I'd Make A Good Buddha

Had a bunch of weird dreams again.

The first: Some friend of mine is perched up in a tree and needs help getting down. The tree is pressed up against a rock wall. To help him get down, two of us partially climb the tree to bring our words of encouragement a couple of feet closer. We offer no physical assistance. A minute later, we're all hanging for dear life on branches, with our feet braced up against the wall. We're quickly getting tired, but my genius comes through. I start rationalizing: "Wait, isn't it...then it could only be...and that's why...therefore...QED," I say, ending up proving that the wall is actually the ground, and that gravity points precisely that-a-way. A few seconds later, when everyone is thoroughly convinced, we're all sitting on that wall which is now the ground, building a campfire. The moral: the placebo effect is all-powerful.

The last: Me and Paul are sitting on a cloud. We are on patrol for God knows what. The cloud is tiny, we barely fit on it. I'm curled up with my head in his lap, for protection from falling off rather than for sleeping purposes or cuddling/snuggling or proving how non-homophobic I am. I remember that we have some movies, including Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds (a boring, but fortunately non-existant movie). I have a feeling that on the ground I wouldn't tolerate such trash, but upstairs I'll take anything to distract me from the altitude. A leaflet drops from the sky. Paul catches it with a ninja-like flash of his hand. We look at it. It's some threat from aliens - they want us to evacuate Earth "or else." Curiously, it's in the form of a novel cover. Paul says something like "psh," and chucks the leaflet down. I start to protest, but then realize it's Paul, and he knows best. There's even a song about his all-around superiority. Then we confess to each other that we're pretty scared of being up there. I confess first. Paul probably confesses out of solidarity or empathy or pity or some other outdated motive. The scene is strangely unromantic given the situation. Apparently in dreams there is no "misinterpretation of arousal" - a wonderful notion from Intro to Psychology class that explains how shaky bridges make us think we're in love.

The next after last: I'm hanging out with some Russians (here's where I should have realized it was a dream) at MIT. We're in some bar/burger joint, but I'm off to myself playing charades with the word "aloof." They're getting ready to leave, I think. There's a wooden chessboard lying on the table in front of me, the kind that folds at a joint in the middle and holds the pieces inside. I'm trying to get the pieces in so I can close it, but they keep spilling out. I'm stubborn, but I'm pretty much channeling Sisyphus; the pieces just keep rolling out. Damn leaky board. The Russians are still getting ready to leave. Russians take forever coming to a decision when there's more than one of them. They live for the decision process. I played soccer with a bunch at MIT for a while - we would meet and by the time they figured out which field they wanted to play on it was morning in next September. Same in the dream. By the time they're ready to leave, it's time to stay and play more games and consume more liquid fire. Someone sees me struggling with the chess board and suggests we play chess. "No, you don't want to play," I say (stupidly, because this is my chance to hand away my Rock), "it's too damn complicated." The Russians find this extremely funny for surely no stranger a reason than placebo's victory over gravity. "Wow," one of them says, "you're a funny guy. You could be a good Buddha." And that my friends is how you tag on a happy ending to a nonsense story.

The bonus one: This one was boring. Just imagine saying that sentence over and over and you'll get the gist.

It appears that writing down dreams is the key to remembering more of them. I only planned on writing down one when I started, but then the Paul and Russians' dreams got green with envy and remembered themselves to me.

To Patriotism

Spent hours today trying to force Pro Tools M-Powered down my computer's throat. Eventually the gag-reflex subsided and persistence triumphed, but let's give a round of applause to the runners up: the evil forces of Windows and M-Audio. Tomorrow, we'll see if a $50 M-Audio USB gadget is enough to make crappy recordings, or if second-rate quality takes a greater investment. Best case scenario for tomorrow - I'll be OD-ing on tutorials - worst case - Mom will be pestering me about fixing the M-Audio-box-shaped hole in the wall.

Before I tuck myself in every night, I usually read for a while. It tends to be something I've already read and that's easy to read. The aim isn't to knock myself out into dreamless sleep, but to treat myself after a tough day of searching for motivation. Currently, I'm rereading the second book of the Vasiliy Yan trilogy chronicling the formation of Genghis Khan's empire. Genghis Khan has already died long ago and his grandson Batu has taken over the reins. I'm at the point where Batu is about begin a Russia-wide epic beating. For the next two hundred pages, he's going to be ripping off Russian heads, boiling Russians alive, pretending he wants to be friends with the Russians and then ripping off their heads and boiling them alive, etc. Here I'm getting to feel like a bit of a traitor. This Batu guy, and especially his commander in chief are so cool, I want them to take over everything - Russians, Americans, Atlantis - whatever will prolong the crusade. I have discovered I have absolutely no patriotism, or in the case of Russia - matriotism, as long as conquest is described in sufficiently romantic language.

I'm beginning to think that these kinds of books are a horrible idea. Romanticizing hundreds of thousands of people getting murdered by Mongols isn't going to teach America's children a damn thing. The government needs to do something about this - this book needs to be rewritten with Americans doing the romanticized killing. The dead Russians may also require some dilution - perhaps a couple thousand dead Iraqis and a couple dozen British corpses - the former for realism, and the latter because they're probably starting to forget who won the Revolutionary War. I somehow doubt Independence Day is as big a holiday there as here.