to it. Also, the Choco Taco is far from the run-of-the-mill soft-serve vanilla cone or hardline water ice: she is an innovator—an individual who packs both a mighty punch and a peanutty crunch. She is, in short, you alter ego, and you are her secret identity, which can never be stolen.

Take Me Black Where I Belong

2009-01-02T07:55:00.009-05:00

The second of the 31 Dreamers is Kim who currently lives in Okinawa, Japan. Kim's dream:

So I was trying to get home to my dad's house, AKA what used to be my parents' house before my mom died and what is now owned by someone else because my dad lost the house. Foreclosure cit-ay! But the long country road my parents' house was on was instead Naha's own Kokusai (AKA "international") Street, which is cheesy and horrible like Haight St. [San Francisco] or South St. in Philly. And so the Tennessee road was lined with karaoke and snack bars and shit, but the people on the street were American frat boys who kept making fun of me and I couldn't figure out why. I blacked out on the walk home and starting running barefoot, kept trying to get there but the road never ended. I found a bathroom and went in and was in a stall and a Japanese girl in a kimono was in there, speaking to me in Japanese, and kept picking up pieces of shit off the floor (that were mine) and her face was also covered in my own shit. When I was leaving the bathroom I saw that I was wearing a leopard print skirt and my face was made up in the Japanese "ganguro" style. Insane! I never made it home.

Kim, some years back I read an article by Joe Wood in Harvard's African diasporic journal Transition entitled "The Yellow Negro," about the subset of ganguro (Japanese for "blackface") who specifically parrot African-American styles of appearance and culture. Transition's byline for the article:

Like their white American counterparts, Japanese kids dig hip-hop, graffiti, and break dancing. In the clubs of Tokyo’s Roppongi district, however, what separates the real from the poser is blackface: darkened skin and curls. Joe Wood wonders whether the Japanese minstrels are trying to be Janet Jackson . . . or Al Jolson.

Then there are the ganguro who darken their skin but lighten their hair (see picture) giving the appearance not of Japanese girls who are trying to look black, but either as Japanese girls who are trying to look like white girls who are trying to look black (e.g. the "orange" tan job prevalent on American college campuses), or as Japanese girls who are trying to look like black girls who are trying to look white (e.g. straight and/or blond "not natural" hair that all the hair salons and dollar stores in my neighborhood specialize in). With the painful complexities and history of race and racism in the U.S., this has been an all but taboo subject outside of academia, a trend that's likely to change as we see more and more people with a visibly "trans-racial" identity (cf: transgender issues were far more invisible a decade ago than they are today). In Japan—a country without a history of Europeans enslaving Africans, and whose social and popular culture is both hyper-accelerated and über-homogenous—is it little wonder that ganguro is what it is? Well, yes, it is a wonder. Now that that's explained, let's move on to your dream:

Clearly Kim, there are places that you want to go back to that are no longer there: a house that doesn't belong to your family anymore; a parent who has left the world of the living; a country road that's been swallowed by commercial sprawl. You want to reconnect with the history that you desire—your feet are bare, making contact with the earth under which bygone things are buried. You are running but you cannot achieve your goal because what's gone is gone forever.

At the same time you are conflicted in your own role and identity in these matters. Remember when that Tennessee country road seemed so blasé and the idea of Haight Street or South Streets seemed so cool? A lot of alienated young people had the same idea, and so the Haight Streets and Kokusai Streets of the world were created by and for all the people who just didn't fit in to where they came from. These places were probably pretty great before the subcultures that birthed them reached critical mass and were co-opted to become the marketing schemes that they are today. And in the eyes of many, these places are still great—look at how many people flock to South Street in Philadelphia on a Saturday night! But they are not your people, and this is a past that you disavow.

And now your dream has you in Japan, and one of the locals is picking up your own fecal matter and showing it to you—reflecting it back at you like a mirror. And then you see yourself as someone who has bought into the vicious cycle of identity consumerism: a European-American, trying to be a Japanese person, trying to look like an African-American, who might be trying to become . . . European-American.

