The Fox's Secret

In this post I want to share a very short and memorable part of a longer dream that has already faded from memory.  The narrative itself won’t take much time but I think that there is a great deal to unpack from this very brief moment.  Here is the narrative:

I am sitting in the second row of seats in a van.  I am next to the sliding door to the back part of the van and it is already open.  There are two men and at least one young adult/adolescent.  The two men are in the front two seats and one of them is my dad.  I am not sure who the others are.  Both my dad and I get out of the van and I realize we are in a parking lot on the North Side of Pittsburgh.  We are next to a parking garage on our right.  Looking to the left, I see Three Rivers Stadium.  At first this feels normal, but then it occurs to me that Three Rivers Stadium is “no longer there.”  Of course, it IS there, standing right in front of me.  I try to tell my dad that it’s not there and he laughs at the obviously absurd statement.  I say that I mean it shouldn’t be there, that it’s gone, that this has to be a memory or a dream.  He shakes his head in disbelief and tells me to prove it.  There is a breeze blowing.  ”See,” he says.  ”I feel that.  Do you?  Just like a normal breeze?”  And he is right.  Everything looks and feels perfectly real and normal.  There is no way to prove I am dreaming.  The pavement feels solid under my feet, the breeze I can feel on my face and I can turn in every direction and see what’s around me.  A perfectly seamless world without gaps.  I say, “It’ not a breeze, it’s the memory of a breeze.”  Then I look at the parking garage and the bland N1 sign designating what lot it is expands to more letters and symbols and spells out “A fool parks here.”  I remember the fool being important in my dreams and I hold up my hand to cut off something my dad is saying as I go to find the fool.  I go around the corner of the garage and I hear laughter, but it is a woman’s laughter and not what I had expected.  I then hear another woman laughing.  I look up at the higher levels of the garage and I know it’s coming from up there but I can’t see anything.  Then I wake up. Read more »

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve updated the site, in part because I’ve been unable to come up with a satisfying piece reflecting on the previous dream narrative in which the Fool returned for a fifth time in the past year.  So instead of continuing to spin my tires in the mud of that particular dream, I’ve decided to go ahead and post another.  This is a dream I had about a month ago, and I think it’s interesting on a number of levels.  It continues with the theme of religion and religious truth (and falsehood) and it also comes back to a central struggle of mine that increasingly revolves around the seeming futility of academic and or intellectual pursuits.  But now I’m interpreting before I’ve narrated the dream.  So without further ado, here is the dream in which I escape from a cult on a hill:

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So in my previous entry I described a dream. Since there is a danger that some people (who will remain anonymous) might take it too literally, I’ve decided to offer up my own beginning (or continuation) of an interpretation that will never really end. The reason I left it un-interpreted to begin with was so that any readers out there in the world could interpret it themselves, maybe even suggest interpretations (non-literal ones) that I hadn’t thought of. In fact, if you haven’t read the previous entry, do that now, then read the rest of this one.

What is it like to fall?

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How do you answer a question like that? Well it’s like…it’s like having the ground taken out from under you. So like floating? No, not really. Like…rushing toward something, knowing it will hurt. Hurt. What is hurt? What is rushing? What is toward?

What is it like to fall?

But the question came to me in a dream. From a baby. Not a real baby . A dream baby. A spirit baby. As the others (who had been watching the baby) drifted away to let the baby sleep, I remained behind, wondering if this baby was having a dream within my dream. Then it opened its eyes and asked, “What is it like to fall?” Read more »

As you might already know, I’m a graduate student in the Religious Studies Department at UCSB.  In many ways, I ended up here as a result of two dreams–the first one I described here.  The second dream is one I’m sure to blog about in the near future.  It seemed appropriate, therefore, to utilize those dreams in my academic work.  After all, it is my belief that our dreams can help us understand and illustrate in a narrative way the religious and philosophical truths that we are wrestling with while awake.

With that in mind, I have decided to post here on the site, in its entirety, an academic paper I wrote in which I used my dream about rebelling against God at the end of the world to explore the idea of “conscience” as it can be found in the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, as well as in the theology of Augustine.

What follows is not light reading.  But I think you’ll enjoy it, especially if any of those figures are of interest to you.  You’ll also learn a few more biographical details about The Fox Foot, including why he still fears putting cottage cheese and peaches into the same bowl.

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In my previous entry, I described a dream in which I decided to take issue with an omnipotent being over the fate of my friend, Debbie.  Toward the end of the dream, I was about to face the presumably very painful consequences of that rebellious choice.  And yet, when I woke, even knowing that the rebels I had led into battle had been defeated, I still felt a great deal of pride over the choice I made.  And I would later realize that the dream itself signaled some big changes in my life and in the way I saw the world.

Does it sound strange to feel proud of oneself for actions taken in a dream?  Maybe it does.  But while I was dreaming, I did not know it was a dream.  I thought the world really had ended, and events really were playing out as described by the more fundamentalist interpreters of the Book of Revelation.  I knew that it was hopeless to rebel against an omnipotent being and that there was absolutely nothing in it for me if I chose not to accept the fact that my friend was going to be sent to hell.  But I stood up for her–and for my ideals–anyway.

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Have you ever had a dream that changed your life?  Or perhaps a dream that crystallized a major change that was already happening in your life?

The first time I had a dream of this kind was during my senior year of high school.  I suppose that as many people approach graduation, there is a sense that the world they know is ending and a great deal of change is to come.  My senior year caused a great deal of reflection on everything from potential college choices to career interests to religious beliefs to the meaning of life.  It was also the first year I remembering having so many personally significant dreams–dreams that literally changed (or made me question) some of my most central beliefs and the ways in which I understood my life and the world around me.  In some ways, you could say my fascination with dreams as having a greater significance than mere fantasy began here, at this point of my life.

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I spent a lot of time thinking on the images, sounds, emotions and events of the Fool’s fourth entry into my dreams in less than year.  I think that in many ways it sums up the most fundamental inner conflict of my life.  At heart, I have been and maybe I still am an idealist.  A dreamer.  A believer.  I still find great wisdom in the secret that the fictional Little Prince learns from his friend, the fox: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.  What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

On the other hand, faith has never come easy for me.  I’m also a seeker.  I question everything and I’m curious to no end.  And in many cases, my searching has not led me to deeper faith, but to ever increasing doubt.  I believed in Santa longer than anyone in my class at school, even into the 5th grade.  Why?  Because I believed, very firmly, that my parents would never lie to me about something so important.  From the time I found out they had, I rarely trusted what I was told by anyone again.  I felt like a fool for having believed for so long.  I was embarrassed and ashamed and realized why so many people had made fun of me for being so naive.  There’s a part of me that never wants to be taken for that kind of fool again.

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