Seal the hushed casket of my soul

The other night I had a dream I was dreaming. Or was it I dreamt I had a dream I was dreaming...

It doesn't matter. I was dreaming. An ordinary dream in which I was kicking some zombie butt when suddenly my dream self realized I was dreaming. It's not the first time this has happened. I've been a lucid dreamer since I was a child. What was interesting about this particular lucid dream is that not only was I acutely aware of the fact that I was dreaming, but that my dream self had powers my corporeal self does not. I'm talking about the ability to bend the rules of physics! Of course, it's nothing new. People have been flying, breathing under water, & falling from great heights without dying (trust me, it happens to me all the time) in their dreams since, well, since people began dreaming, I suppose. But what struck me was how rational my dream self was about the whole thing.

My thought process went something like this: "It's ok, I've had this dream before. These zombies can't hurt me; they aren't real." So, instead of kicking more zombie ass, I went fishing. And in my dreams I take a whole body approach to fishing, which means literally entering the water & swimming with my prey. In essence, I became a fish. I won't go too much into what fish traditionally represent in dreams (the unconscious, fertility, sex, religion, to name a few), instead I'll tell you what dreaming of fish (& being a fish) means to me.

Fish have long been recurring motifs in my dreams (as well as zombies, vampires, snakes, water, & school). They have also been motifs in my recurring dreams (I have dozens!). I have no doubt as to why these motifs surface so frequently. I spent a great part of my childhood fishing & swimming, watching horror movies, & of course, attending school. What interests me is my dream self, a self that is so obviously like me but is not me. I am not always conscious that I am dreaming, but more often than not, I find myself inhabiting a world that is completely within my control. In my dreams, I can do anything. Be anything.

So, how about you? What do you dream about? How often do you dream? Do you dream at all? I'm dying to know.

...

On a Dream

John Keats

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,

    When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept,

So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright

    So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft

The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;

    And seeing it asleep, so fled away,

Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,

    Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev’d that day;

But to that second circle of sad Hell,

    Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw

Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell

    Their sorrows—pale were the sweet lips I saw,

Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form

I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

& 

To Sleep

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
    Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light,
    Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
    In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
    Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
    Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
    Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
    And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

...

What post about dreams would be complete without Keats?!

...

Mooning over you: every day we descend a step further toward Hell

Well, my dear readers (all three of you!), I'm tired of listening to myself think. I'd like to hear from you.

What are your thoughts?

On life? the uncanny? zombies? Freud's predilection for cigars, coke & hysterical women? Soundgarden's new album? silent movies? tonight's harvest moon?

not tonight's harvest moon, but spectacular nonetheless

Full moons, especially the big, fat, low-hanging ones like the harvest moon, were once thought to be uncanny.

The Moon Illusion, as it is now called, is an optical illusion that causes the moon to appear larger when it is closer to the horizon & smaller when it is higher up in the sky. I was going to post a picture, but nothing was loading. You're over the moon about it, I'm sure.

And I, I have nothing to say.

So, tell ME something.

Anything.

...


To the Reader
Charles Baudelaire
trans. William Aggeler

Folly, error, sin, avarice
Occupy our minds and labor our bodies,
And we feed our pleasant remorse
As beggars nourish their vermin.

Our sins are obstinate, our repentance is faint;
We exact a high price for our confessions,
And we gaily return to the miry path,
Believing that base tears wash away all our stains.

On the pillow of evil Satan, Trismegist,
Incessantly lulls our enchanted minds,
And the noble metal of our will
Is wholly vaporized by this wise alchemist.

The Devil holds the strings which move us!
In repugnant things we discover charms;
Every day we descend a step further toward Hell,
Without horror, through gloom that stinks.

Like a penniless rake who with kisses and bites
Tortures the breast of an old prostitute,
We steal as we pass by a clandestine pleasure
That we squeeze very hard like a dried up orange.

Serried, swarming, like a million maggots,
A legion of Demons carouses in our brains,
And when we breathe, Death, that unseen river,
Descends into our lungs with muffled wails.

If rape, poison, daggers, arson
Have not yet embroidered with their pleasing designs
The banal canvas of our pitiable lives,
It is because our souls have not enough boldness.

But among the jackals, the panthers, the bitch hounds,
The apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents,
The yelping, howling, growling, crawling monsters,
In the filthy menagerie of our vices,

There is one more ugly, more wicked, more filthy!
Although he makes neither great gestures nor great cries,
He would willingly make of the earth a shambles
And, in a yawn, swallow the world;

He is Ennui! — His eye watery as though with tears,
He dreams of scaffolds as he smokes his hookah pipe.
You know him reader, that refined monster,
— Hypocritish reader, — my fellow, — my brother!

...

