Dreamways

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a "stew of plastic and marine debris, at least twice the size of Texas by some estimates, … floating in the Paciifc Ocean some 1,000 miles off the West Coast.“ The Great Pacific Garbage Patch? This senario sounds like Li’l Abner meets Godzilla, something out of a 1950’s „B“ science fiction movie, but is a waking-world reality, according to Paul Miller („The Plastics Paradox: We’re Drowning in an Ocean of Garbage,“ The Denver Post, 13 Jan 08).

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Jules, the tiger-striped kitty is seated alone on a hill at night, gazing at a star-spangled black sky, in the first panel of this Sunday funnies odyssey. (“Mutts,” Patrick McDonnell, 02 Dec 07) The next panel is headed with: “Jules Dreams of Africa”. The kitty, standing below says: “Ooooh – this is very exciting.” Next we see Jules in the midst of lush green vegetation, surrounded by all sorts of African animals and birds of a friendly nature. The final panel shows Jules alone in the jungle, his body language indicating pleasure: “I might meet Jane Goodall!”

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The photo image of Martin Luther King’s face takes up most of the visual field of the black and white ad that covers the bottom half of this Martin Luther King Day (21 Jan 08) Denver Post page. His hands are held together, fingers interlocked, at the level of his chin. He is facing us, his eyes looking into the distance somewhere to his right. His gaze is relaxed, focused and pensive.  read more »

"What Are You Doing Here?" reads the headline. "'I thought I was dreaming,‘ a Warsaw [Poland] man told the newspaper Super Express after he visited a brothel and saw his wife among the establishment’s employees. The paper said she had told her husband that she worked at a store in a nearby town. The couple, married 14 years, are divorcing. (The New York Times, 10 Jan 08)

This slight snippet of waking life news is as dense with various types of dream made manifest as – well, as a dream!

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The first thing we see is a simple drawing in shades of gray depicting a mélange of patriotic American images. The text reads: “America is a dream, a vision, a miracle based on one noble idea – the idea that people of every race and religions can live together in peace. That everyone is entitled to equal justice under the law and that government is responsible to the governed. But an Idea, despite its awesome power, can be dangerously vulnerable. It must be sheltered and guarded, nourished and protected. Few things are more tragic than the death of an idea.  read more »

"Neuroscience is confirming what we all suspect: Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy.“ These challenging words appear in an article by Walter Kirn entitled "The Autumn of the Multitaskers“ (The Atlantic magazine, November 2007.) The dream of being able to do it all has become prevalent in our 21st century world: "Thanks to technology or some other magic, we’ve entered a new age when the laws of cause and effect (as propounded by Isaac Newton and Adam Smith) have yielded to the principle of of dream-and-make-it-happen (as manifested by St  read more »