The dream's imagery is a bit fatalistic, but the message is positive. You obviously recognize the pitfalls of this cycle and so eschew participation in it. You are surrounded by people who bombard you with a fratboyesque cluelessness, yet you stay strong. You know where your roots are and celebrate their strength. It is true that the shortest path homeward is to never leave the house in the first place. But you are wise to travel—to see the world and experience different ways of doing things, and for this reason you perceive the changes in the places that you've left and are more critical of them. You are also more critical of your own changes and the person who you once were—you want to reclaim the desireble parts while shedding the detritus. You want to find that perfect place, free from bogusness and cacophony of karoke bars and fast food. And so you keep running, non-stop, to find your beloved Tennessee country road.

The Rainmaker

2009-01-01T14:33:00.005-05:00

Last year when I saw bell hooks speak she reminded us all that she reads a book a day. I figure I can at least open a new book each day and read a sufficient amount of it. Today's book is Art & Fear: Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It's a good book to crack open on the first day of the new year and a good introduction to today's dream.

The first of the 31 Dreamers is Neily from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Neily writes:

I had a dream my friend Tom won the Nobel Prize for Science for effecting significant cultural change in China (using a scientific method of some sort). He was simultaneously elected president of Italy on a cooperative platform.

At his Nobel Prize acceptance/presidential inauguration speech, held inside a mostly white, cathedral-like space, he wore a bishop hat and plain street clothes. Instead of giving a speech, he orchestrated a miracle which was that it rained indoors and abstract images were mysteriously projected on the wall above him. Everyone in attendance was in awe.

When I asked Tom what he did to earn the Nobel Prize, he demonstrated how he would remove red bricks from a wall or a structure without being detected...it didn't make any sense to me.

And then I woke up!
Thoughts?

Thoughts indeed, Neily. As one year draws to a close and another opens, all of us have thoughts around the events of the past 12 months and how these will shape the future. Several subjects highlighted in the news from 2008 have materialized in your dream: Nobel Laureates; goings on in China; a president being elected on a more progressive platform; upheaval in Italy’s government—your dream reads like the ingredient list to a week’s worth of the BBC World Service only with some names of people and places jumbled. Your friend Tom must be quite a fellow—the three Nobel Prizes in the sciences were split between nine different people in 2008 for work in subatomic physics, human immunodeficiency viruses and fluorescent green proteins, yet Tom takes all for something we can only imagine (perhaps harnessing the seismic power of the Sichuan Earthquake to liberate the people of Tibet?) and still has time to oust Italy’s right-wing coalition through promises of direct democracy. Maybe if a million of us just close our eyes and think real hard we can get your dream to actually come true. Are you doing it? I am.

Onto the meaning of your dream: Tom is cast as a wonderful man, capable of working miracles and helping others through the marvels of science and cooperation. You obviously hold a lot of respect and fondness for this person while seeing him as something of a hip authority figure—the presidential bishop in jeans and a t-shirt who is so cool that he manages to one-up Al Gore by actually making it rain as part of his PowerPoint presentation. This spectacle may be spectacular, but you're not 100% sold. Is it all show and little substance? While the rest of us sit in church (by the way, was it the walls or the people in the cathedral who were mostly white?) and shout our praises, you ask Tom to explain himself a little more deeply, and he nonchalantly tries to impress you with his Jenga skills (see picture). Okay, so Tom’s quite the fun-loving gamemaster as well as the people’s liberator, but what is he really playing at? That, Neily, is the question in your dream. You like and respect your friend and his casual playful ways, but do you sometimes feel like you’re being played? Maybe not. Perhaps your dream about Tom is a about your own desire to step up to the pulpit and fulfill your own dream, and Tom's role is that of an inspiring friend and mentor from whom you can learn to make it rain.

Neaily, I hope that you'll share this with Tom and ask him to send a dream in to 31 Dreamers.

