Un - incarnation

I could be one of these trees.

Am I a tree?

Genre: Reflection
Inspiration: This article

DISCLAIMER: I am no particular fan of the cliched universe within a universe science fiction (for examples think Matrix, or Men in Black). It's a fascinating concept and makes great fiction but the more it's used to conveniently alter perceptions of "what's real" the less credible it seems to be creatively. So let me be the first to express shock that I'm exploring a related notion:

Of late, I'm taken a heightened interest in exploring creativity, and my dreams are a huge inspiration for me. Its been a while since I've recalled one in enough detail to log it, and so on Saturday morning after restful sleep and with clear recall I did exactly that (see "Dream-Show" below). Imagine my surprise hours later when I happened upon a page called "How To Have a Lucid Dream" by a chap named Charles Hamel. A number of years back, during a particularly lazy year in University (when I got plenty of sleep) I quite often recalled and logged my dreams and often hoped to make them lucid. As I rekindle this interest it seems opportune timing to once again strive for lucidity. I read the article with interest.

Ultimately, last night the question I pose in the title came to me (with curiosity rather than epiphany) and it's only partially facetious... One activity the article recommends is to ask yourself "am I dreaming" a few times a day, to establish the habit in hopes that it carries over into dreams. It seems that in order to ingrain the question you'd have to ask it quite often, with the unfortunate bi product of feeling like a bit of a loon. However, it struck me that the reason this actually works is because people recognize and discern "real" life. It's in dreaming that we can't inherently recognize our state of being. I suppose this is why I feel real anxiety when I dream about trading my motorcycle for another that I don't want or losing the enamel on my front teeth and being left with only loose hanging nerves (real dreams!)

So all of this led me to realize that while I'm dreaming and ignorant of that state, it might as well be real. It feels real (despite often being quite weird), I have real emotions and I have real interactions. It's only when I wake up that I get the sense of strangeness that comes from reflection. So I wondered if "real" life might just be some parallel dream state once removed from "sleep" and perhaps its so freaking long because I'm some long-living organism that is in a stasis where it's only logical to create this state of reality to pass the time. Logically, this led me to the conclusion that if this strange extrapolation were to be the case, then I'm quite obviously a Douglas-Fir or a Birch.

Everything surrounding me, like in my dreams, might just be a figment of my leafy imagination... But I suddenly became concerned, because one of the cautions in the article warned that too abrupt a lucid realization of a dream state might in fact cause one to wake themselves and I can't really think of anything worse than abruptly waking up to realize that I am in fact a damned tree - stuck, motionless and cold on the side of a road somewhere, or worse, in a suburban business park in Oshawa. I'm glad to say however that as nervous as I was typing this out, I have yet to jerk my barky self into wakeful appal and have as yet retained my blissful dream state.

...before anyone points out that by extending my logic you could imagine yourself as just about anything conceivable, I'd like to note that I've already thought that through. The notion is ridiculous. Either this world is real and I'm just being wistful, or I'm a tree and no one else really exists in this reality.

