Bored in Dreamland

Hopefully, by the time you read this I'll have been found. I seem to have gotten lost in a dream, and I have to say it is not at all what I expected. For a start, it's terribly dull. I always assumed that being lost in a dream would be an exciting and vibrant experience, if at times a little harrowing. Turns out it's a bit like having an anxiety attack and being very sleepy at the same time. I imagine it might be like spending too much time in a country where you don't know the social mores and eventually get tired and frustrated from constantly doing the wrong thing because you simply have no concept of what the right thing is, or could possibly be.

That's not to say there aren't some nice things about it. I can summon up a talking penguin anytime I want, for instance. Unfortunately the only thing it wants to talk about is how disappointed it is that I never went to grad school. Which I guess means the penguin is a manifestation of my father. Except my father is here already. In fact, there's several little clones of him milling about, and all they want to talk about is fish and how frightened they are of polar bears. Which suggests that my father is just a manifestation of a flock of penguins. This is precisely the sort of thing that I don't know how to properly react to. It's pissing me off. I get enough of this in real life.

Then the other night I had a lovely dinner with Gurdjieff and Mamie Van Doren. But again, it was terribly frustrating. Gurdjieff's English is dreadful, and he overcompensates for this by bugging his eyes out a lot and gesticulating wildly with a forkful of spaghetti Bolognese. It's unhelpful and messy. Then I managed to derail things entirely by asking Mamie what it was like to be dead. Turns out she isn't. This cast quite a pall over the proceedings. Gurdjieff told me "you verra bad man," and then they both ignored me for the rest of the meal, carrying on a completely unintelligible conversation between themselves. I would have made my excuses and left, but it took me hours to figure out how to get out of the insanely complicated chair I was sitting in. There were straps and buckles involved.

After that, I tried to keep to myself. I couldn't find much to do, so I ended up spending a lot of time napping. Except of course that would just put me back in the dream world. It was a bit like walking out of the front door of your house and finding yourself back in the hallway, in that it was equal parts fascinating and irritating. I suppose if I was a mathematician or a psychologist I would have something insightful to say about this sort of folding of reality, but I'm just a schlub with a BA, so all I could come up with was "Whoa, that's kinda trippy." The penguin was terribly disappointed.

I tried all the touristy things one does in dreamland. You know, the classics: flying, going to class naked, being chased by an unknown assailant, being the president and starting a nuclear war. The usual stuff. It was all fun, but rather unsatisfying, like I was just doing the things so I could cross them off the list. Oh and consequence-free sex with whoever I wanted turned out to be a disaster. Like anybody would, I tried it with myself first and apparently my technique is really lacking. I thought that I knew what I like, but when I caught myself checking my watch, well, it was emasculating to say the least. I lost the taste for experimenting after that.

Eventually I decided to concentrate on asserting normalcy. Perhaps I could escape by turning the dream world into the real world. I created a passing simulation of my house and office, and tried to follow the same routine I do in the waking world. I'd get up in the morning after lying in bed pretending to be asleep for what I judged to be eight hours or so. Then I'd make myself a cup of coffee and feed the cats. This took a long time as the house was populated by every cat I'd ever owned or wanted to own. Then I'd have a shower, get dressed, kiss my wife, explain to the penguin why an MFA wasn't for me, and head out to work.

Work was always a blur. I mean, literally. I couldn't get it to come into focus at all. Vague walls, ill defined cubes, shadowy co-workers who made sounds like papers rustling and keyboards clacking at the bottom of a well when they spoke...None of it resembled reality in the least. Well, maybe it resembled my reality, but now that I was paying attention to it, it certainly didn't resemble real reality. I managed to keep this up for what felt like a few days, but the passing of time kept slipping away from me. I suppose a few months must have actually gone by, because I eventually ended up having a midyear review with my shadow boss. Overall, my performance had been "rustleclickrustlerustle ," but I needed to concentrate more on "clackclickrustleclack" if I ever expected to make "clickityshufflerustleclack." I promised to do better, and then let the whole thing evaporate into thin air.

