The Long Arm of Gravity's Law

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."

U2...Can Be President

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.