Brains! Part 1

*these ideas are not my own, except the part about the zombies

Every idea I've ever had belonged to someone else first.
                                                    -James T. Hellcat

In his book How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker wrote, "...the mind is a naturally selected computer." I like this metaphor. For one, I'm a Darwinist/Dawkinsist, so the idea that the brain has evolved to be the crazy thinking machine it is is not so surprising/terrifying, & for another, the brain as data processor seems to me completely plausible given its nature.

What do I mean by its nature? Well, the brain has several data processing functions. It is a counting machine, a language processor, it has an expandable memory, and it is capable of crashing, to name a few. For more on the brain: http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1997_09_naturalhistory.html

But it's the misfirings of the brain that I really want to talk about. The other day I experienced a classic blunder (in Statistics, a Type 1 error/false positive). I was sitting on my couch enjoying a visit with a friend, when I looked to my left & noticed my cat hunkered down beside the couch, no doubt stalking a fly or spider or a bit of fluff. I then looked up & saw that the cat was sprawled out on the dining table. A quick double-take back to 'the cat' next to the couch & I realized that it was actually a black bag I had earlier set on the floor. Duh!

Called pareidolia or simulacra, this 'uncanny' phenomenon occurs when the brain fills in false information & recognizes a vague image as a specific one. Sort of like the mind's auto-complete, if you will. Human self-delusion is fascinating, don't you think?! Pareidolia (not aliens, God, ghosts, etc.) is also to blame when we insist that we 'recognize' a familiar face, only to realize upon looking closer that it is not at all the person we had thought, & it is what causes us to see faces on random objects such as the moon or a slice of toast. It also makes us susceptible to the power of illusion/magic.

Traditionally (& still today?!), these misperceptions have most often been attributed to supernatural beings/occurrences. But it's just your mind playing tricks on you ... literally! So why do we insist on perpetuating these supernatural myths? Evolution, baby. Our minds have evolved to take on some pretty herculean tasks, so it makes sense that the brain would try to make things easier on itself, say perhaps by switching off/turning down consciousness when it is not directly necessary in order to accomplish the task at hand. ie. making sense of the black lump protruding from behind the couch. That black lump could have been almost anything, so in order to save time & costly cell activity, my brain made a guess based on a number of things (previous experience/memory, what I imagine it to be, & what I hope it is). So why DID I see my cat & not a dog, or a sweater, or a panther, or a black hole, or the black bag that it really was? 

I'll quote Mr. Pinker again, if only because he says things so much more learnedly & eloquently than I (he's the Psychologist, Cognitive Scientist, Linguist, & I'm the English major): "...the mind is a system of organs of computation that enabled our ancestors to survive and reproduce in the physical and social worlds in which our species spent most of its evolutionary history" (Pinker 2005).

1. Our brains are still evolving & are, therefore, not without imperfections.
2. Our social & physical worlds have evolved much faster than our brain's have.

While the costs of making a mistake in perception may be different (but not less) in the contemporary social & physical worlds, our brains are still hardwired to be on the lookout for both the things we know that are safe & the things we don't that are potential dangers. It may be nothing more than a perceptual error when we misinterpret vague images, but it pays in the long run. The brain's auto-complete function enables us to quickly locate our mates/family in a jungle of faces, locate food & shelter sources & avoid danger. Only sometimes, the brain gets it wrong (like Google?!). I am familiar with the sight of my cat (I've had her for about 6 months now), I do not own a dog, the particular shape & colour of the bag was consistent with that of my cat's (rather large) posterior, I completely forgot that I had set the bag there myself a few hours earlier, & there are no panthers or black holes (that I know of) in my home, so it makes sense that I would infer that the shape I saw was my cat, Vampira. Human perception is a subjective approximation/guesstimation rather than a fundamental, objective truth.  

Everything is a lie.

...

The other day I wrote about my brain. Specifically, how superior I think it is. You may dismiss me as an egomaniac, and to a certain extent, you'd be right. I am genetically hardwired to be selfish (or rather, my genes are). But that does not make me a selfish (and therefore, according to some, bad) human being. As intelligent as I am, as you are, as anyone can ever be (and trust me that person would be a gazillion billion times smarter than me & you put together), there is so much that we don't know, it makes what we do know seem infinitesimal. I may be gifted according to some subjective standardized test, but I am far from being a know-it-all. I am no better (or worse) than the lot of humankind.

In essence, when it comes to the human brain, degrees of intelligence are irrelevant. We're all pretty damn smart (in comparison to protozoa, say) or stupid (compared to superhuman robots, which thankfully, don't exist). Think about it. From an evolutionary perspective, we aren't that much more evolved than primitive man/woman (which explains a lot about our current disordered world!). I may be an intelligent being, but most of the time I find myself shambling about like some ravenous, slobbering zombie. 

