The New Ireland Gives Up on Friction Power, Dual Carriageway Bridges, Umbrella Headwear, and Fake Babies

This report is based on a dream I dreamed on March 4th of this year (2010). It began outside, in Ireland, somewhere between Dublin and the west country. A ‘high-quality dual carriageway’ bridge was being built over a tiny stream, absurdly tiny, babblingly beautiful. As the project went on, bands of people milled about, interrupting the workers, asking questions, and sitting off in groups of twos and fours to smoke and grouse. There was a lot of sniggering and shaking of heads. Some people were taking country strolls over the bridge, pretending it was a pedestrian boardwalk and tapping their canes on it. I walked all around, touring with my sister, who’d heard that the Irish had just invented a special umbrella that could be fixed to the top of your head like a hat, look all ruffled and gorgeous, then gush out at the push of a button, completely inflated, whenever the drizzle came down. What new rave was this? I wondered. To find out, she and I ran off to a shop where the hat-a-gamps or umbronnets were sold, but the vendor shook her head and rolled her eyes, almost melancholy like: “All outta stock. I’ll be glad if I never see one again. They’re not for Irish people, mind you. Not too practical either.”

The dream’s final scene played out in a house where we were guesting. Instead of depending on the grid, you had to generate your own electric by running your fingers up and down transparent tubes containing some special (secret) liquid. I started feeling out this long tube, squeezing it like a plastic syphon, and following it down a spiral staircase all the way into the cellar. To my dumbfoundment, the bottom of the tube was puffing out particles of fluffy lint and static air, looking like dandelion seed-puffs blown and huffed by some kids. A faint whistling sound filled the room. The tube bifurcated right down to the floor and straight into a pudgy baby lying in a crib. The baby was white, bulgy and bubbly, like it had been moulded from clay or plastic or some weird hardening agent spilling out the end of the tube. In my astonishment, I reached my finger out to touch the baby’s cheek and O no! I noticed that my finger left a wee indentation, as if the baby were really made of clay. I then touched its lips, and, to my horror, the entire mouth disappeared, and the baby’s face began puffing and going blue. What had I done? I frantically touched the spot again to make the mouth come back, but instead erased the whole face with my hands! I turned tail and split, running away from the house.

Whatever Ireland is made of, it isn’t made of big roads, weird hats, static electric and plastic babies. The people don’t seem convinced of that either. The ‘toy stuff’ and material fun ain’t gonna last, and I could almost hear the public sighing, sighing in relief. A lot of low-down, hang-dog depressed ‘rich people’ were going poor again: “Thank God we can get back to life as usual. Don’t mind if we have a drink.”

Why am I Healed? One Knows

I drank two quarts (1,872 ml) of lemon juice, 1 quart of spicy V-8, 1 quart of kombucha, 1.5 flasks of wine in the past 48 hours.

Swallowed a mass of herbal tea, beef, onions and garlic. Not to mention some fat slices of pizza.

O I drank more water than the total of all the other liquids. Have eaten fruit, sandwiches, raw greens, petfood supplements, lemons. Swigged fish-oil. Eaten liver. Eaten blue-green algae capsules from Lake Klamath. Indeed my friends, I think despite how good the bevs/viands made me feel, it was TIME and my happy Bod which healed me. And today I am healed. ;)

Nathan Paul Hillman is healed. A tree bears fruit because it's a magic tree. Water flows downhill because it's bewitched. Nathan is well again because life's a miraculous exception to the rule.

Nerve Bundle

"senses a dangerous nerve bundle in the surrounding culture, rippling over to edges of the globe, an undercurrent of panic feeding off of personal emptiness - a swelling and seething hysteria building up after such overstimulation spills off and people are left alone with themselves and their raging needs - up until now barely fending off the void...."

People Afraid of Ritual Want Random Events Controlled by a 'Safe Programmer' !

