Fly by Wire

I had a dream the other day where I was flying. That's not unusual. In fact, I'd say one out of five of the dreams I remember have me supermanning it over the mighty skyscrapers of Boise-Metropolis.

But the dream the other day was unique in that my method of propulsion was revealed to me: wires. If you are familiar with the original superman movies, you may well know that characters were "made to fly" by having large rigs set up with wires on them. Amazing stuff. Apparently in my dream, that's how I flew as well.. Now I didn't get to see them, but I can just imagine these HUGE rigs extending far above the city scape, there JUST so that BEN could fly around.

I've been interested in figuring out "what dreams mean" lately - and I think this dream tells me that I think the world exists to meet my whims. Is that an enlightened point of view or what!! Another thing of note - I want to fly high up in the sky but somehow that search has got me all wrapped up in other things!

The Star Trek Gospels - Metamorphisis

The star trek episode "Metamorphisis" shows the interaction betweeen the important human concepts of companionship, love, sacrifice, freedom and loneliness.

A great man honored for his life long achievement is dying of old age and goes out far away from his people to die with his dignity intact. In his journey, an energy being wrecks his ship, marooning him in a new land, but restoring his health and youth. In this new place the only beings are "the man" and "the companion". After more than a century alone with "the companion" he tells the creature that he will die of loneliness if he does not have other beings like him for companions, hoping it will let him leave.

The companion finds another ship, and maroons another six people on the planet to alleviate the man's loneliness. But these are people with duties to perform and have with them an official with a diesase the companion cannot heal. The companion foils their every attempt to escape. Eventually they find a way to communicate with "the companion" on its level and find that it is "in love" with the man. The group explains to "the companion" that humans need freedom, not just love and further, that the man and it can never be together in the way the companion really wants because it is not human.. At the same time, the official is about to die and is overcome that she has wasted her life in her duty to the expense of never having loved.

The companion joins with the official, giving up its powers and immortality, to save the official's life and so that together they will have a chance at true love, if even for but a moment. The man offers to take her with him, to explore the universe with him. Her power ends in this land, though, and so the man stays with the woman/companion to live out the rest of his days alone with her in love. The group is freed to go but take with them the wisdom that there are more important things than duty.

The companion is lonely... That is why it brings the man to it. The man is lonely, and that is why the companion brings more men. We find out that what loneliness really is is a longing to love. She longs to love, to be someone's true companion, but does not understand what that means. She knows only that her emptiness is filled by the man. After 150 years she finally finds out that the MAN'S emptiness is not filled by her. To love him, she cannot be his jailor, no matter what riches or youth she provides.

Isn't it amazing what we can learn about ourselves when we examine our advesaries? What is it we don't like about them? What is it they don't like about us? What puts the two of you at odds?

I aim to please, but there are too many targets.

Cereal Killer

Splendid Shredded Wheat
How fibrous are your spoonfulls
Part of a breakfast complete
With splenda - synthetically little delightfuls.

The Squirrel and the Moon

Once there was a brown squirrel.

He and the other squirrels gathered nuts day by day and every way they kept busy.

After a few seasons, the brown squirrel grew restless and scurried about farther from the trees in which he made his home than ever before; so far, in fact, that he was able to see through the dense canopy to the moon above.

"Oh what a new and wonderous thing!" said the brown squirrel, who staid and played under the moonlight.

The brown squirrel eventually returned to the trees that were his home and the other squirrels asked him where he had been.

"I have been to the moonlight where things are new and wonderous," he said.

The other squirrels were offended. They marked the brown squirrel with tree sap, "Moon! This squirrel belongs here amongst the trees! Do not deceive him with your stellar promises!"

But though the moon waxed and waned, it remained beautiful and the brown squirrel returned to it and staid longer each time.

The other squirrels chitterred and chattered their anger, "Moon!! Moon! You dastardly fellow! Why do you make me so sad?"

The brown squirrel heard his friends and was mad at himself and the moon too. He staid away from the moon and staid in the woods. For the seasons to come he gathered nuts and staid by the trees in which he and his fellow squirrels lived; when he was restless he dreamt of the moonlight and blamed his sad soul on the squirrels around him.

Vane and Vein

I am getting old
I said, looking at my veins,
Vein, vain and in vain.

Forgiveness and Blame

I'm re-reading a great book that looks at the question "what is evil?"

Most recently I am reading a chapter that says both parties involved in conflict tend to see the other as evil and themselves as fighting or acting out as a kind of necessity. People could blame themselves or share blame with the other, but this is painful; and to avoid that pain many people (especially those prone to violent or abusive conflict) put the blame label of evil on the other.

For me I find that I cross over between blaming myself for everything and blaming others. I have favorites whom I rarely blame for anything and then there are those whom I am in a habit of placing more than the correct amount of blame.

It is not a fair world with regards to forgiveness by one's neighbors. The first impression I have someone paints my view of them and makes it easier to forgive them or easy to blame them. My impressions only change in moments of stress when the person is again able to prove what kind of person they are.

Is it love that allows us to forgive, or forgiveness that allows us to love?

Forgotten Dreams

I love dreams and dreaming.

It is amazing how much memory of feelings we can retain despite forgetting all the specifics in dreams; I wonder if that has implications in the world of the awake.

I can remember feelings of love for people whose names I can barely remember and whose faces I cannot begin to remember. These things are just gone forever. Perhaps some of that is retained in our dreamworld. Perhaps the dream that I forgot had the face of someone I forgot and all I have is a vague feeling of love or joy or confusion or whatever else I associated with this forgotten person long ago.

Danger, Stress and Opportunity

My car broke down the other day. It really is amazing how something like that can point out just how each moment of your work-a-day mundane world revolve around things we take for granted..

My days go like this typically: get up, go to the gym, go to work and eat breakfast in the breakroom, work, each lunch, work, go home late, eat, waste time (er study, thats right, study) and go to bed.

Without a car, this all falls apart.

It also really points out when you don't have many friends!!! I can't imagine asking someone to go out of their way to take me to work. I just don't have any friends I'd feel like asking that of. I'd rather walk. What does that say about me?? What kind of keep-to-myself homicidal freak must that make me!!

The Star Trek Gospels

I sometimes wonder if I could write a modern age text, a post modern bible, that speaks in alegory like the new and parts of the old testaments...

I think I would start with the gospels according to star trek.

Of course we have the original series...we can call that the old trekstament...

Episodes: The Cage/The Managerie, The Apple, This Side of Paradise, and a few others seem to suggest that humankind really shouldn't live in fantasy worlds and should live off their own work and sweat.

More to follow...

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Soccer dream.
Out on a field; My legs and arms are exhausted. I push myself towards the ball with the reste of my team and sometimes somehow manage to get there first, but when I kick it or throw it (must be some kind of special soccer game) I feel this ache, this resistance to doing my best work...and it is hard to imagine when I wasn't this exhausted.

I loved what a comment a friend made casually the other day. She talked about wanting to live with her higher self. How awesome is that. My dream might be about finding my higher self.. and how difficult it is sometimes when you aren't calm, when you are exhausted by life and by your own challenges that you become frustrated as though you'll never see your higher self again except in glimpses and sparks of memory and fantasy.

Its so easy to say, "I'll just skip soccer practice today."