anxiety dream: neither, either/or reality or/nor nightmare
Aboard the ship yesterday morning, I was reading this article https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/ when called away for debarkation, then forgot it until this morning, called up and read while wondering about the reality of the alligator and other crawling creatures just outside the window in the parishioner's game room of my anxiety dream; why the alligator, why the constantly changing neighborhood we were visiting, why I’d borrowed a friend’s Lincoln car to get there between services to visit a parishioner’s new home, then parked the car where I couldn’t find it to get back to church in time to preach at the main service my sermon that I’d preached at the early service, why I kept thinking "well, no matter, the rector will know my sermon notes are in the pulpit drawer and he can just use that," why I’d left my cell phone on a chair inside the house we were visiting, and when Linda went inside to get it for me while I kept looking for the Lincoln, and came back and found me and handed me the phone it was in pieces and wouldn’t stay together so I could call the rector and tell him why I wasn’t there, why my watch (I’ve not worn a watch or carried a calendar in years) kept showing the time as 10:45 exactly when I should be stepping into the pulpit, who the suggestive and flirty blond woman was at the parishioner’s house that I kept anxiously trying to keep Linda from noticing, wondering in the dream why I had gone to make this visit and parish call between services instead of having sense to realize there wasn’t time to do that. Lincoln coupes and Lincoln convertibles kept coming into view and I’d head for one to get in and hurry back to church only to realize that the car I’d borrowed was a Lincoln sedan, so kept looking, searching, futilely walking, searching.
Wonder if the right brain breaks free while I’m sleeping. I’m right-handed, which is left-brain controlled, I don’t think I really even have any idea of the alt-reality that’s hiding, lurking, shadowing up there in the right-brain, shaking, rattling its bars to get free. I’ll try that left-handed writing again, pandora’s box: who besides me remembers that story, all the frightening creatures that, when the box was opened, escaped and could not be caught and stuffed back into the box. Like the ungodly creatures called forth and set loose by Jadis to fight Aslan. In the fiction, of course, just as in John's fiery and imaginative Revelation, Aslan has the victory; but what a scenario.
The article about Hoffman concludes with an observation about the taste of chocolate as the ultimate nature of reality. Which with two cups black coffee I’ve over-consumed this Friday morning before embarking on another long drive, this time westward today and eastward tomorrow, instead of east and south then north and west. The book I took along and read aboard ship, borrowed from another friend, not the friend with the Lincoln (that friend really does have a Lincoln Town Car but why I borrowed his car in the dream beats the hell out of me) essays about a different perspective and perception of reality by a man who is concerned about what we are doing to our world. My truth: our greedy, selfish consumption of the earth may not matter, provided sometime within the next millennium or two a moon-size asteroid heads to earth, קֹהֶ֣לֶת has his way with us after-all -- and the universe continues oblivious that we ever were, a la Thomas Hardy: “By the Earth’s Corpse.”
Donald Hoffman’s quest and observations are interesting and perhaps right on, but no more original nor profound than Plato’s much earlier, much much simpler, and more graphic Allegory of the Cave.
Friday morning insanity, but at least I’m back in the illusional reality of 7H.
DThos+ fighting the quicksand of life and watching a flock of white egrets in the surf at my very feet