Dream August 5, 2011 Diaspora Doorway
I should have written this earlier, because it has faded.
I was standing on a barren beach, my head thick with memories of having walked for days and nights without rest. My knees made rending and cracking noises. Ahead, high on the beach near colossal sand dunes, was a small service station. The building was constructed of searing white concrete blocks and was bathed in fluorescent light whose source was nowhere to be seen.
A slender dark hand rose up from the sand at the side of the station, waving at me, then it vanished. Stepping closer, I discovered that the station had no doors, and the hand had emerged from a deep stairwell plunging deep into the sand. I descended the stairs and came out on a vast platform glowing with that mysterious light, a wide corridor ending in a glass wall that faced an indigo expanse bristling with stars.
“Where Earth and Heaven meet,” a voice said. A beautiful woman of African descent appeared before me. She grabbed my hand and led me through a threshold to the left. “I need your help.”
On the other side of the door, I was struck by the vision of mountain peaks thrusting up into the black of space through the glass, a column that seemed to stretch into infinity.
The woman faced me. Her features were mobile, shifting from one facial landscape to another, settling into hers for a few moments and changing again. She gestured to the wall opposite the glass. It was a bland, plaster surface; a small square with a burned out light bulb was centered low on the wall.
“Will you change the bulb?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. From my shirt pocket, I pulled out an incandescent light bulb. I changed the bulbs. Once I screwed in the new bulb, it flashed on, a radiance that burned my hand. Its light was like the sun, and I had to turn away from the brilliance.
Something was growing from below the glass at an alarming rate and I stared in awe. Fifteen enormous chutes, or curved tracks, unfurled beyond the glass to the right of the mountain peaks. They stretched out straight for thousands of feet, then curved gently until the tracks were completely vertical, ending a few thousand feet into the abyss of space.
“Thank you,” a man’s voice said. A very pale man with red hair stood where the woman had been. He approached me and each millisecond a new form emerged from his body, human and otherwise. These life forms rapidly populated the station, milling about, then descended a wide stairwell that opened in the door, leading out to the chutes.
The pale man extended his hand and I shook it. “My name is D. D. Wilkinson,” he said. “Your assistance has been invaluable.”
He turned away to position himself before a control podium that had risen from the floor before the glass. His body drained familiar, but more strange, beings each moment. One of those forms was a professor of mine from Graduate School. She saw me and waved, smiling.
She said to me, “We’re ready to go,” and indicated two ghostlike women who had also fell out of Wilkinson.
I gaped. “You’ve known about this for how long?” I said.
One of the women, who favored Winona Ryder with too much makeup, said, “I’ve been visiting her room since I was a seed.”
They laughed and went down the stairs.
Outside the glass, the chutes were filling up with transparent bullet-like ships, packed with humans and alien life forms. Wilkinson pulled a lever and the first row of ships fired down the track and up into the inky black of space to homes beyond the scope of my understanding. After that initial departure, Wilkinson captained a continual succession of those ships into space, their coronas of atmospheric burning reflecting off the peaks of the mountain.
“I didn’t know that light bulb was in my pocket,” I said.
Wilkinson didn’t turn around. “I didn’t either.”
“What does the D. D. stand for?”
“Diaspora Doorway.”
Dream Over
The Irony Diet
On one of many rambles through the telepathic experiment we call the INTERNET, I came across a fairly recent approach to eating called the Paleolithic diet. I suppose it’s not that recent, some 2.5 million years old. However, most of humanity have long abandoned that menu. So, an old fad that found purchase again in the 1970s, like the future rabid fame of Vanilla Ice on Planet Badrap year 6500.
Endorsed by a gastroenterologist with a name almost as difficult as his career title, the diet is a reflection of what Paleolithic humans ate, the hunter-gatherer meal plan prior to the advent of the agricultural revolution (I always imagine corn and wheat and rye forcibly TAKING OVER). Choice foods include meat, fish, fruit, nuts, seeds and vegetables. If you eat grains, legumes, sugar, SALT, dairy, potatoes and alcohol, Slarbar the ascetic caveman will clomp you.