I dreamt this dream on March 13th, 2010. In it I witnessed the effects of a ‘Reality Game’ generated (supposedly) by a computer programmed by humans to arrange hologram ‘reality events’ in random, complex patterns such that any real-life decisions which the human players made actually spurred the computer to fire back seemingly unpredictable phenomena. I believe the dream symbolises the direction which American and industrial Asian societies in particular are tracking. As far as the human players were concerned, the point seemed to be the desire to be caught up in something which seemed (most excitingly) out of their control, and which also gave them an air of heroism (‘purpose’) devoid of responsibility and social accountability. I won’t claim that the human players lived out their roles devoid of any sense of personal or social ethics, but the charge which people got out of gaming (an experimental stage) meant that many of the players would commit heinous acts out of sheer boredom, curiosity, or a desire to mess with the computer. People seemed to delight in the fun of guessing “Is this real or isn’t this?” If the gamers commited ‘bold acts’, it was only because they naively assumed a computer generated life couldn’t lead to REAL death, love, loss, disappointment, grief or pain. In other words, it allowed the participants to avoid all the very things they most needed to come to terms with in their plastic lives, and spelled out a perfect chess-board of self-deception. Within this frame of deception, I saw keenly the presence of demons, delighting in the folly and frailty of the human inventers.

Being keenly critical of such things in my own waking world, I was even more critical of this particular ‘game’ in the context of my dream – partly because it worked out to my own peril and isolation and, frankly, angered me to the point of driving me to use a spiritual exorcism to combat the series of events interplaying between human and computer. What I found most void and vapid about the game was its clear role in society as a *surrogate* ritual – a sham counterfeit to stand in the place of the many rituals of life, death, love, passage, voyage, work, clan, reunion, parting (etc) which pre-modern societies enact as extensions of a single integrative world-view.

In my dream, the contents of the game played out in a perfect pastiche of my parent’s and Oregon sister’s house. The players did not primarily consist of my family members – rather I sensed that my family members were suffering from the damnable trip the players were getting out of playing their game.

In the perception of the participants, ‘virtual’ objects and dangers would seem so real that one could no longer distinguish between real and virtual. Though I wasn’t a willing participant, I realised that I couldn’t ignore or escape the plot of this game.

My first face-off with the game was with a creature I did not know was real or virtual. A huge swooping venom-green serpent coiled through the air straight at me. I dodged to one side – it passed me by. As the game developed, I noticed that the participants became increasingly uneasy; it was a relief actually. Their healthy fear seemed to me a good sign!

And yet they weren’t near afraid enough (one is reminded of those who graspingly took Sauron’s gift-rings). I suspected that the humans had not only used the computers to create ‘bad art’ (trivial, reality-shunning, nature-hating), but that actual supernatural forces were at work to toy with the Materialists who’d created the game. When a ‘virtual’ suicide hanging occurred in the house attic and players advised me to take no notice (“It’s not real!”), I became even more convinced they were victims of moral delusion: they themselves might soon be dangling from the ends of ropes. I toyed with the idea of camping out in this attic – because I guessed any place the players were so keen to avoid had to be of central importance. Yet I was jittery, uneasy. I was partly unsure myself what was going on.

I went outside. I walked along a long dark beach. I noticed that shapes and shadows eavesdropped on my peripheral vision. I hurried back indoors. By this time the game seemed like no game at all. It was more like being trapped in some version of _The Exorcist_. I went to the top level of my parents’ house – to the room in which my sister and I had grown up. I noticed that some bunched bundled shape was shooting underneath all the blankets, carpets and curtains. The shapes then shifted into creatures. Even the house cat (was it the house cat?) changed its form. I began speaking out in a rhythmic voice, chanting, but couldn’t catch my breath to make audible sound. Once I gained strength, I resonated with power and banished the apparitions or forms from the household through intercessory prayers and petitions.

Once all the ‘excitement’ had ended, my family and I went back to the social rituals and dramas of our real lives with a vengeance – and life was good, not a dull or meaningless moment! The Mundane was full of Art and Narrative and Wonder. There was no need to add in a mind-blurring game to replace the ritual of a communal meal or bedtime story or lover’s walk. The grid and embroidery of our lives was undergirded by our faith that everything in the world and through time hung together in one piece. No one seemed to worry about techniques and proper results as much as becoming a family again. In place of robots, we got our human beings back.

