Where My Head is at
Today I awoke from a not-quite-nightmare that is best described as a live action Durer woodcut. I call it a not-quite-nightmare because while it held all the menace of a nightmare, it was just too fascinating to be truly afraid.
The dream involved a village haunted by demons/werewolves of the original settlers to the island. They had settled the land by order of their King and went mad during the winter and killed each other. The madness was supernaturally inflicted and heightened. Now, the current villagers were all possessed by these tormented spirits and I rode my bicycle into town. Everything, save me and my bicycle, had the heavy lines of a Durer woodcut and they moved and flowed in a strange manner, emphasized by those heavy lines. I remember best bicycling into town during the late evening, seeing my hands on the handlebars of my bike, and watching yellow cat's eyes appearing everywhere, like lanterns being lit, as my arrival was noticed. (I dream in colour) I don't remember too much else.
Having just read V for Vendetta I have been thinking 3 things:
1) I think I've read it before but where and when I don't know.
2) I wish there was something I strongly believed in.
3) Words are truly viral.
To elaborate:
1) I knew where the story was heading and details were familiar but in a vague way. I think I may have read it at Jeff's place in Ottawa while watching one of his many pirate films that lost much but not all of my attention.
2) I don't believe in a God but I wish there was one or many. I joke there must be a God because somebody up there hates me but I am aware the life I live is of my own making.
I don't have faith in our political system or our politicians. But I am not motivated to change that because, while politics affects us all, I really don't notice the effects of any of our politicians.
I wonder, if things were to become the facist state described in V for Vendetta, would I just put my head down and try to live quietly or would I actually care enough to challenge the system and face the risks that entails. Doing something involves more than a conviction of what is right or wrong. It involves taking a stand for something you feel is right or standing against what you feel is wrong. I'd like to think that I have the courage to do something that dangerous/challenging/noble? but doing such involves a depth of belief in something which I currently don't possess.
3) The graphic novel contains songs and poetry and even V speaks with a certain cadence that I found pleasurable to read. I found myself enjoying the use of language to such a degree, I would read and re-read bits of the dialogue aloud to hear the sound and tone.
I began to think of the novel Snowcrash where people's brains were being re-programmed by exposure to words/sounds that equated to bits and bytes in a computer.
Like a virus carrying and injecting it's DNA into a host cell, words inject ideas into people but only if the right receptors are open, only if the right words are chosen. Words can create changes in thinking patterns, can mutate and multiply. People changed by words often don't realize it and start spouting out those same words to infect others around them.
Words mutate in terms of meaning and of use. Remember when the word "party" was just a noun and not a verb? Words that don't evolve, die out of usage and become embedded on the pages of mouldy old tomes like dinosaur bones between strata of earth. Old words may be discovered by some wanderer through a library, who sees the importance that word may once have had. They may be propped up and be put on display, like dinosaur bones in a museum, but their true relevance in relation to our daily lives is something most of us will never truly grasp.
This is actually a fairly condensed version of the thoughts going through my head today. I don't have the inclination to continue writing it because, I find, as I am writing, my thoughts are mutable, changing and shifting. The words I am choosing to use are affecting the ideas I am attempting to convey and I feel the ideas are are being lost.
That said, one last thought:
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with Kraft peanut butter on Wonderbread is a nostalgic food. Even if the Kraft peanut butter is sugar and salt free but does had added stablizers which make it disgusting. The only reason we have it is the supermarket was out of the just nuts kind. However, one must make do with what one has at hand.
Posted by Marmy on February 2, 2006 04:41 PM