Friday, February 14, 2014

Goblin dream transformations.

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André Dahmer: Malvados.
Why do I park in spaces reserved for cripples?
Because the Internet transformed me ...         ... into a sitter.
 
Lake Urmia (aka Oroumeih) in Iran is as good as gone:
Google Maps.
Lots of places of interest on this map: Sochi where the LGBT have been recently fighting it out with Vladimir Putin, the Chechens, the Americans ... ; Baku, headquarters of mega salaries earned by the international band of gypsies who build oil fields; the Aral Sea (mentioned here recently); Armenia; Mosul (What happened in Mosul again? Was that before or after W. declared the war won?) ...
Lake Urmia, 1985.Lake Urmia, 2004.Lake Urmia, 2008.Lake Urmia, 2010.Lake Urmia, 2010.Lake Urmia, 2012.Lake Urmia, 2014.
From 1985 ... so, say, 30 years. The one I grabbed (the last one at the right) seems to show an increase, a rebound, but it's hard to tell with Google.

So many dimensions for dream transformation, a-and a rich cultural hinterland already documented: 'The Hag' of Irish & Newfoundland mythology; the thirteenth fairy in 'Sleeping Beauty'; ... a long list I am sure. Plus many photographic and cinema montages over at least several generations - Roman Polanski's 1965 shocker 'Repulsion' for one.

After Gerry lost his legs he had nightmares (he told me), of being in a prisoner of war camp where racially identified torturers were zapping his legs with high voltage wires. He would drift in and out of it and if anyone happened to be there in a moment of semi-lucid wakefulness he would ask them to please cut the wires.

Mine is a dream goblin: a hand and forearm reaching from behind and around to thrust between bloody ribs and grasp and squeeze my heart. I have learned to enjoy it over the years.

And another, only once: of dying and becoming one of a row of heads of lettuce in a black, peaty vegetable garden; and my friend Keith putting his hands, fingers, between the leaves.
 
Daniel Hertzberg: hidden depths.The Shard, London.

Girls in Jolo, South China Sea, Sulu Sea.Anonymous girls somewhere.Bizarro.
Toying with notions of identity.
 
Johannes Vermeer: Girl with a pearl earring.Frances Broomfield.Frances Broomfield.Cover of Russell Hoban's 'The Medusa Frequency'.

NASA: Ivanpah Solar Energy Plant, Mojave Desert.Typhoon Haiyan.
There is indeed a solar-thermal generating plant Ivanpah in the Mojave Desert - in fact there are a number of comparable plants in the region, more than I had imagined. But what is the red bit there? No idea - and not knowing makes the whole thing incomprehensible. Maybe it's just me. A-and yes, Haiyan was big, BIG! biggest fricken EVER; but was it as big as most of India? Or most of China? Or has the image been subtly altered? Distorted? Photoshopped? Enlarged for effect?

Bizarro.
Shhhhhh.
Karima Rashida el-Mahroug (aka Ruby Rubacuori) & Richard Lugner.Karima Rashida el-Mahroug (aka Ruby Rubacuori) & Richard Lugner.

I am sure we can twist Kurt Cobain quoting Joseph Heller's Yossarian "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you" - maybe through a loop of wartime wisdom like 'three on a match' - and come up with a nice & pithy expression for terror dreams that at once debunks the psychotrophic cop-outs and puts a crack in it all through which one might just be able to smile back at The Hag. I'll leave that with you as an exercise.

Or ... Consider what will be done to force you to hide and not speak of suicide wishes & recurring anxiety dreams.

"Well time passed and now it seems everybody’s havin' them dreams."   (Talkin' WWIII Blues)

Easy enough to see where Gwynne Dyer is coming from as he fearfully boosts geo-engineering: see Geo-engineering is in trouble and the retraction Mea culpa on geo-engineering; it's not as bleak as I thought in the Georgia Straight recently.

Even such a sold-out intellectual as Pascal Bruckner and his recent 'The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse'. Hard to tell of course reading it in translation but it looks like the rankest tissue of exaggeration and ends with the ubiquitous 'Technology's gonn'a save us!'. Rah-rah Science! It's a common refrain. Oh my.
 
"You can be in my dream if I can be in yours."
Now there's a proper Valentine's Day sentiment eh?

Dream well gentle readers.
 
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