And now I stand on a flat white plane that stretches to infinity in all directions, a white, perfectly hemispherical sky overhead. If you happen to see a place like this in your dreams, please do stop by and see if I'm still there. I'd love for someone to lead me out of this boring place, or at least explain to the penguin why an MBA isn't the guarantee of success it used to be.

The Tale of the Large Bells

The bells were too large for the belfry, and in consequence never rang correctly. They had been installed by a drunken cross-eyed steeplejack with his mind on other things. The problem wasn't discovered until the day of the unveiling, a day that would forever be a black one in the town's history. The whole population had gathered around the town hall, everyone gushing with civic pride. The mayor took to the podium and made a dreary speech that failed to avoid making a weak joke about bats and belfries. Then the winner of the elementary school spelling bee recited Poe's "The Bells", stopping to spell out "tintinnabulation" in a moment of forced precocity that absolutely ruined the poem and set everybody's teeth on edge. Finally, the mayor pulled a cord and the cheap tarp that had covered the belfry gave way to reveal a lumpy piece of workmanship. The mouths of the bells flared out grotesquely, spilling out of the openings of the belfry and ruining its shape. Fortunately, an unaesthetic line or two didn't bother the mob, but when it came time for the inaugural bell ringing it was obvious there was a problem that couldn't be ignored.

"BONGKLAK-BONGKLAK!" went the bells, the expected rich deep bong abruptly cut off by the bells swinging into the interior walls of the belfry and each other. It sounded like a pair of very expensive buckets being bashed together, and the mood of the crowd began to turn ugly. Questions were shouted out, most having to do with the cost of these monstrosities and the exorbitant millage used to fund them. The mayor tried to lighten the mood by leading a rousing singalong of "God Bless America", but fumbled the words halfway through. This was one outrage too many and a bloodthirsty howl went up. The police had to be called in to disperse the crowd, who even in these modern times had a rope, a tree and a stool handy for a lynching. Throughout all this, no one thought to stop the bell ringers who kept the whole mess boiling with constant not-quite-bonging reminders of the disaster.

Things got worse when a summons was put out for the steeplejack to come and fix his mess, only to find he had fallen to his death in the interim (not while working, oddly enough). The belfry construction project had already had some fairly serious overruns, and there simply weren't funds left to hire a replacement, as even the least competent steeplejacks don't come cheap. Volunteers experimented for hours, trying to find a way to get some use out of the bells but were frustrated at every turn. If the bells were swung gently they didn't collide with each other, but neither did the clappers move enough to produce an audible sound. Lining the outsides of the bells with velvet produced an unsettling staccato noise which several townspeople decried as "the devil's hiccups". A grandiose plan was floated to install concealed speakers in the bells and pipe in a recording of the St. Marks Campanile. Unsurprisingly, no electrician could be found who would have a part of such an unethical scheme. One of them wrote a letter to the editorial page of the only local paper, containing the memorable phrase "a belfry full of discord and turpitude" (which was unfortunately misprinted as "a belfry full of disco and turpentine").

In desperation, the town tried to make the bells a quirky selling point for visiting the town. "COME SEE THE BIG BELLS THAT DON'T RING SO GOOD!" proclaimed the highway signs. The few tourists who did show up were inevitably disappointed by the hourly demonstration. Almost nobody bought the cheap plastic bell souvenirs, and further disaster struck when the t-shirts that were supposed to say "I ♥ the Awful Bells" ended up having "I ♥ the Awful Bells" printed on them. A few actually sold, but only to design geeks who found the error hilarious. Eventually the town council realized that they were throwing good money after bad and the tourism campaign was abandoned.

So the bells fell silent for several years. Then, one fateful night, they fell loudly. It was inevitable really: the yoke they hung from was never meant to hold such heavy bells, and was made of shoddy wood to boot. In a March windstorm it finally gave up the ghost, splintering into thousands of tiny pieces and setting the bells free. They tumbled out of the belfry and landed in the town square with a thunderous crash. The townspeople ran to investigate the noise and were absolutely thrilled to see that the bells had finally been dispatched. There was dancing and cheering: the town had never felt so united while the bells hung over it. In an inspired moment, an eight inch pit was dug and filled with cement. The bells were placed in it upside down, their mouths opening to the sky. The cement quickly hardened and the upturned bells became a permanent fixture of the square. Ever since, the bells are filled with lemonade during the harvest festival and other civic occasions. It tastes strongly of verdigris, but everybody in town has at least a small sip to prove a point. No one's quite sure what that point is, but tradition is tradition.