Dream-show

Genre: Non Fiction
Inspiration: REM Sleep

The dream centred around a stay, somewhere unfamiliar. I think it was a hotel of some sort, but if it was it was all on the ground floor. Rooms were lined up in a row and my only recollections of it is the "hallway" leading to and from the room. I am unsure why I was staying there but the rest of the dream had to do with a reality-game show type of adventure, more like the eco-challenge than, say Survivor. I believe I was staying there with my wife and dog.
The most vivid recollection is returning to the room through the long "hallway" which is in parenthesis because it was a strange mix of different places. While it was as narrow as a typical hotel hallway, it was extremely long, perhaps over a kilometer and varied greatly in composition. Sections of it were outdoors, with something blocking the left side, and on the right tall, dense stalks of corn over ten ft high. This transitioned into an indoor section which looked like a barn but much narrower - the left and right were stalls that looked like they were for horses but were too small, perhaps 4*4 ft. the doors to the stalls were waist high and simple wood frame with wire mesh. The floor was dusted with hay and 2*1" slats crossed the hallway floor from side to side. What was notable was that I was running through these sections to the room - there was an urgency to get back to the room, but not for any particular reason - I remember feeling more of a general excitement that comes from eager anticipation of "what's coming next", rather than something specific. I remember seeing mice dart across the barn section floor as the dog and I ran through, me turning and calling him the whole time as he was, (as usual in real life) stopping to sniff, pee and explore as I ran ahead of him. The barn section came to an abrupt stop at a quick left and right kink in the hallway where I knew (though I never made it that far) that the hallway became a typical motel like hallway, though a little narrower and a little more suspiciously derelict.
Outside of this vivid memory, I also remember a particular moment in my dream where I was with others in a dune filled desert like landscape about to get onto motor vehicles for a race across the baron landscape. Teams (I had a partner, though I have no idea who - I think they were behind me) were being ushered through what felt like a checkpoint, to the waiting vehicles. There were a number of them, all different kinds and looked kind of beat-up from what I recall. because I ride motorcycles I was offered a particular vehicle that others had not taken and i remember thinking that using it would provide a great advantage over the others who i had established at this point were on ATVs. As I rounded a dune I was presented the vehicle by the "host" or "Marshal" figure - it was the size of a child's bike with a similar frame. It was yellow with strange wheels about 8" in diameter that had no tires but looked like solid rubber. I immediately thought to myself that this was perfect and would likely win my team the race. Because I was so confident I relaxed knowing that I could leave minutes later because I'd easily be able to catch up and win the leg. It also happened that I had the worn shoes on - either sandals or my dingey boat shoes that I wear for garden work. I left to change them in eager anticipation of riding this machine across the desert.....

Stabby McVengeance

Genre: Slice of Life
Inspiration: Stream of consciousness


The fork that was used to shovel the Chinese food from the take out container into the china bowl, was the same one now being relentlessly plunged into the clumsy effigy Eleanor had fashioned from her own couch pillow. Putting a blond wig on it was enough in her mind to effectively represent the woman, who 10 minutes earlier walked out her front door. This woman had come into HER home, drank HER coffee and callously offered her only half of her asking price for the gaudy, diamond encrusted Cartier watch which she had received as a gift from her estranged husband. She knew the price she was asking was high, but she was after all a locally known - nay, famous (locally) - television show host with her own line of (locally sold) fruit chutneys. A watch she had worn was worth a hefty premium, Eleanor thought to herself reflectively, and she was offering it at only 30% above market value.
Her tennis elbow kept her stabs metered to a reasonable thrust that barely damaged the silken material - but the stabs were cathartic and she wasn't concerned with the depth of the wounds inflicted on the pillow. It hardly mattered after all, because in five minutes Eleanor was going to call the woman and invite her to lunch - she would say that she had enjoyed the time they spent together despite her not having bought the watch. She would give the woman the impression that they could be friends, cultivate and nurture the relationship over the ensuing months, perhaps even years- whatever it took - and eventually, when least expected and in as public a way as possible, expose her as the shallow, cheap sow that low-balled her on a Cartier watch transaction so many months before. This sort of vigilante justice was Eleanor's gift to society. She stabbed the pillow once more for good measure before picking up the phone.

The power of Doodle

This one carried me through a particularly grueling training session at a conference in Redmond, Washington...

The Waters of Change

It seems to me that I must love water. most of what I draw tends to incorporate it in one way or another. I think perhaps its because a landscape really doesn't seem to be complete unless it has a fluidity to it - something that makes you feel that earth is under the influence of a constant and determined force. Seashores and rivers seem to me to be harbingers of impending change; constant, inevitable, powerful and significant.

Peggy

Genre: Lamentation
Inspiration: Fear...

Long days and long nights have been the norm for the last two years. Ever since my left leg was amputated I've been forced to find new ways of coping without it. It used to be one of my closest friends (perhaps even THE closest - no guf). We'd do everything together; In fact I can't recall ever having done anything without it.

I'm still a lucky guy though. Righty and me make a good enough team. Actually, to tell the truth I think he's been a touch jealous ever since peggy moved in. She's the new one and has led a mysterious, sordid and experimental life. Instead of skin, muscle and sinew she's an intimidating melange of space age materials and fancy engineering. Righty might just be jealous because Peggy moved into Kevin's spot (he was my right leg) - which I have to admit is a pretty cozy spot for a brand new addition to "the gang". I've never let anyone that close to my balls so quickly in my life.

