Category Archives: Words Words Words

On Coincidence

I had the joy of spending Victoria Day outside with a few good friends at a spontaneous picnic. Simple pleasures: roast chicken, a few different kinds of fresh bread, warm strawberries, grapes, cool drinks, and total relaxation. All stresses were forgotten as we nibbled and laughed and played with my lovely goddaughter, who had more energy than the adults lazing about. Plus, I got a bit of sun, which, if you’ve seen my milky-pale skin, is a blessing. I no longer look like a creature of the night.

I happened to stop in at the secondhand bookstore around the corner and brought home quite the find: a copy of Connie Willis’ Lincoln’s Dreams. I’m a huge Connie Willis fan. I am not, however, a fan of charging $9.99 for a two hundred page book, and for some reason I never picked this one up when it was cheaper. (Actually, I know the reason: I’m not a Civil War fan.)

Well, apart from being immensely smug about scoring a Connie Willis book secondhand, I discovered that this book fits right in to my life at the moment. It’s not about the Civil War. (Well, sort of, but it’s a means to a different end.) It’s about dreams.

Now, I love how Connie Willis examines the whole what-is-real perception of reality, and time-travel, and life vs death. At this particular point in time, however, when part of my attempt to solve my sleep problems involves recording dreams, this particular book becomes even more fascinating. Especially since I’ve started noticing that every once in a while, I “dream true” – I’ll write something down in my notebook when I wake up, and a couple of days later something very much like it happens in the real world.

There’s no such thing as coincidence, I’m fond of telling my students, since everything’s connected by energy of various sorts. I’m also a Jungian, which means that I subscribe to that whole collective unconscious idea. I also think that our human concept of time is a construct to make our lives easier, sort of like democracy. So, why can’t someone start picking up the dreams of a man involved in the Civil War? What’s to stop me from having the odd dream about something that (in our childlike perception of “linear time”) hasn’t happened yet? Why does man stubbornly insist that memory only stretches backwards, because he has experienced it? We know the future exists, because today was yesterday’s future. By extension, we’re living in someone’s past.

Mankind places a lot of weight on what is verifiable by sensory proof, and yet is incredibly subjective about other concepts that require faith. Some are inviolate – of course it’s true, even though it cannot be proven – and others are flatly dismissed without even a second thought – that’s impossible. It’s absolutely fascinating to see how uneven we are, and how strongly we’ll defend certain ideas, yet obstinately push away others. Man’s a hypocrite. A loveable, frustrating, contradictory, inconsistent hypocrite.

Academic Peeps

Peeps – unholy marshmallow creatures. Being more of a chocolate bunny girl myself, I didn’t encounter Peeps until three years ago when a co-worker introduced me to the original Peep Research page. Then, it was LOTR as peformed by the little critters: Lord of the Peeps: The Fellowship of the Peep. Now, at last, someone has done a Peep study that touches my very heart: A study of small fluffy creatures and library research.

Extremes

Three States Aim to Outlaw Eco-Protests

What’s next – complete abolishment of free speech?

And at the other end of the spectrum, science has established the optimum method of shoe lacing. Thank goodness; I don’t know how much longer we could have gone on…

See what happens when I work at the computer? I blog as I find nifty stuff while I research. When I don’t work, I don’t blog. You can be thankful or disappointed, as you like.

I’m done now, though. I need another Advil or two; my neck hurts.

Offhand

After an hour and a half break to take an Advil, make and eat dinner, and have a glass of wine, I’m back at the computer. Hey, don’t try to stop me. I’ve been restless and not-work-y for the past ten days; let me work while I’m happy to work!

Besides, it benefits two parties: the employer who needs this freelance work done, and me, because my work makes money so that I can buy more books. (This is serious. I’m currently in the throes of Egyptian and Norse mythology heaven, and I’ve got a list of titles I want as long as my arm.) Plus I’m multi-tasking: while one page loads, I’m searching out new links with the other.

Eventually I’ll stop, and I’ll watch Buffy or something. Speaking of, was anyone else left a bit off-balance by the Angel season finale? It was great, and tied up loose ends while preparing for a new season, but I guess I’m just too used to mass violence and cataclysm on Angel these days. There was surprisingly little cataclysmic action in this episode. It made for a nice break for the characters, of course – who, come to think of it, were left as equally off-balance.

Asatru

I’ve been sailing along through this research, and all of a sudden, I’m forced to take another break; the server which hosts the pages I’m working on is overloaded and has politely asked me to come back later. Well, it’s one way to make sure I take time to stretch and munch something, and pour myself some iced tea (I gave up on the hot kind; it kept cooling before I got to drink it).

On my travels about today, I came across this article on the growing pains of Asatru on the Asatru Folk Assembly site , the modern Norse reconstructionist religion, comparable to traditional Wicca being a reconstruction of Celtic-Britannic spirituality. It seems that they’re addressing many of the same problems the eclectic Pagan community is addressing: the evolution from a hearth/home-based religion to a public religion, the problem of clergy, the problem of congregation in a non-organised religion, and the issue of money. I found it interesting.