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

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

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.