A Full Denial

I'd like to address the unfounded rumors I've been hearing everywhere about my interest in fire. Now, I fully admit that I like a nice campfire and am entranced by a backyard fire pit. I love a candlelit dinner, a barbecue lunch, and a breakfast buffet served out of chafing dishes. When I think of holidays, I think of jack-o'-lanterns glowing in the night, their features flickering in and out. But there's nothing unhealthy about any of that: we all love these things and the fire that makes them possible. If I might spend a little more time appreciating them than you, it doesn't indicate a problem. I should be able to linger over thoughts of fire without it being misinterpreted as some sort of religious mania (or worse). It hardly means that I'm enslaved to the dark burning heart of the searing flame god, he who licks across the world leaving ash kisses on its blistered flesh. It's not like I wander the warehouse district late at night with a sacramental can of gasoline, lighting up the darkness with impromptu altars. At no time have I been known to sit with a brand new Bic lighter, flicking it on and off until all the fuel is used up, chanting "holy, holy, holy" all the while. Finally, I have never, ever, paid a prostitute an exorbitant amount of money to dress in a red and orange outfit of my own design and refer to herself as "The Madonna of Conflagration" while she sticks lit matches between my toes.

Honestly, I don't know how these things get started.

Something About Crowns

I'm trying to use this random word generator to get my juices flowing this morning and so far it has given me:

nice
closet
chatted
reign
course

"Nice closet," said the king as he chatted up the showgirl. "I've not seen many like it in the course of my reign." She batted eyelashes so huge and artificial it was a wonder she didn't fall over. Luckily her sturdy Ukrainian feet provided an unbeatable counterweight. She could have hung heavy rocks from her eyelids and still remained upright.

Speaking of her remaining upright, this was becoming an increasing problem for the king. As she lead him from her dressing room to the bar, he was beginning to wonder if droit de seigneur meant anything these days. Fair enough, he was just a king, not necessarily her king, and if you wanted to get technical, the right only applied to wedding nights, and was probably apocryphal anyway. But still, wasn't kingfucking like starfucking? Weren't showgirls into that kind of thing? Dammit, didn't a crown count for anything these days?

In fact, the crown may have been a bit of a problem, but it was a point of pride for him to wear it everywhere. Sure, it was a little old fashioned, and sometimes people looked at him like it was the wrong thing to do, the haberdashery equivalent of eating one's salad with the fish fork. But he didn't get this: kings wear crowns, right? He was a king, ergo he would wear a crown so people didn't forget it. He wasn't weird about it: he didn't carry an orb and scepter around as well, or insist on being draped in ermine at all times. And it was a nice crown, a demure crown, a crown with a lowercase "c". More of a lightly bejeweled gold circlet really. When he was feeling festive enough he was known to wear it at a jaunty angle, as if to say "I am a king, but I'm a fun king."

The crown was set at said angle tonight, but it wasn't having the desired effect. The showgirl made a point of being politely flirtatious, but in a way that clearly stated "I'm an entertainer", while giving no trace of the "prostitution is a kind of entertainment" subtext he was so desperately looking for. It was becoming increasingly obvious that he had set his cap —er, crown— at the wrong sort of showgirl, the moonlighting law student type who rarely offered "extras" (and even the ones that did were usually only in it for the blogging). Resigned, he gave a weary sigh, straightened his crown, ordered another rum and coke, and asked the young lady what she thought of the ICC's relevance in relation to the rights of sovereign nations, monarchies in particular. She replied that it mattered whether they were signatories or not, but indicated that international copyright law, particularly the expansion of the Berne convention, was more her line.

The king deflated just that much more.