"Another circumstance of great moment which points to the same conclusion is the association of the dead with Hallowe’en. Not only among the Celts but throughout Europe, Hallowe’en, the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinsfolk. It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the approach of winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of the cottage with its familiar fireside. Did not the lowing kine then troop back from the summer pastures in the forests and on the hills to be fed and cared for in the stalls, while the bleak winds whistled among the swaying boughs and the snow-drifts deepened in the hollows? and could the good-man and the good-wife deny to the spirits of their dead the welcome which they gave to the cows?"        -The Golden Bough, LXII. The Fire-Festivals of Europe


I have been woefully dreadful at keeping up in my blog the last few weeks, so please bear with me as I try to make some massive strides trying to catch up.

I’ve been trying to dream for about a month now, with no reportable results. I say no “reportable” results because I really can’t be sure if I’ve dreamt or not. What I mean to say is that my dreams are so life-like and unimaginative that I wake up the next morning wondering if it was a memory or a complete fabrication of my mind. This in turn gives rise to my questioning whether or not any of my memories are of past experiences or if they are all of remembered dreams. This caused a mild identity crises until I realized that if these memories were just my brain playing tricks, it’s still MY brain that’s doing all this work, it’s still part of me, they still make me who I am. If I remember running through a field of daisies, it is because either I have done that before or because some part of me has wanted to so badly that it convinced itself that it had.

That being said, the earliest memory that comes to mind is of me and my two cousins wrestling with my paternal grandfather in his living room. There’s not much more to the memory, except that I was probably about two, and the other family members were sitting around us on the couches, watching in amusement. I remember this moment almost as well as I remember his funeral about a year later. The funny thing about the latter event is that I remember it in the third person. I see myself in my dad’s arms, I remember facing away from the pastor’s oratory, remember the scenery of the cemetery, but I remember it all as if I’m perched in a tree, detached from it all. This is quite a paradoxical memory as I know that it is accurate; I am absolutely convinced we were standing to the northeast of the hole, that I was clinging to my father’s neck, and that it was a slightly cool, partly cloudy day, and yet I don’t see it from my eyes – I see my eyes staring back at me over my dad’s shoulder. I guess what I glean from this is the overarching (and perhaps somewhat corny) theme that although I see something from a different perspective, it does not make its truth any less accurate. I can’t trust my memory, but I have to accept what it shows me.

I was having a difficult time coming up with a sublime experience before I stumbled upon Corrin’s blog that reminded me of the brilliantly common moment between sleep and consciousness. Regrettably, as of late I have gone instantly from unconsciousness to an alarm-clock-induced panic and missed out entirely on the intervening time of the mystical. What scares me most often in those seconds is not the realization of some nightmare, of falling or of monsters or of death, but rather that there are no impossibilities, that if I don’t keep my thoughts in check, I will soon have to contend with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man rampaging down the streets of Bozeman,
when impossible is nothing (do I have to cite adidas here?). But the infinite possibilities have a duality about them – they are as brilliantly promising as they are terrifying overwhelming. It is this duality that is so awesome, so sublime, that I have come to look forward to my time in the between [I digress here, but this duality brings to mind the two headed image of Janus, god of beginnings and ends, ups and downs, ins and outs. Basically, I guess, Duality. Did we talk about Janus being the etymon for January, the beginning month, in class? If not, this is Mythic Clue numero uno]. It is why, when I feel this lucid unconsciousness creep in, I use whatever part of me is awake to hold on to it as long as possible, why I will sometimes set my alarm a half hour early, to give myself that extra chance to fall into the enticing trance.

However, I didn’t mean out outright steal Corrin’s blog, so permit me, if you will, another sublime experience (or two). In a more…material…way than the abstracts of the aforementioned sublimity, I find hiking the peak of a mountain to be fantastically sublime, be it Bozeman’s own Blackmore or Cape Town’s Table Mountain. There’s just something about observing the world from the top of a four-thousand foot cliff, either looking out into the southern ocean or across the Gallatin Valley. It’s absolutely spectacular, but the thought that an errant gust of wild wind would prompt a faster way down the mountain keeps the spine tingling.

Let’s take a quick media time out as I introduce to you the lyrics of Streetlight Manifesto’s song “The Big Sleep”. To conserve space, I really wanted to highlight the following few lines as they connect most directly with what we’ve talked about in class, but the entire lyrics can be found here, and the song can
be listened to here.

