Zombie Hugs

New blog! Just discovered! Written in the past! (summer 2008)

Last month I read 1984. At first I said, "This is a great book, and it's not freaking me as much as I expected." Then it freaked me. I've been having nightmares about the future ever since:

Dream One: Based on real science. I am wearing a striped shirt and it is my job to toss nets into the sea. There are lots of men with fish tails, these are the leaders. Everyone who is not a mermaid is wearing a silver suit and riding a bike around in a big circle, slowly, but they are not smiling on the bikes and I don't understand. Who doesn't smile on a bike? There are no fish in the oceans except ones put there by companies, pre-packaged in little mesh bags.

Dream Two: Apocalyptic. This dream comes while I am reading Tintin et L'Ile Noire, which features a scary gorilla. I am crouched under a desk in a tall skyscraper. Everyone is running around saying "the time has come." It is during the second part of the dream that I accidentally volunteer an old high school friend to fight a huge beast for the second time. His head is taken off. I am stricken with horror.

Dream Three: Orwellian. Literally. Takes place in the actual year 1984. We must speak "Classroom Speak." The city's cobblestone streets are deserted, minus a few people who undergo temporary yet permanent transformations like werewolves; they are zombies every time a city bus rolls by, and stay a zombie for three minutes. I become a zombie by receiving a hug from another zombie, but since I don't want to infect anyone else I run and run and run, feeling strong and heroic and alone until I wake up.

These nightmares all took place in the future and really freaked me, so I made a quick decision to banish all thoughts about the future and take a break from the future blog. What is the future besides the past and the present? Like Lao Tzu himself says in Chapter 38 of the Tao Te Ching (adapted by Carrie): "Knowledge of the future will make you crazy! Think instead about now." In another post I will describe my secret futuristic fantasies (including fast trains, beds that make themselves, and world peace), but for now, "We can ask for an alternative future."

Then I read Marlys and The Dharma Bums (two different titles, but now you're imagining Marlys and Fred Milton in a car to California with Sal Paradise); my last dream appeared in cleverly drawn sketches with rambling beatific text and I woke up with "This Land Is Your Land" in my head.

Thus, I took a break from the future blog. But now I'm back. The future and I are going to try to make it work.