NO BEER AND PEANUTS SAY SLARBAR! YOU GET HEAD CLOMPED!
Of course, this meat rich collection is very high in iron. It’s irony. But it’s also full of irony.
Can you climb a palm tree and find a degree at the center of a coconut? Is it possible to learn how to create a written language from the heart of the elk you’ve just slain for dinner? While spending all day searching the woods for tasty roots and mushrooms, is there any time to reflect and measure your strengths and weaknesses and imagine what you want to be when you grow up? And without salt, brother, you’re forced to hunt again in a few days or your family will starve.
Scientists discovered the fossils and other traces of Paleolithic Man, not by reading the detailed journals of prehistoric humanity, but by inheriting the gift of expendable time made possible by civilization. Scientists revealed what Paleolithic humans ate at the peaks of mountains of history, peaks thinly supported by years of personal study and experience and time, but deeper and wider down by the written thoughts of countless predecessors encapsulated in ponderings which take time, time, time.
And from where does this bountiful time to think and build cities and schools and universities and hospitals come? Shaping the focus of the anthropologist?
The farmer is the base of the mountain, and the foods he plants are its deep roots. The barley, wheat, rye, corn, lentils, peas, beans and potatoes. The milk from the sheep, goats and cows. The salt to cure the back of the pig so the family can have bacon for days and days. Beer from the barley to enjoy and alter the experience of men.
The farmer and his crops froze time for humanity. These foods that the Paleolithic diet denies are the benefactors of modern civilization, science and specialization.
It's the Irony Diet.
I am laughing.
Modern mathematics did not arrive in a vacuum of constant hunger and the efforts of every individual to locate food. It emerged from a store of grain, olive oil, wine and sausages cured with salt.
Effectively, here’s an equation for the Paleolithic diet:
-1 + 1 = 0.
Endorsed by a gastroenterologist with a name almost as difficult as his career title, the diet is a reflection of what Paleolithic humans ate, the hunter-gatherer meal plan prior to the advent of the agricultural revolution (I always imagine corn and wheat and rye forcibly TAKING OVER). Choice foods include meat, fish, fruit, nuts, seeds and vegetables. If you eat grains, legumes, sugar, SALT, dairy, potatoes and alcohol, Slarbar the ascetic caveman will clomp you.
NO BEER AND PEANUTS SAY SLARBAR! YOU GET HEAD CLOMPED!
Of course, this meat rich collection is very high in iron. It’s irony. But it’s also full of irony.
Can you climb a palm tree and find a degree at the center of a coconut? Is it possible to learn how to create a written language from the heart of the elk you’ve just slain for dinner? While spending all day searching the woods for tasty roots and mushrooms, is there any time to reflect and measure your strengths and weaknesses and imagine what you want to be when you grow up? And without salt, brother, you’re forced to hunt again in a few days or your family will starve.
Scientists discovered the fossils and other traces of Paleolithic Man, not by reading the detailed journals of prehistoric humanity, but by inheriting the gift of expendable time made possible by civilization. Scientists revealed what Paleolithic humans ate at the peaks of mountains of history, peaks thinly supported by years of personal study and experience and time, but deeper and wider down by the written thoughts of countless predecessors encapsulated in ponderings which take time, time, time.
And from where does this bountiful time to think and build cities and schools and universities and hospitals come? Shaping the focus of the anthropologist?
The farmer is the base of the mountain, and the foods he plants are its deep roots. The barley, wheat, rye, corn, lentils, peas, beans and potatoes. The milk from the sheep, goats and cows. The salt to cure the back of the pig so the family can have bacon for days and days. Beer from the barley to enjoy and alter the experience of men.
The farmer and his crops froze time for humanity. These foods that the Paleolithic diet denies are the benefactors of modern civilization, science and specialization.
It's the Irony Diet.
I am laughing.
Modern mathematics did not arrive in a vacuum of constant hunger and the efforts of every individual to locate food. It emerged from a store of grain, olive oil, wine and sausages cured with salt.
Effectively, here’s an equation for the Paleolithic diet:
-1 + 1 = 0.
