The War On Sailing has long been fundamentally interested in most pseudoscientific & religious dogma, ideas, theory, etc., not because they have any intrinsic value (which is to say, any intrinsic truth) but because of the use of such things as both motivation & controller by those who hold power, & of course the struggle for the ultimate power on this planet is the purpose of the War On Sailing. Why else have a war? Don't answer that.
I was reminded today of this while reading a monograph written by the late Winston Feeler, a completely discredited & therefore noted authority on dreams, in which he argued most ridiculously that dreams are more like a children's dot-to-dot puzzle than most people realize. One could keep a record of one's dreams, he argued, on a blank piece of paper, & then connect the finished record once enough dreams were recorded (say, twenty dreams) & one would have a delightful drawing which said "something" about the dreamer. In my younger days, I did attempt something of this sort, & my dreams, once connected, formed an astonishing likeness of Casper the Friendly Ghost. If I had been able to contact Feeler (he's not dead, he's serving consecutive life sentences in near-isolation for raping & eating three of his more delicious patients), I am not sure what he might have deduced from that. I was & have always been far more interested in Hot Stuff, the Little Devil.
Two dreams Feeler record were of fundamental interest to scholars of our discipline. One patient, identified as Patient Crumble, which is known to have been George H W Bush's nickname for Donald Rumsfeld, described a dream in which he was hanging out with friends in Paris, stole several things, was caught, & then was completely baffled that he couldn't just pay for them & leave, the whole "robbery" being some kind of fraternity prank. This dream was recorded in 1989.
Another dream Feeler records by someone he called Patient Alberto Gonzales (we're currently not sure to whom this refers) is even more interesting: while showing off a new house to friends, one guest of the patient notes that the walls are misaligned, & moves them, so that doorways appear in their natural place, including one doorway which opened up an entirely new room. The patient is delighted, but even in his dreams his friends call him a dumb fuck.
I draw attention to this not because the dreams have any sort of mystical or symbolic meaning - the dreamers are obviously incredibly obvious & unremarkable people whose other dreams include "flying," "watching my parents having sex," & "invading a country full of brown people who have a lot of oil" - but to show just the opposite. Dream symbolism is a cautionary tale - it leads to too many dead ends & encourages you to waste time in other peoples' heads when you least want to be there - when their brains are cleaning house.
I got all this from reading a moronic pamphlet by a damaged man. I am too afraid now to do crossword puzzles.