And like I always say, I am a self-portrait of you.

...

The human brain, with all of its capabilities, its imperfections, & its limitations, truly amazes & confounds me. It is not only the source of, but quite possibly, the best example of the 'uncanny' there is.

Which brings me to zombies. The words 'uncanny' & 'zombie' are practically synonymous in my world.

I really like zombies. They are my favourite monsters, despite my theory that zombies, vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein, golem, ghosts, demons, mythological monsters such as Medusa & Hydra, succubi, human monsters--serial killers/cannibalists/necrophiliacs etc.--even the Devil himself, are all incarnations of the same thing: the inherent darkness within the human brain. Zombies aren't real, but they are useful as a metaphor for the things we don't understand/like/are afraid of about ourselves. It is much easier to create an 'other' to bear the weight of our troubles, one who is capable of acting out all of the nastiness we can imagine, than it is to accept that we ourselves ARE monsters. Lest you think I am being incontrovertibly pessimistic about humankind (and truthfully, most of the time I am), I also believe that our brains have advanced far enough for us to accept this & move on. We are not merely devils, we are angels, too.

And, although logically impossible, zombies are, nonetheless, quite frightening to anyone with a brain.

...

Welcome to the Age of the Zombie.

...mmmmm brains!

...

The Computation
John Donne

For my first twenty years, since yesterday,

I scarce believed thou couldst be gone away;
For forty more I fed on favours past, 

And forty on hopes that thou wouldst they might last;
Tears drown'd one hundred, and sighs blew out two;

A thousand, I did neither think nor do,
Or not divide, all being one thought of you;

Or in a thousand more, forgot that too.
Yet call not this long life ; but think that I
Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die ? 

...

Sources


Carroll, Robert T. http://www.skepdic.com/pareidol.html
Chalmers, David. http://consc.net/zombies.html
Dennett, Daniel C. http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/unzombie.htm
Pinker, Steven. http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/papers/So_How_Does_The_Mind_Work.pdf
___________. http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1997_09_naturalhistory.html

Just when you thought it was safe to be dead!

I was 11 when I first watched Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988). My best friend & I sat in her livingroom & ate popcorn & drank pop & watched it over & over & over & laughed & laughed & laughed & cried & cried & cried. We also hung out with the cows in her barn & later checked out the Hustler mags her Stepdad kept between his mattresses, but that's another story (& trust me it's NOT as perverted as you think).

Return of the Living Dead Part II wasn't my first zombie flick, but it was almost as memorable. The first was a little known Z-grade classic called The Children, about a group of kids who become zombified after the school bus they're riding on passes through a mysterious fog. I was 8 & watched it with my Dad. For some reason I thought the children ate the adults when they hugged them (they don't, they burn them) & it was because of this movie that I was terrified to go into the shed. There was a lot of junk in the shed & consequently a lot of hiding places for the children, you know!

But Return of the Living Dead Part II. THAT one made me laugh pretty much from beginning to end. Good-bad acting, cheesy dialogue, blood, guts & brains galore! It was the day my love affair with all things slashy & trashy truly began. I've seen better zombie movies since (much better in fact), but it was crucial to my psychological development. If it weren't for movies like this, I wouldn't be the mentally deranged person I am today! I also wouldn't have this:

That's right. Return of the Living Dead Part II Original Motion Picture Soundtrack on vinyl. Framed. Oh hell yes, baby, can you dig it!

Besides arousing in me a feeling of total nostalgic bliss, this album is important because a) it was released in 1988 around the same time as the movie, b) other than a small hole in the cover itself, it's in near mint condition, and c) due to rights issues or some other damned thing, the soundtrack for the DVD is not the same as the soundtrack for the VHS. This puppy's rare. Ca-ching!

Thanks, Tom D. (Told you no one else would buy it!)

...

And for your viewing pleasure:




 ...

dying is fine)but Death
e.e. cummings

dying is fine)but Death

?o
baby
i

wouldn't like

Death if Death
were
good:for

when(instead of stopping to think)you

begin to feel of it,dying
's miraculous
why?be

cause dying is

perfectly natural;perfectly
putting
it mildly lively(but

Death

is strictly
scientific
& artificial &

evil & legal)

we thank thee
god
almighty for dying
(forgive us,o life!the sin of Death

...

Don't let them bury me, I'm not dead!

Today is Wes Craven's 71st birthday. And what better way to celebrate than with spiders, snakes, psychotropic drugs, Haitian voodoo, premature burial ...

& zombies?!

One of my favourites from the 80's--a sleek, subtle(r), underrated thriller courtesy of the gore-master himself--I can't even count how many times I've seen this movie:

Loosely based on ethnobotanist Wade Davis's non-fiction account of his investigations into Haitian zombification, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) stars Bill Pullman as the ethnobotanist/anthropologist Dr. Dennis Alan, and also features Cathy Tyson, Zakes Mokae, Paul Winfield & a pre-CSI Paul Guilfoyle (he's so young & cute!).