Libraries, Harry Potter, Lord of the Flies and Censoring Evilmother
I worked in a children's and YA library for a year, and picked up lots of those books and read the first few pages. So many placate the reader as if placating an abysmally stupid little person. "Let's Junie B Jones them to death."
I recall several parents strictly forbade their children to open "the dark covers of Harry Potter." Because witches are evil and evil is contagious as influenza in a warm, wet climate. One homeschooling mother would bring in her child weekly. His legs and arms were shackled and pinioned by chains woven out of misinterpreted verses from the Old Testament. Kid made a racket coming into the library and up the stairs. His mother had a pale, stern face that promoted sterility and fear. In her spare time she tortured question marks.
One day while Mother was distracted by a fanciful picture of an alien, the kid drudged his way to the YA shelf where I was putting away paperbacks. He asked for a good story. I picked out Lord of the Flies and told him it was about a bunch of schoolboys his age who wash up on an island and then proceed to gradually go wackball nuts.
As soon as he touched the book, his Mother's question mark alarm went off. The poor kid's chains turned molten red, and he gibbered in pain, dropping Mr. Golding's wonder as he collapsed to the floor. A black shell like chitin emerged from a pore in the back of his neck and cocooned his entire head while he jerked on the floor like an epileptic cockroach.
His Mother glided over to us like a Sith Lord. She hooked a silver leash onto a loop on the cocoon and dragged the boy past me, down the stairs. She left an absence of curiosity in her wake. All of my good ideas were singed away like sweat in a frying pan.
Digression aside, I agree with what you wrote, Gary. Although I haven't read Twilight, I have read Rowling's stuff, and I'm guessing that it isn't just that Meyer's characters may have weak motivation, Rowling is probably just a better, more inventive writer. The Harry Potter books have tons of references and descriptions of humdrum high school moments, but Rowling's shining feat is weaving an original wind to revive that humdrum and make it quite, quite wonderful.
The best writers resuscitate.
I recall several parents strictly forbade their children to open "the dark covers of Harry Potter." Because witches are evil and evil is contagious as influenza in a warm, wet climate. One homeschooling mother would bring in her child weekly. His legs and arms were shackled and pinioned by chains woven out of misinterpreted verses from the Old Testament. Kid made a racket coming into the library and up the stairs. His mother had a pale, stern face that promoted sterility and fear. In her spare time she tortured question marks.
One day while Mother was distracted by a fanciful picture of an alien, the kid drudged his way to the YA shelf where I was putting away paperbacks. He asked for a good story. I picked out Lord of the Flies and told him it was about a bunch of schoolboys his age who wash up on an island and then proceed to gradually go wackball nuts.
As soon as he touched the book, his Mother's question mark alarm went off. The poor kid's chains turned molten red, and he gibbered in pain, dropping Mr. Golding's wonder as he collapsed to the floor. A black shell like chitin emerged from a pore in the back of his neck and cocooned his entire head while he jerked on the floor like an epileptic cockroach.
His Mother glided over to us like a Sith Lord. She hooked a silver leash onto a loop on the cocoon and dragged the boy past me, down the stairs. She left an absence of curiosity in her wake. All of my good ideas were singed away like sweat in a frying pan.
Digression aside, I agree with what you wrote, Gary. Although I haven't read Twilight, I have read Rowling's stuff, and I'm guessing that it isn't just that Meyer's characters may have weak motivation, Rowling is probably just a better, more inventive writer. The Harry Potter books have tons of references and descriptions of humdrum high school moments, but Rowling's shining feat is weaving an original wind to revive that humdrum and make it quite, quite wonderful.
The best writers resuscitate.
Dream: Beck Interview
Had a dream that I interviewed the musician Beck while in a car which was driven by two chaps who had no idea who he was. Their idea of good music was discs one buys at the dentist. Beck was Beck in the dream, but he resembled the British actor Martin Freeman. I talked to Beck about the polarization of his music, how many of his songs trawl through a beautiful despair while others are light and ridiculous. He was reluctant to talk about himself; he briefly told me how he got his start in Libya, then put a Peter Gabriel CD in that had a Rolling Stones label.
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