A Worm's-Eye View of the World

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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."

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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

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.

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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

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.