After the Authors

I had a dream last night that I was a character in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.  Those who've read know it's partially a story about the relationship between an author and his characters.  My dream placed me at the end of the book, where I had to say goodbye to King as he left the world of the books and returned to Maine.  I knew that, despite any attempts I might make, my narrative was complete, and my story was done.

At some point, the authors of your life will leave you behind.  Or you will leave them behind.  Some difference, no difference.  It could be a girlfriend or an organization or a practice or anything.  She will stop taking your calls or they will inform you that you services are no longer needed or you will no longer be able to do the asana.  It is inevitable.  Entropy comes for everyone.

And when you wake up from the nightmare, you realize that you have no author, or that everything is your author.  Some difference, no difference.  The story keeps going, and what you think is an ending is just a really sad part of the book.

Or a really happy one.  Maybe if enough of your authors disappear, you can stop living narratives and start living reality.

Dream Weaver

I have broken the Seventh Seal of the New Age Apocalypse.  I have started to keep a dream journal.  If you don't, I cannot recommend it enough.

I never gave dreams much thought, even when I encountered therapists who encouraged me to treat them more seriously.  The psychological approach to dreams seems so clinical and cold to me, and, although I never consciously had this thought, I think I always wanted my dreams to remain free, wild, and mysterious.  The idea of putting dreams on the couch seemed to rob them of all their potency.

Thanks to Arthur Magazine, I know I'm not the only one that feels that way.  The cover story of their big comeback issue is an interview with comic book artist Rick Veitch, who has spent the better part of 20 years writing and illustrating his dreams for over 20 years.  That's his work on the cover.

Something about the combination of dreams and comic books spoke to me.  Comics are one of the last places where the free, wild, and mysterious can still bubble up into the larger culture, unless you think a Norse god teaming up with the Tin Man and an unfrozen WWII soldier is standard everyday happenings.  I love comics but have never been able to participate in the creative process.  I can't draw, and I haven't written any fiction since high school.

Rick Veitch tells me I don't need to do either.  All I need to do is dream, and I can play with the same magic he does.

So, yeah, I started a dream journal this weekend, and I am already amazed at what I am uncovering.  Thus far, because the cosmos has a sense of humor, the primary benefits I have seen have been psychological.  I am amazed at what writing and rehashing my dreams has told me about how I carry guilt around.  Some of the details have been painful to write down, but doing so has let me walk around this week with a little less weight on my shoulders.  Being aware of some previously subconscious coping mechanisms has let me understand myself a little better, and I'm able to be just that much gentler with myself.

Thus far, I haven't dreamt up the next great superhero franchise, but, hey, the Dream Every Day Project is less than a week old.  Give it time.

My Dreams v. The Dark Knight Returns

This was my dream last night:

Somehow, the Joker seemed to be killing people in the dream realm. I, as batman, could only get to where he was causing a ruckus through dreams, as could my father. Once we got there we found that the Joker had done some diabolical shit and gotten away, but he had left clues and the cure for the Joker Virus in an old car. He also left clear instructions that the only way to get to the second part of the adventure was to play through the Batman video game on the PS3 in the beater. One of the things you could do in the video game was gain a bunch of different weapons through mastering the hammer throw, including a Green Lantern ring.

Apparently I did what I needed to do, because it flashed forward to the second part, which was entirely nautically based. The Joker was terrifying people on the beaches along the coast, because he had gained Aquaman-like powers. I/Batman managed to catch him at one point by firing a grappling line horizontally, hitting a big pier, and pulling myself through the water at high speed, grabbing him on the way by. The Joker wasn't too put out by this, though, because somehow he lassoed me when I got on the pier so I couldn't get away. I was above him, but he was climbing up towards me and it was clear he could easily overpower me, but that wasn't his plan.

His plan turned out to be, there was a cruise ship right by the pier with a bunch of people with high powered rifles. When I thought it couldn't get any worse, it turned out he had planned the whole thing so that a giant submarine breached and smashed up the pier and the cruise ship. The waves/tide pushed everybody into a canal, which was lined with more dudes with high powered rifles. I remember calculating that there was like a one percent chance that someone could swim by those riflemen without getting shot at such close range, and sure enough I did get shot twice, because I wasn't batman any more, just Bryan. 

But I did survive to advance to part 3 of the dream, where people started getting washed up in this Mad Max-type setting, except it was on the beach. All of a sudden this dervish of light and evil started charging around the beach looking for stuff to kill. I tried to hide behind some old tires in the garage, but the dervish found me. Turns out it was the spirit of the Joker, and he was unkillable and all powerful. He rode me around and extended his tendrils trying to latch on to humans, from whom he could draw power to reincarnate stuff. He did that for a while and it looked like it would be really bad.

Luckily, somehow we ended up on an elevator. As the elevator rose, it revealed a cat and Russell, the bassett hound. the cat turned into Batman and Russell turned into Superman. Superman flew out, grabbed the Joker, snapped his neck, and threw him to the bottom of a pool, so that the real Aquaman could handle him.

Your move, Mr. Nolan.