A very interesting dream

I woke up early, got up and had a bowl of cereal, and got back into bed. Mary Lou left for the gym This wasn't a good idea but Mary Lou ended up giving her spot at Tread to Maureen, who is in town for the weekend. After Mary Lou left, I went back to sleep for an hour or so.

I woke up immediately after having a dream where I was a detached observer watching a scene where Vladimir Putin was holding a sort of ceremonial audience. A group of people including Jenny, Lauren and Mark were waiting in a line at the top of a long flight of stairs that led down to a stage where Putin (who looked more like Medvedev than himself) was sitting behind a desk. He seemed friendly and relaxed. Various honorees would walk down the stairs and share a piece of a fancy cake or pastry with Putin. Jenny's turn came up. She was wearing an Easter dress and a big hat. She went down and had the little ritual with Putin. It seemed to go smoothly like it was supposed to. Lauren and Mark Riedsel were in line behind Jenny. Mark was being honored for some sort of heroic act while serving on a Coast Guard vessel. Mark held up a khaki military jacket on a pole. He had worn the jacket during the incident, during which perhaps he had come under gunfire. He and Lauren retreated back and sat down by a wall around a corner and out of sight of Putin, as they didn't want to go through the ceremony.

Pretty strange!

More dream images

The one that stands out happened yesterday morning: Someone had a huge pet bear. I ended up cuddling with the bear, despite my reservations about how dangerous this was. The bear, who was affectionate and non-aggressive, ended up lying on top of me. This was not in any way sexual but it was rather strange.

Morning dreams

I woke up in around 330am and went downstairs for an hour or so. I woke up again at 630am with Mary Lou coughing loudly. She went downstairs to be considerate and I went back to sleep. I remember parts of a series of dreams, where I awoke after each one and fell asleep again. I finally got up at 930am.

The first series of dreams involved scenes featuring water.

1) Japanese coastal defenses at the end of WW2. I was with some Japanese military waiting for Americans to arrive in a destroyer. The war was not officially over but the Japanese had accepted defeat and were prepared to welcome the Americans without resistance.

2) Possibly a continuation of the dream above. I was with a group watching some people in circus uniforms walking together along a ridge to my right. Fireworks were launched, possibly from the destroyer. Instead of exploding high above us in the sky, the fireworks came at us like rockets. "We're under attack," I said, but I wasn't afraid because the rockets burst harmlessly with mild force. It was more like a playful display.

3) Again, possibly a continuation of the second dream fragment: Some men dropped objects into the water that turned out to be mechanical toys that were activated when submerged. The toys didn't have an recognizable form or purpose. Someone was explaining how they worked but the explanation didn't make practical sense, as it seemed to involve friction and sparks like old toy cars that made sparks when rolled along the floor.

4) The final fragment wasn't connected to the earlier ones. I was sitting in a living room with my mother and a group of relatives that included her brothers, Uncle Marvin and Uncle Linden Reeder. Some younger cousins were also there but Aunt Rubye, my mother's Sister, wasn't present. It was a typical family visit of the sort we often had when I was a child and my grandparents were all alive. It seems that my Mom and Uncle Linden both died shortly after the visit and I was thinking somewhat philosophically about the coincidence.

I relate to these dreams impressionistically. They tie in with the era I grew up in, the post-WW2 America that felt secure and fundamentally good, a time when I was naive and didn't realize humanity had darker and uglier dimensions. So much of my recent waking life is focused on the outrageously dysfunctional geopolitical process that has never produced a truly just society but has veered further toward the extremes with the election of Donald Trump as POTUS and the bold aggression of authoritarian leaders in Russia, Syria, Turkey, the Philippines and elsewhere.

May 23, 2013 to Paul Ershler (who died in November 2017, I just learned)

Reply to Paul Ershler

Thanks, Norm,

According to the Gospel of John (for what it's worth), "I am in the Father and the Father is in me; I am in you and you are in me."

