THAT DAY

I'm reading Robert Moss's The Secret History of Dreaming. He makes me face that I've betrayed my dreams' demands in two key areas: they've said clearly that they want me to date again and apply to grad school. I've made only token attempts to comply. Tribal shamans would have no trouble explaining my current illness: soul loss! Not theft; I threw my dreams away. To heal, I have to act on them.

And I don't know how. I just can't seem to. The illness meant to spur me has drained me so much I can't face the challenges... barely get through the day's demands. Feel deadlocked.

So I do what I always do when trapped: retreat into art.

First I finish illustrating the dream-poem Oh, Wait (left).

Then I design a web-comix version of Franchise (upper right)

Then I expand the tour of Thuvia Upland on my imaginary planet Tharn (right)

Then I add some watercolor landscape-sketches to Pegasia (lower right).

Back up all this new work and start to index it. Oh, I'm sick all right! No energy at all. Yeah.

THAT EVENING

I read the saga Sigurd and Gudrun, in Tolkien's translation. Rhythms and alliterations in Nordic poetry are unlike Latin ideas of regular meter. It's not just chance flashes of barbaric splendor, or poetry whose natural rhythm gets lost in translation; it's an irregular but strict polished form consciously aiming (through compression and outrageousness) for those flashes of splendor.

Tolkien's interpretation of Odin is startling. He's treacherous as Loki toward the heroes he helps, because he's trying to harvest heroes; it's prophesied only a mortal dragonslayer who's gone through death can defeat the Midgard Worm at Ragnarok. Valhalla's no mere brawler's heaven but a training camp. So Tolkien doesn't find the Norse tragedies tragic--just sacrificial and preparatory. Is he imposing a Christian myth on the Norse? Yet the evidence is there. The father-god sacrifices his own son so that Sigurd resurrected can save us all. Tolkien's just noticed the implications--why the Norse version of the All-Father's even crueler than Jehovah, sacrificing all his children. He's not a jealous God; nor a loving one. He's recruiting.

This does fit my impression of the Icelandic sagas: the Norse worldview's not tragic or fatalistic, just harshly pragmatic, admiring those who can make hard decisions. And in mythic terms, empowering: for only mortals, not the gods, can save the world from darkness.

THAT NIGHT

Puffing freighter, green-inlaid with a trove of Chinese jade struck a greedy long-jawed West Saharan reef. A horde swarms from their clay-oven slum to help pale shivering crew ashore through vicious surf. But as a fee, pocketing the cargo! Gem-haul percolates pirate-swift through all Africa: green bruise of luxury. Still spreading! Walk a fair with me-- velvet veins amid tawdry jewelry. Small-time booths. We amateurs now carve and sell this top-rate stone: the waxgoldgreen, the marbletawn. And what do we carve? Well, that one the tourist rings she'd always done in plastic soft and cheap. And he fakes antiques: achieves ancestral sleek, though all is borrowed fire. And yet... she carves, in her hill-hut, intimate scrimshaw dreams she never could scroll in the local coarse-grained wood.

Salvaging jetsam ain't a crime. No, this is simply how our webworld is. Out of the hands of experts! All cranks with loot. Deep roots, farewell! In fairness, we self-taught can be original, and backed by Wikipe- dia, pirate sages flower, unique. Problem is: foundation's weak. Cracks yawn shoddy. Miscarpentry mars our Rodia Towers of cool debris. Traditionlost, we cannot tell what's chaff, what's vital. Ah, will we amateurs ever evolve the skill to carve our soul's sweet shape? Not me so far! Heft dreams all made of lovely long-to-be-filigree jade, and here I squat, slum bungler! I pick up my drill, but know I'll betray the depth of my dream. The prime stone so velvet gleams! Small-time gone wrong. Forgive me, all; forgive my bunglesong.

NOTES AND GUESSES

• Western Saharans salvage the wreck: to me, they're the ultimate dispossessed. Morocco invaded, occupied their coast. No one cared.
• Looted jade: Tolkien's picture of Norse culture's lost esthetic. His lecturenotes opened up a world I'd only seen misrepresented in public school (and Wagner).
• Woman carving dreams in a poor tropical hill-town: recurring dream-theme. Example: The Air Burundi Paintings
• Deep roots, farewell! Quotes Tolkien's line about Aragorn's kin: "deep roots are not reached by the frost." He means unbroken cultural traditions, even if just a few diehards keep it alive.
• Rodia Towers: Simon Rodia, a classic outsider artist, built beautiful towers of junk in LA. But the towers are fragile, hell to preserve.
• Spotty self-education: Gordon B just sent me a transcendent dream, Strange Service, but added he hasn't studied ESP because "I haven't found a suitable teacher." I wrote back "You don't need one; basic scientific method (just trial and error plus careful notes) will guide you as well as most teachers, without the risk of getting boxed into an ideology." This dream points out that we self-taught may have gaps in essentials.
• I've been reluctant to go to grad school. This dream explains why I should go--to fill in gaps. Despite biases, universities do aim at comprehensive grounding--filling gaps and correcting pop culture's simplified myths. How I wish Tolkien had been my lit teacher!
• ACTION 1: Research grad schools, I guess. But not in art! In writing, literature, myth and dream.
• ACTION 2: Get my Dreamverses out there. Crude, yes, but they address a core issue of our age. Without cultural traditions helping us to read our dreams (night- or day-) we're damn near all amateurs hefting true jade. A dragonhoard we lack the tools to work.
• This is Dreamverse #64. Sixty-four dream-poems! And, at last, the last.

  In my hut alone, I've polished one dream in every chessboard square, for each Yi Jing hexagram. There: good or ill, I'm carved out now. I'm done.

  Dream well, little rabbits, little burglars. Dream well.

  --Chris Wayan, 2009--

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