Why do you cry when you know how the story ends?
How can you laugh when you know that it hurts your friends?
…
So, how many more examples until we break?
So how many sacrifices must we make?
Because we've all been there once before
And it looks like we've returned once more
So is this the beginning or the end?

Anyone who has read All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren will recognize the parallels between this song and Jack Burden’s Great Sleep, where he disappears from his world for a while, dismisses (forgets?) all of his emotional ties to those he loved, becomes quite a nihilist, and only then is able to tolerate those he’d loved and return home.

As the topic of Ganesha came up in class this afternoon, I couldn’t help but recall that Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita after the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico:

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
(I’ve read since that the two sentences are actually several lines apart in the Bhagavad Gita, and that another, perhaps more accurate translation has “Time”, instead of “Death.”)

Linkin Park’s most recent album release also references this quote. The title of album is “A Thousand Suns”

Although I stated previously that I hadn’t dreamed in about a month, I did in fact dream last night, but because the rest of that paragraph remained true, I kept it in there. The following in a recounting of that dream, as accurately as I could remember it. I tried to emulate the feelings I had during dreamstate as best as I could - the thoughts where the thoughts I had then, the social commentary (in particular, of the media) was what I thought in the dream, and I included some alliteration that was fairly forced. I don’t know why my dream felt like forced alliteration, but maybe it was how I interpreted the feeling of trying to create my own sense of order and meaning out of chaotic, apocalyptic, meaningless events. Without further ado, my dream:

We were under attack. The Capital of the United States of America was being hailed upon by some undistinguished foreign entity. I saw the first bombs hit the roof of the Capitol Building. Knowing to what heights this bombardment could escalate to, I fled. A few others thought as I did and ran in the other direction, away from the fire and smoke and kabooms and sirens, but the masses still thronged toward the disturbance, wanted to get a better look at the destruction. “Idiots,” I thought, and kept running. I motioned to my friend, who I just sighted across the street, and he joined my trajectory towards the towering parking garage where my vehicle was located. Without speaking we agreed the quickest way to the car was scaling the structure, so up, up, up, straight up to the level we sought. Unlock. SlamSlam. Crank, catch, go. We tore out of the lot, making our way though the crowded streets of D.C. It was odd the way only a fraction of the populace was in a controlled panic, determined to get out and save their families, while everyone else was calm – though calm in an unthinking, insane fashion where they seemingly could not comprehend the death that was about to befall them and their countrymen. They had all quaffed too deeply the Kool-Aid that the terror-obsessed media had been offering for years. We made our way to the coastal apartment where we met up with my sister and some other friends. While my friends prepared for our escape, my sister and I hopped the boats in the harbor and scrounged for any salvageable scraps that may aid our journey. When the waves became weirdly wicked, however, we went back to the apartment where our pals were wating, and we all loaded onto a small bus. Fortunately, one of our friends knew how to operate the bus, so we designated him our driver and took off. The driver said he had friends in Great Falls we could stay with until we came up with a better plan, so we headed north. On our way we happened across the house my sister and I live in when we weren’t attending school. We stopped and went inside and began raiding the cupboards. My sister and I worried about our parents until we came across a note that mentioned that they sought shelter with my cousin in Rochester (I should point out that I’m from Minnesota, and the geography of this mission is a combination of the US, MN, and MT. D.C. was mixed in with Bozeman and in the approximate location of St. Paul, my house was where it should be, a little northeast of the Cities, and Great Falls was about where Fargo/Moorhead would be located. Rochester was still a few hours straight south). Having resupplied our expedition and laid to rest my fear for my family, we began again towards Great Falls. At one point we had to climb a single-lane, steep mountain pass, and we nearly toppled off the cliff when the Shifter (although the Driver knew how to drive, for some reason he needed someone to shift for him when he said “shift”) hit the wrong gear and we were on two wheels careening over the cliff until our Driver stabilized the bus and said, “Don’t worry, I drive this all time. We’re fine.” A few miles later we parked, and had to set out on foot to our destination. The first town we passed through was, strangely, an apocalyptic version of a location I have dreamed of previously. It was about at this point that my alarm went off and I woke up, wishing I knew a little bit more about how the story ended.

Again, I apologize to those who made it all the way through this post for the length it came out to be. I'll stop here. Next up, some sentences and maybe a bad day or two.