 I like to think of this as

"the creative agency permeates, defines and transcends everything."

The very existence of anything seems illogical to me, suggesting my logic process is limited in scope. I'm left with believing something beyond my cognitive understanding is making all this happen but I can't fully grasp who, what or how, I can only grasp the patterns of what is through being open to learning. The vulnerable state we're always in points (to me) toward having hope and faith, not trying to grasp and hold onto anything ephemeral (i.e., everything in the life except truth), and trusting that something so incomprehensibly creative wouldn't be doing all this just to give you and me a hard time :)

 Just my thoughts!

Dreams and more dreams

 I really should start writing down my dreams regularly. I'm remembering clear dreams almost every day, especially when I wake up at the time Mary Lou gets up for her Tread classes and go back to sleep for an hour or so. This morning I dreamed I was visiting my old Sunday school class. I didn't recognize anyone but I seemed to be given special guest treatment, specifically, the opportunity to address the class. I started acknowledging that I seldom attend any more. It seems I was going to discuss my current spiritual status but I don't remember anything further. In another dream, Mary Lou and I were walking around a shopping area of a resort of some kind with a wealthy couple a little older than us. The wife offered to pay for something and I said "Oh, that's OK." She said in a friendly manner, "We probably have more than you." I thought this was true and replied, "We're both very fortunate, or very blessed, if you will." We were leaving this place and walking up what seemed to to be a hill. I glanced down and saw their was a steep precipice going down a long way to our right. Immediately, I started sliding down the side toward what looked like probable death. However, I managed to stop my slide when I came to a narrow ledge after 20 yards or so. It seemed I could cling to the ledge until someone managed to rescue me.

I feel like I could remember more details if I didn't wait all day to write down the dreams. For months, I've allowed myself to drift through my mornings, sitting in a chair in the living room reading the news and engaging with my friends on Facebook. I can get away with that without serious repercussions; but, I have a number of meaningful things I feel I could or should be doing, e.g., our taxes, practicing my music, working on audio for more video clips of the Dr. Morpheus Rides Again performance last October, working on self-publishing my novel. Today I felt somewhat discombobulated and out of synch with myself. I did spend a good bit of constructive time working on one of my philatelic projects involving letter covers sent from Cameroon with hexagonal postmarks. I've also worked on organizing, recording, and writing about my collection of American Presbyterian West Africa Mission postcards from 1911-1913. Both of these projects could easily be made into research articles or stamp show exhibits. Maybe I will contact Marty Bratzel for advice on the projects.

Top 10 reasons people still support Trump

10) "I don't care what he does in his free time. Trump's moral degeneracy is not relevant to his performance as POTUS."

9) "I also don't care if he laundered money for Russian gangsters of whom Putin is the Godfather or if he actually did collude with Cozy Bear, Fancy Bear and Wikileaks to release stolen email and documents at strategic times during the 2016 campaign and/or obstructed justice. Too bad, I actually think it's funny."

8) "I won't believe the allegations of moral degeneracy are true until I see a video of Trump romping with Stormy."

7) OK, but what about stiffing contractors and extracting cash from investors and governments for his failed developments such as Atlantic City casino hotels, then declaring bankruptcy and leaving taxpayers with the tab? "I don't know anything about all that. I don't have time to fact check every accusation made by the lying liberal media."

6) OK, but what about the scam called Trump University? "There's no such things as Trump University- stop making things up!"

5) "He has now repented of his sins and accepted Jesus as his personal savior, so what he did in the past has been made white as the driven snow."

4) "I only watch Fox News and Sean Hannity says all that stuff is lies and the Mueller is an agent of the deep state." 

3) "Whatever Trump has done, is doing and may do in the future, Hillary was worse."

2) "He may be a reprobate but I like his Supreme Court appointment, the big tax cut, his stance against letting Muslims into the country, the plan to put armed teachers into public schools and the pro-business cuts in government regulations he's making."

