Dream Interpretation, part 2

Posted by Leon:

just awoke from the craziest barrage of headcold-induced dreams, including but not limited to (and in no particular order) telling Lindsay to run off to the hospital for her "beginnicals", listening to a moth flutter around his ears before it crawled inside his head and emerged from a nostril in a caterpillar form, feeding the dog a peach and having him bark back in a southern accent, and ordering a "Tebow steak" at a restaraunt only to have the waiter/angel cross his arms, shake his head and murmur "tsk, tsk, tsks" as he ascended into the heavens.

My interpretation:

God, where to even begin! You've got several of the most basic mythological archetypes there. 1. The creation story- lindsay going to the hospital (where we all "begin") to get her "beginnicals"... certainly something that would somehow shed light on our strange emergence into the world. Can our emergence be explained? Not in any normal way, so a word must be invented. 2. The peach- forbidden fruit? I associate southern accent with racism. Incorrect sustenance (dogs don't eat peaches) leads to negative effects. Have you been eating well? Is a lack of nutrition or bodily maintenance leading to a Pandora's Box of health problems, like your sickness? 3. The transformation of the hero- a simple moth fluttering about enters your head and emerges in glory, transformed, not unlike a Native American sweat lodge or a bar mitzvah... but obviously, and oddly, your HEAD is the medium! It symbolizes your own act of becoming. When I think of moths I think of the woods, camping, and them flying into the fire. Brings up issues of duty, compulsion, and action- not unlike your own act of becoming, in the woods, running the trails, getting faster, rising through the ranks, becoming more than you were, but also sacrificing your body, in a way. 4. Which brings us to- the rise to transcendence. It's as if Freud himself wrote the Tebow sequence, with it's transubstantiation metaphor, the chiding of the one thinking he can judge himself worthy of entry to the heavens, and then the rapture. The rapture in runners' terms I suppose would be losing the race, getting left behind. You have misgivings about your rising stature and your ability to maintain it. Remember that existentially we make our own rules, we are not beholden to rules from above. Transcendence is not given, it's taken. We are free. Free to run as fast as we want, or not at all. The journey is what's important, not the beginnicals and not the endicals- THE JOURNEY. Run free Leon.

The New Liquor Store Cashier

I just had the strangest cashier ever. I put two bottles of wine up on the counter at the liquor store and he said “Can I help you?”

It took a couple seconds to figure out how to respond- “I want to buy these.”

He stared right at the money in my hand and asked, “Do you want to pay with cash or a credit card?”

I held up my hand slightly and said “Cash.”

He kept looking at it and asked me “How much?”

Again, how do I answer? I’m trying to not be rude but everything he's saying is completely backwards. Obviously it’s his first day on the job, but how does he not know this routine? Certainly he’s bought things in a store before, probably thousands of times. The customer puts things on the counter, the cashier rings them up and tells the customer how much is owed. How has it been this much trouble up to this point? I asked him, “What do I owe?”

He looked, “$14.71.”

I handed him $15 and wondered what else was going to happen.

He rang it up and said rather confidently, “You’re change is twenty-nine cents.” He had said it too early though, he still needed to put all the money away and get the change. A minute later he handed me a quarter and four pennies. Except he didn’t really hand it to me. I wouldn’t say that he “tossed” it either, but whatever he did resulted in two of the pennies falling to the floor.

I picked them up and he handed me the bag. As I grabbed it he asked me if I wanted it double-bagged. I said no, realizing later that this was a huge mistake. My wine bottles made it back home intact, but I should have taken him up on his offer just to see what else would have happened. Would have he put them in a trash bag? Would have he then have asked if I wanted it triple-bagged? Paper-bagged? Tea-bagged? No way, but something very weird would have happened and I wish I knew what it was.

I know one thing though- he’s my new liquor store cashier.

Wax On, Wax Off?

The Karate Kid... classic story of The Hero's Journey, for those of you familiar with Joseph Campbell. The hero is placed in an unfamiliar setting, is taken under the wing of a master of some skill, and then succeeds in proving his new skill without the help of the master. The story is a metaphor of any rite of passage into adulthood. Where do these archetypes come from?

What marks the physical rite of passage into adulthood? And how do you think the screenwriters came up with "wax on, wax off?" Wax on... wax off? Wax on...... wax off? After he refused to continue doing it, he discovered that he already possessed the desired skill- a skill he had to use responsibly.

Can you figure it out, or do I have to spill the beans?

The Last Place You Look

When people can't find something sometimes they say "It's always in the last place you look." Of course it is. That's because you found it. What kind of maniac would keep looking? Beware if you ever hear someone say, "It was in the third to last place I looked."

The Funniest Thing I Never Said

Sloth and I were at the co-op’s board meeting today with 10 Amish farmers when the subject of bin Laden’s death came up. Someone asked if we'd heard that bin Laden's father had 57 children. I thought of the funniest thing that could be said at that moment- “I had no idea bin Laden was Amish.”

But I couldn't pull the trigger, too busy trying to decide if it was appropriate or not. Just as I realized that although it was probably inappropriate it would still be acceptable, although just barely. I wanted to say it but sadly the moment had passed.

There's no doubt the place would have erupted in laughter. As it died down I could have added, “I should have known by the beard, by why didn’t he wear a straw hat?”

The Dying of the Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Did you ever realize that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s 5 stages of grief, which are generally used to deal with the death of someone close to you, also double as a guide to dealing with our own death? Poor Dylan Thomas only got to the 2nd stage.

Shock- No way will there be a dying of the light!
Anger- I rage, rage against the dying of the light!
Bargaining- Is there anyway I can avoid the dying of the light?
Depression- I’m so sad there will be a dying of the light.
Acceptance- I’ve come to live with the fact that there will indeed be a dying of the light.

I hope your thoughts on death matured after that poem buddy!

Reflections on Freedom

I find it tantalizingly strange that people who believe that we are victims of our environment tend to seem like victims of their environment, and people who believe that we are masters of our our destiny tend to seem like masters of their destiny.

Maybe we are both victims of our environment, and masters of our own destiny, the same as we are both physical (our body) and non-physical (our thoughts.) And maybe we belong to each category in proportion to how much we believe we belong to each category.

Perhaps our bodies are victims of our environment because they belong to our environment, and perhaps our minds are masters of our own destiny because they are not of the physical world.

The physical world effects our minds and helps shape them, but perhaps in the realm of pure thought we are free.

You know, like the guy in this song:



Or the guy in this vat:

http://www.sechumscm.org/WhereAmI.html

Or the guy who wrote these words, sitting inside on a lovely spring Saturday afternoon. Time to go become part of the environment.