For those of you who enjoy this sort of thing, here is the American trailer:

...

Well shot & decently acted, this movie practically screams das Unheimliche. Pullman is quite believable as the relentless doctor, however, south-afrikaner Zakes Mokae steals the show for me as creepy witch doctor/bokor Dargent Peytraud.

Just look at this face:

...

I first saw The Serpent and the Rainbow around the time it was released & not surprisingly, it still resonates with me today, some 20 odd years later! This is one of those movies that sticks with you.

The dream sequences in this heavily atmospheric & somewhat disjointed--but never too disjointed--film are quite literally nightmarish. The effects are realistic. The setting is haunting & lush. And the subject matter—zombification—well, everyone who knows me knows how I feel about zombies!

Good enough to eat ... you.

Of all the movie monsters out there--and there are so so many--the zombie is perhaps the most frightening. Why? A loaded question, but I think it stems from the fact that zombies are most like us. In fact, they are us. Only an us that is 'un'conscious, dead to the world.

While the zombies of our imagination are typically (thanks mostly to Romero) portrayed as flesh-eaters, real zombies prove to be much less opportunistic & dangerous. The zombie originated in Haitian folklore (something Craven definitely kept in mind). There have been hundreds of (mostly unsubstantiated) accounts of men & women returning from the grave after allegedly being poisoned by some kind of drug that rendered them 'lifeless,' yet years of research has only turned up a few toxic fish-based powders that mimic the effects of anaesthesia. When the powder wears off, these 'zombies' usually return to their homes to 'haunt' their families, or as is suggested in the movie, are dug up by some evil houngan's henchmen & put to work. Like Christophe (played by Conrad Roberts, who coincidentally had a part in an episode of CSI).

*Spoiler alert*

In our film, the powder is blown onto our hero's face and he soon finds himself paralyzed but completely conscious of his surroundings. Here's where things get tricky. While under the influence of this drug, he has all sorts of hallucinations, including visions of being buried alive! And the viewer has the pleasure/pain of experiencing it right alongside him through a series of clever POV shots. In this case, the shots are quite effective. (Another director who successfully uses a similar type of POV shot is Aldo Lado in La Corta Notte Delle Bambole di Vetro aka Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971)).

Forgive me for the seemingly unrelated intrusion, but if you have seen both movies you will know what I mean. And besides, it gives me the opportunity to show you the killer cover: 

Dig?

...

But now, back to the zombies.

Although they aren't dangerous in the same way modern brain-slurping gut-munching talking running thinking zombies are, traditional zombies aren't any less sinister. The ramifications of zombification are obvious: good ol' fashioned mind control. What better way to force someone to bend to your will than to remove all traces of (self)consciousness from his/her mind!

Sidebar: Governments have long used prescription drugs & alcohol to 'legally' exert mind control over their public (but that is a subject for another kind of blog!).

...

(It always comes back to mind control, doesn't it?)

If you like your zombie movies crunchy & bloody & not the least bit serious, don't bother with The Serpent and the Rainbow. Although there are plenty of scares, Craven is restrained here & so are his zombies. Which brings me to the point.

(Does there really have to be a point?)

No. But it's almost always where things start to get weird.

*Another Spoiler alert*

Dr. Alan enters a strange world when he arrives in Haiti. Everything about the place is contrary to what he knows/thinks he knows. He is arrested several times by the police, framed for murder, nearly castrated, beaten, sent home at gunpoint (but not without his prize) only to return to Haiti to be drugged & subsequently buried alive & unearthed/brought back from the dead (if only in his mind). And finally, after defeating the bad guy, our battered hero emerges from the battle triumphant. (Sounds like a story I once read ...)

...

Usually what appears to be uncanny turns out to be less than mysterious, nothing more than our minds playing tricks on us. But there are those rare instances where it turns out to be something more.

We could travel to Haiti in search of zombies, completely confident in the versimiltude of our own realities.

Like Dr. Alan.

We could be researchers looking for a specific kind of drug that creates these zombies. A drug certain companies would be very interested in acquiring.

Like Dr. Alan

We could be tourists simply looking for a tax break.

Like Dr.Alan.

And we could find nothing but civil unrest, corrupt city officials, & some hallucinogenic fish powder & the occasional strange custom.

Like Dr. Alan.

Or, we could find ourselves, like Dr. Alan, unable to wake from some terrific nightmare.

We could find ourselves

zombified.

...

From Towards Break of Day
W.B. Yeats

Was it the double of my dream
The woman that by me lay
Dreamed, or did we halve a dream
Under the first cold gleam of day?