Dream - Cliffside Writing Cabin?

Cliffside Writing Cabin?


A disjointed dream. I was attending a sort of writer’s workshop and general getaway at a cabin situated at the edge of a cliff hanging high over the lapping waters of a cave ocean. The cliff on which the cabin was situated was the topmost of several cliffs, each one stretched out farther than the one above.

A prominent fantasist was the guest writer to lead the workshop, and in the dream – he was surly and quick to anger. While the cabin was inhabited by writers, it was also crammed with squatters. There were multiple bedrooms, but not many bathrooms. One jerk had taken up the back bedroom with his small family, and that room had a bathroom to itself. If anyone wanted to use that bathroom, he sneered at them and called them sick and gruesome names.

At one point in the dream, I stood in the dark street in front of the cabin with others. The guest writer was engaged in an argument with another man. It escalated, and the two men proceeded to beat the fucking shit out of each other. While they punched and kicked, they started crying. I was so embarrassed, so I crept away toward the only entrance to the cabin, which was in the rear, just a few yards from the cliff. The stone steps to the door were piled awkwardly on a buckled hillock of land. I saw it and immediately knew that because of my dipshit leg and balance, I might fall. So I watched several people enter the cabin, looking at me like the what the fuck are you waiting for dude?

Finally I tried to ascend the steps, and the world TILTED. I pinwheeled my arms and fell to the ground, sliding down loose gravel toward the edge. Before I pitched over the edge, someone grabbed my feet, and began hauling me up. It was my brother, saving me again. He pulled me upright and said, “You almost fell.”

We stood there silent for a few minutes, staring down at the black water. Enormous ripples disturbed the surface, as if something colossal moved below.

I looked around in panic. I was suddenly worried about my sister. “Where the hell is she? I haven’t seen her for hours.” He didn’t know, either, so we began a search for her. We found an access path down the cliffs that led to the water, and we descended calling out her name. At the bottom near the breakwater, we saw no trace of her, both of us horrified that she may have fallen. Someone called from above, “Your sister is at Wal-Mart! She’ll be here soon.”

We exhaled in relief.
Far out in the cave ocean, something positively gigantic broke through the surface. Four ebony sperm whales rose up, each one ten times as large as a normal specimen. The whales were attached to each other, head to head and tail to tail. When they cleared the water, they transformed into elephants, the color of coal and each the size of Tolkien’s oliphaunts. They broke apart and charged away into the inky recesses of the cave, the water supporting them as if it was shimmering, black glass.

Dreamshift.

We were back in the cabin. It was crowded with writers, strangers, friends, and family. A creature walked in, smoking a cigarette, a three-foot-tall Ganesha. His packoderm skin was heavily pebbled and black like the oliphaunts we had seen on the cave water. He blended into the nearest conversation with ease.
The crowd in the cabin seemed to multiply, knotting up. A man I didn’t know pushed through from the back, his eyes focused on mini-Ganesha.
“What the fuck is that thing?” He pointed at Ganesha, his finger going from head to toe and back again. “You must have some sort of BIRTH DEFECT! How do you even let yourself be alive?”
Ganesha smiled, didn’t say anything. He took a long drag on his cigarette and stretched his trunk out to the man’s face, and blew the smoke out, enveloping the asshole’s head. When the smoke had dissipated, so had the man’s head and neck. His body was still, with a blank space above his shoulders.

With one of his many arms, Ganesha gestured to a shadow in the cabin, and a woman I had once cared for emerged from a doorway. She looked at me for a moment. I could see my image reflected in the wetness of her pupil, and it swiftly deteriorated, and her recognition of me was gone. She leapt into the air and started to dance around the crowd, dancing alone, weaving through the people maze. I squinted my eyes and didn’t know who she was.
I wanted to watch the cave water again, so I went out the door.
Someone had fixed the steps.

Dream Over

Transition

Transition


Our robotic coal mine canary runs on a solar charged battery. Cheese Kurls have been rising out of the foyer carpet for five days now, and Shibbety the Maid avoids that room. His army-issue canteen is a holy chalice that shines like a green angel in the catacombs. It’s tough when you have three shoulders and a jelly arm. We drink waters out of the radiator when our stomachs wants to boils the boll weevil. A lazy river has no place in Becky’s kindergarten cafeteria, Uncle Ragout! Your dairy barn dress design will win first place for sure, maybe last place if the buttons fall off, and I hope they don’t because everyone here under the stage wants YOU to win. She dropped some collagen in his Cheerio bowl when he reached for the butter hat.


Transition

Why is Donald Trump scary as President of the United States of America?

I was asked this question.

My response.



He's scary because he's not bright enough to be President of the United States; he's scary because every interaction he's had with the public since January 20 has been that of an impoverished mind obsessed with himself and how he still harps on media coverage of his winning even though he won; he's scary because his henchwoman Conway told the public there are "alternative facts"; he's scary because he talks of war like it's a child's game, a cartoon in which massive death is not real; he's scary because the energy behind every action we've seen him do comes from Bannon, a smart, educated Nazi bent on division and the dissolution of democracy; he's scary because he convinced a great deal of the American public that he cares about them, when he only gives a fuck about himself. As for the cultivated opinion of celebrities? Some of those people are obviously idiots, reality show stars, much like Trump himself, a celebrity who starred in The Apprentice. But if you love any books or music or movies or whatever, "entertainers" give to the public, and many have imaginations and their minds are cultivated to think critically about issues. They are not automatons programmed with entertainment. It takes thought and a lot of fucking work.

Don't Break Your Back on Alternative Facts

One of my early memories of thinking about thinking occurred in elementary school when we were taught about the distinction between fact and opinion. It was a lesson that burned itself into my mind. A fact is a solid construct that exists outside and independent of our minds. While a fact may be a product of the mind and body, like a desk that’s made with wood instead of plastic, once it’s produced, more than one person can look at the desk, touch it, inspect it, demolish and examine its components and understand and agree that yes, that desk is made of wood instead of plastic.

An opinion is the manifestation of an individual’s mind, an individual’s perspective, a butterfly floating within that space with wings composed of the world filtered through the sieve of that person’s every sense and thought. One person may have an opinion about the desk that contests the opinion of another.

For example:

BLOBBY says: That desk is ugly as pluck.
GORPO says: That desk has been sanded so finely. It is an object of beautiful utility. I want to sit down and write a story on the desk about how
BLOBBY is a festering moron.
BLOBBY says: GORPO has the aesthetic sensibilities of the Salty Slug Club.

But if either BLOBBY or GORPO try to contest that the desk is made of plastic instead of wood, such a statement is neither fact nor opinion.

Saying the desk is made of plastic instead of wood is FICTION.

One can say that it is his opinion that the desk is made of plastic, but every other person who has seen and touched it and recognizes it is made of wood is obligated by FACT to conclude that poor bastard is either LYING or CRAZY.

Alternate facts are FICTION or INSANITY.

Facts allow humans to live in a sane world in which we can communicate and agree upon a foundation that is beyond argument. Facts are the reality that prevent us from slipping into solipsistic MADNESS.