31 Dreams from 31 Dreamers

2008-12-30T03:48:00.009-05:00

2009 promises many things. The earth promises to rotate on its axis 365¼ times—the same number of times that it rotated on its axis in 2008. The sun promises to allow the earth to complete another revolution around it over a similar period of time. The moon promises to remain in its orbit, circumnavigating the earth every 27.2 days, repeating its cycle of lunar phases (from our perspective here on Earth) every 29.5 days. All this amounts to the promise of 365 days haphazardly organized into 12 months. Many humans have promised that the first of these months shall contain 31 of these days and that this premiere month shall be known to us in the English-speaking world as "January." And this January promises another thing: an annual tradition called "FUN-A-DAY."

FUN-A-DAY takes the concept of the New Year's Resolution —the promise that we make ourselves at the onset of a new calendar year—and turns it into, well, fun. What exactly is fun? In the notions of many who take part in FUN-A-DAY, fun is art, or, perhaps, art is fun. Therefore it stands to reason that when we make art, we make fun. Even those who try to make something fun that is not art end up making their fun into art through its processes of deliberation, execution, documentation and exhibition. One friend of mine flossed her teeth everyday for the first FUN-A-DAY in 2005. Is that art? Some may argue that that flossing one's teeth is not even fun. My friend decided that it was fun, and so she flossed and she took a photo of herself flossing each day. After 31 days that yielded 31 photographs of 31 flosses, she created an accordion-style montage of the series (see picture), which fit, naturally, into the now-empty dental floss case. Opening the case I was treated to an experience that was, well, fun, to say the least. And then I went home and flossed my teeth, thinking fondly of my friend, which was fun too.

For the 2nd Annual FUN-A-DAY show in 2006, I dreamt a dream each day, woke up, put the dream into words and pictures and offered an analysis of what the dream meant. 31 dreams, dreamt by 1 dreamer. That was fun. Other people often come to me with their dreams, putting them into words and pictures for me, and then ask for an analysis of what their dreams mean. This is even more fun because there are 2 of us engaged in conversation about the dream. So for this year's FUN-A-DAY I'll be collecting 31 dreams from 31 dreamers and offering an analysis of each. The dreams will be posted here as well as at the 5th Annual FUN-A-DAY show in Philadelphia. Anyone (this means you) is welcome to send in a dream so long as it is understood that these dreams will be subject to public scrutiny, discourse and analysis from me and anyone reading this blog or attending the FUN-A-DAY exhibition. The lucky 31 Dreamers will receive a limited edition bound collection of the 31 Dreams, as well as notoriety and infamy for their innermost subconscious thoughts. Won't that be fun?

For more information on FUN-A-DAY, please visit the ArtClash website.

31 DREAMERS

Dream Blog Wakes Up

A Waking Dream of Greater Vision

31 Dreamers: Live in Vermont

31 Dreamers at Fun-A-Day

The Dream of the Drop

Top Readers' Picks

My Favorite Dreams You Sent In:

The Mad Crapper

Trepidatious Trainhopping

The Subconscious Songwriters Union

The Long Arm of Gravity's Law

Providence...POSSESSED! Part 3: Puppy Uprising

Providence...POSSESSED! Part 2: You'll Bee Back

Providence...POSSESSED! Part 1: The Oaten Exorcist

When The Cat Flips The Bird

Брокколи

Costco Cookies & Melamine Milk

Ren Faire Nightmare

U2...Can Be President

Empty Tents & Barrel Rolls: A 20-Year Dream

That Wriggled and Wiggled and Jiggled Inside Her

A Worm's-Eye View of the World

Suspendered Sentence

You'll Sleep With The Fishes: a double dreamer feature

Teenage Ninja Brushes With Killer Whale

This Is The Grassroots Work I'm Gonna Do With You

Unite And Take Rover

From The Fleece Of An Iron Sheep

Let Sleeping Dreams Lie

2-for-1 Special

This Little Light of Mines

Giraffic Park

Tandem to Camden

Yiddish From Rubbish

Plea For A Rickshaw

Choco Taco Thwarts Identity Theft

Take Me Black Where I Belong

The Rainmaker

31 Dreams from 31 Dreamers