Paleo-Nate: This makes me very happy. My brother in-law in touch

Paleo-Nate: This makes me very happy. My brother in-law in touch

Tracing Interlacing Trails

I have just stumbled into someone along the byways of Madison, a Welsh woman of Aberystwyth, who offered for my dwelling a stone cottage facing the Irish Sea. She splits her year between B&B and home in Wales, and lingering ties to Wisconsin. I met her Cambrian son, an English teacher in Morocco, and learned that her former husband is the famous Irish professor in Classics I once took notes for.

Haienwatha and the Hart-Crown of Hickory

Friday afternoon, the Twelfth of March, I dreamt. I had somehow been appointed a 'Rescuer' of some ten to twelve 'White Brides', all abducted by Eastern Native Americans in a wild past age, or in some remote future when America was being rebirthed.

Each bride had been force-wed to a powerful chieftain. I don't remember the early 'rescues' I made (or what I did with the Brides), only the last one, for my pursuer outdid any Indian I'd ever seen, living or dead. I felt a temptation even to worship him. In fact, he's one of my great heroes.

The Indians were riding over broad grass-grown hills by the sea, and I fled before them with a beautiful White Bride on a proud white horse, over a stream and high bank, over a hedge and stone fence into a meadow of oaks.

Behind me, on the plain, I saw an army of thousands. The plain rang, and clear voices vibrated like trumpets. I heard resonant pealing shouts of "Hiya-WATHA! Hiya-WATHA! Hiya-WATHA!"

The great Chieftain, an Iroquois (my own bloodline, since Cherokee were Iroquoian) came riding behind, and he had a tall upright crown of hazel and hickory rising up from his shoulderblades and collarbone on either side. They rose up vertical like small trees, gnarled and finger-limbed, intertwining like wicker. It struck me to the core, and I wanted to follow him...but I was leading his bride.

I climbed a tree with the White Bride, while an Indian guide climbed up with me, telling me if I wasn't brave enough to kill Hiawatha, he (my guide) would kill ME.

And up he came up the tree after us, and I stabbed Hiawatha between the collarbone and the neck, about three times, while my guide said earnestly: "There must be blood. I need to see blood."
And there was blood. I don't think he died nevertheless.

I was stung with remorse, and bewilderment at what was happening, for I so admired this Hiawatha/Haienwatha. What a great and sad irony that this namesake of the Onondagan follower of the Great Peacemaker (Deganawida), and enforcer of the Peacemaker's vision, fell under my blade in my dream.

Bardic Autumn Term

I was admitted this morning (the Occident evening) with funding to the University of Aberystwyth (Wales) to learn a poet's trade. Bardic banter straight ahead. Ws, Ys, DDs, RHs, LLs, and THs beckon and bait me.

The Merry Mouth of Ystwyth Wants to Munch Me !

Professor Jem Poster at U of Aberystwyth says my CW application is strong and desires to tele-interview with me! I've arranged to speak with him this coming Monday in the late morning - in the British evening.

Creepsy does it spine-sneaky tingle creepsy - ancient sounds of JOY, fierce joy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B3Ojdr51Fc

Born Geniuses of Blind Repair :)

I dreamt today that I visited a bicycle shop in which the blind technicians repaired things by means of touch, hearing and sound.

I should clarify that they were more interested in loud verbal diagnosis than actually REPAIRING anything! They told me exactly what was wrong with my bicycle, and proceded to do nothing about it. :)

Carro della Morte

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo02H7HT0J

The piece itself (anonymous, 1400s-1500s) comes from the powerful Florentine court of Medici and counts as one of many processionals of _Trionfo_ (Triumph), of Love or Death, syncretised with Roman tradition at that time. The background painting on youtube is _San Giorgio contro il drago_ - 'Saint George against the Dragon', by Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1460 – 1525/1526) of the Venetian school. The latter worked under Gentile Bellini.

Ladders and Libraries

I dreamt today I found a huge colour-illustrated book called The Encyclopædia of Dramatic Treaties which the Greeks and the Jews Have Made with Foreign Peoples. It was on a top shelf in an underground library and only reachable with a ladder.