Power Doodle...

Make of this what you will... a strange cornnucopia of brain waves and manual spasms recorded for the world to see. To be fair, I was subject to a remarkably uninspiring seminar at the time.

Can't take it any more...

Genre: Poetic Genius
Inspiration: Internet Auctions and the guy who knew so much about them this morning ahead of me in line for coffee.

Standing in line, it all seemed fine the day before my trip
but as soon as I left I became bereft and a quiver came to my lip.

This really is it, because I've had to split, leaving everything I have behind
The house is a mess, I must confess but I'm sure my wife won't mind

The very hardest part, will be having to start everything again from naught
Because it was easier to go, then let my wife know about the terrible disease that I've caught.

I don't know what to say, about my addiction to Ebay - I resolutely refuse to confess
Maybe if I didn't care about all the wonderful trinkets out there my life wouldn't be such a mess...

Cow - Boy

Genre: Fantastical
Inspiration: the fat, shirtless man in the building across the road

Tony stood at the open window of his 14th floor apartment and surveyed the street below. He recognized the people he watched from high above - Carey the tent rigger with her three legged dog stopping at Starbucks for her morning Espresso, Billy the Kid (a champion canon-get-shot-out-of "er", so he called him) crossing the road and heading to work, and Fallopian Tube - "the most reproductive woman on the planet", getting onto her motorcycle in preparation for her trip to the grocery store across town. Since the United Nations, 34 years ago had disbanded and outlawed all circuses, carnivals, expositions and bake sales across the globe, Crow's Foot Montana had become a veritable metropolis of the "alternatively abled". Tony, himself a 3 legged, cow spotted 400 lb man was known as Hefty-Heifer Harold (the name "Harold" was his addition because he was a fan alliteration) and had arrived in Crow's Foot a year after it was settled on top of an abandon mining town in a mountain pasture as the Zion of freakdom by a pioneering group of French Canadian acrobats.
Since its inception, Crow's foot had grown at a rate of 370% per year to become the 4th most populous city in the United States complete with its own skyscrapers, business parks, trampoline bus stops and trapeze highways. It was from his lofty perch that Tony surveyed the street below each morning reflecting on his busy day ahead. As Time magazine had noted in its final article of the "Freak-town USA" serial trilogy - "As the Mayor of Crow's Foot no one needed a third leg more than Tony".

The 6 handed Redlingarner

Genre: Space Epic
Inspiration: Nothing in Particular

18 years is what it had taken Lance Flyboy to travel across the far reaches of the Galaxy. Scandalously, this was 10 more years than expected by just about every space council that had authorized the exploration. The Fandagoran hyper-drive was meant to remedy issues the solar fleet had with previous drives and when he returned, they were deeply concerned that the incredible investments they had made invading, looting and pillaging Fandagor - all with the intended result of capturing the Hyper-drive - had been for naught.
Flyboy, had a dark secret however. Shocked to discover, when he returned from his trip, that the earth year was in fact 17 years, 9 months and 4 days later than he expected, he knew he could never speak a word of his stunning discovery in fear of council reprisal. Scientifically, Flyboy could prove that 3 hours and 12 minutes on Marzgin 4 1/2 (famous in galaxy lore as the most hedonistic of the Marzgin sister planets) equaled precisely 17 years, 9 months and 4 days of earth time. This really should have come as no shock, but Flyboy was busy trying to land his ship and not thinking about the temporal impacts of Marzgin 4 1/2's near-light speed orbit. Unfortunate as it was for Flyboy's alien lust to have single-handedly derailed the space council's pan-galactic settlement initiative, he was privately adiment that those 3 hours with the 6 handed Redligarner, were well worth it. He did feel it was a real pity - because the hyper-drive was incredibly effective.

The Eclectic Socket is born...

Welcome to The Eclectic Socket - a product of my realization that my idle mind may just produce enough random material to make it worth my while to share it all. I've spent a lot of time making use of fleeting moments, and lingering hours, with absolutely none of it presenting anything of value. The thought recently crossed my mind that putting these things on-line might achieve two goals - rather than cluttering notebooks that collect dust on my shelves I can a) share the drivel with the world and b) give it a home that might actually serve as a reasonable repository.

So here it begins...