I dreamed that I submitted a workplan for an upcoming project and received the comment that we should be employing Advanced Super Techniques (AST). Then there was a call about the project in which I was again urged to use Advanced Super Techniques. I pretended to know what this meant and made what I hoped were some appropriate remarks about what we might learn using AST, meanwhile frantically googling to find out what it meant; but my screen filled up with a solid block of random letters and symbols.
Then I somehow heard about an expert in AST and went to consult him. His lab was in an old brick factory building. When I entered the building I discovered that the lower floors had been made into artists' spaces, studios with a shop in the center. Everyone looked at me strangely. The geometry of the building was an Escherian impossibility and I was completely lost, but I pretended to know where I was going and fumbled my way around, getting increasingly hostile looks. I eventually made my way up a mad staircase to the Fourth Floor, where I pushed open a door and entered a forest of trees growing in complete darkness. Feeling like I was finally getting somewhere I pulled out my phone, turned on the flashlight, and entered the forest, where I saw strange instrumets and old smartphones hanging from wires around the trees. Then I woke.
1 comment:
That's a magnificently dark nightmare. Kafkaesque in the fullest sense, with a delightful dose of surrealism and even Lovecraft (as well as Escher) in the weird stair angles.
Now, consider: I'm a depressive, pessimistic person, the sort who identifies with Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History--or at least the famous Novus Angelus thesis, one of the few I find comprehensible--and Augustine's negative view of humanity. And yet, I dreamt vividly last night that I was helping Santa fill people's stockings with gifts. Santa was right their next to me, both of us very busy at our work. This just went on for a while, quite pleasantly and industriously, until I had trouble juggling the stockings, the gifts, and the gift-lists. That's when I awoke.
My point is, maybe you should try a little pessimism. How about an enjoyable round of "Désenchantée"?
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