1) "The f'ing Wall! Finally, no more rapists who can't even speak English pouring in to take our country away!"

The view from an old, intellectual white guy who isn't into Marvel comix or movies (IMDB Review of Black Panther)

(Written before I realized there was an alt-right campaign to trash the film's ratings on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes.) Browsing user reviews, I see many jaded Marvel aficionados were not impressed by this offering. I would guess most of them are relatively young white guys. Being a relatively old white Star Wars guy, never having read a Black Panther comic and having seen only one X-Men movie (I did read X-Men comix in their early days), I'm looking at Black Panther, the movie, from a very different perspective, one shaped by the Vietnam War and Civil Rights struggles, the long view historical context (e.g., 18th Century colonialism, the self-destruction of four empires in WW1 and the undoing of the remnants of European dominance following WW2, the Cold War, Vietnam, the fall of the USSR, the wrong-headed adventures of US neo-conservatives leading to a destabilized Middle East, and the rise of China as the next superpower), 20th Century rock, cinema and literature, etc. Having found the media hype intriguing, I approached Black Panther with an open mind, viewing it as a standalone expression of pop culture. I would imagine the negative reviewers who panned the film or damned it with faint praise, will view my review as way out of touch. No problem, bring it.

From my vantage point, the film is a tour de force of fantasy action adventure and an audiovisual powerhouse. The costumes alone of the citizens of the small African kingdom of Wakanda are well worth the price of admission. The best of Star Wars has nothing on the special effects. The throbbing African rhythms alternating with hip hop beats and ranks of male and female warriors slamming their spears to the ground in unison keep the viewer in a prolonged state of excitement. The film features a full range of thrills- single combat between heroic African martial artists, armies clashing with primitive weaponry backed up by armored dragonfly air support and tank-like rhinos, high tech cars chasing a convoy of MRAP (mine resistant, ambush protected) SUVs and wreaking havoc on hapless civilian traffic through Seoul, South Korea, dramatic appearances of the superhero, Black Panther, in his transforming body suit that absorbs kinetic energy from various projectiles and channels it back toward criminal aggressors, ultra-high speed trains flashing along elevated tracks through the hidden, futuristic capital of Wakanda, to name a few. Reviewers who think some or all of this is ridiculous are forgetting something: magical realism.

However, the most compelling aspect of Black Panther is the thought-provoking script, brilliantly manifested cinematically though it is. The premise of Black Panther, a hidden paradise of scientifically advanced black Africans disguised as a poor third world backwater in order to prevent everyone else on the planet from realizing what they have and disrupting their idyllic way of life, is an extremely ingenious flipping of the contemporary geo-political reality, i.e., a small set of advanced countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas fending off incursions from the masses of disadvantaged and resentful descendants of oppressed minority groups and colonial subjects who would like to enjoy the health, wealth and opportunities of their current and former masters. In the movie, some of the elite of Wakanda, including a king's brother, are anguished by the plight of their black cousins in Africa as well as the USA. These Wakandans believe their country should use its vast but secret power to intervene on behalf of the oppressed of the world and create a more just global order. The king, a conservative traditionalist, considers this a betrayal and puts a stop to his brother's plans, setting off a generational revenge cycle that threatens to upend Wakanda's idyllically detached society and set their devastating technological power against the ruling princes and oligarchs of the Earth. Unbeknownst to those complacent elites, their fate hangs in the balance as the sons of the old king and his brother face off to determine whether Wakanda will remain a wary but hidden observer of their abuses and machinations or a stalking jungle predator coming to devour them in their sleep.

Perhaps many viewers of Black Panther who respond favorably will enjoy it for its dazzling surface of beauty, action and drama. I certainly did. Those who go a little deeper and consider the ironies and implications of the story it tells (for example, Wakanda's radical anti-immigration and isolationist policies vs. the social conscience of the antagonists), will find food for thought. Is the idealistic resolution of the core conflicts satisfying? You be the judge.