Dream log for Tuesday, February 6th, 2007
Saturday night I dreamt that I was taking a shower. I was not taking it in some ordinary shower stall, but rather in an irregularly shaped room about twenty feet in length and ten feet in width. It had small, pale blue tiles lining its floors and similarly sized white tiles lining its walls and ceiling. Somehow the showerhead was able to send water out to all the various areas of the room, drenching it like a downpour. It was in this room, I thought in my dream, that some noted climatologist, or meteorologist, or earth scientist of some stripe anyway had first had some insight about some important atmospheric phenomenon or other. He had done so while watching the water fall from the showerhead and slowly fill up the room. Soon, as I stood there with the water running over me, my thoughts drifted towards sharks, and I got lost in various chondrichthian musings about divers and great whites swimming in the clear blue ocean. Eventually I snapped out of it and realized that the shower had been running long enough for three or four inches of water to pool up on the ground - the amount of time that had taken obviously being dependent on the amount of goop clogging the showerdrain. I decided that anyone passing by the hallway outside (or whatever else was immediately outside this gigantic showerstall) would think me really weird for staying in the shower this long, so I decided to leave it. I turned off the water and grabbed my towel and the dream then ended.
--------
According to my commonplace book, on the night of the second of February I dreamt of an explorer who was making contact with a 'primitive' society. However, over the course of this contact he had blasphemed against one of their idolatrous gods and so the people had captured and imprisoned him. After a while, they took him to a stone statue of the deity that he had blasphemed against, in order that they might ask the god himself what a just punishment for the explorer's crime would be. Everyone, including the explorer, thought that the answer would be 'Death!' When they approached the sone figure, a booming voice spoke from within it. The explorer then indulged in a bit of narration, saying that "At the time, I of course assumed that the voice was produced by one of the tribal priests hiding in some cavity within the statue in order to fool the populace; but I later learned that this was not, in fact, the case." Well, whatever its cause, the statue spoke up then, saying "I give to you two options for this man's punishment. Either you can kill him, as you had intended, for that is an entirely just response to the crime of blasphemy, or you can keep him alive, and teach and train him in the ways of my mysteries, into the secret depths of my worship. Then, once he has been fully initiated, and fully converted to a true believer in me, he shall be able to understand his sin, and accept fully the indignity of the traditional punishment for blasphemers." The dream ended then, so I don't know what happened next, though it was strongly implied within my head that the autochthons would choose the second option. I don't know what the "traditional" punishment for blasphemy entailed, though, nor why the villagers would assume that the god wanted the explorer killed rather than face that traditional punishment.
--------
My commonplace book also claims that night of the 29th of January, I dreamt that, before going to conquer Mexico, Hernando Cortés wrote several volumes on mathematics and the nature of infinity.
Writing volumes on mathematics and the nature of infinity since 1986,
--mark
--------
According to my commonplace book, on the night of the second of February I dreamt of an explorer who was making contact with a 'primitive' society. However, over the course of this contact he had blasphemed against one of their idolatrous gods and so the people had captured and imprisoned him. After a while, they took him to a stone statue of the deity that he had blasphemed against, in order that they might ask the god himself what a just punishment for the explorer's crime would be. Everyone, including the explorer, thought that the answer would be 'Death!' When they approached the sone figure, a booming voice spoke from within it. The explorer then indulged in a bit of narration, saying that "At the time, I of course assumed that the voice was produced by one of the tribal priests hiding in some cavity within the statue in order to fool the populace; but I later learned that this was not, in fact, the case." Well, whatever its cause, the statue spoke up then, saying "I give to you two options for this man's punishment. Either you can kill him, as you had intended, for that is an entirely just response to the crime of blasphemy, or you can keep him alive, and teach and train him in the ways of my mysteries, into the secret depths of my worship. Then, once he has been fully initiated, and fully converted to a true believer in me, he shall be able to understand his sin, and accept fully the indignity of the traditional punishment for blasphemers." The dream ended then, so I don't know what happened next, though it was strongly implied within my head that the autochthons would choose the second option. I don't know what the "traditional" punishment for blasphemy entailed, though, nor why the villagers would assume that the god wanted the explorer killed rather than face that traditional punishment.
--------
My commonplace book also claims that night of the 29th of January, I dreamt that, before going to conquer Mexico, Hernando Cortés wrote several volumes on mathematics and the nature of infinity.
Writing volumes on mathematics and the nature of infinity since 1986,
--mark