CRASS ATTEMPT TO RIDE ON BUKOWSKI’S BANDWAGON

Lucid dreaming: If It’s ever happened to you, then you know just how disorienting it can be. A lucid dream is a dream in which the person is aware that they are dreaming while they are dreaming. On Sunday morning last, knowing I had to prepare to face some fiscal hurdles at the beginning of the forthcoming week (perhaps presaging the minor tsunami that was about to hit shore), I dreamt that a business associate of mine in Los Angeles attempted to launder $100,000 in cash through my bank account; in exchange for allowing this transaction, I was allowed to spend up to $2,000 of the deposited funds to set my wrecked finances straight.

Throughout the money laundering dream, I would often awaken and feel assured that “everything was alright”, my financial insecurity had been resolved. And then I would realize it was all but a dream and fall back into slumber, only for the dream to resume it’s false assurances and the pattern would repeat itself ad nauseum: Everything’s okay, no it’s just a dream, everything’s okay, no it’s just a dream.

The entire process of lucid dreaming can be frustrating and perplexing. Here is how the neurobiologists explain the whole thing:

Neuroscientist J. Allan Hobson has hypothesized as to what might be occurring in the brain while lucid. The first step to lucid dreaming is recognizing that one is dreaming. This recognition might occur in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is one of the few areas deactivated during REM sleep and where working memory occurs. Once this area is activated and the recognition of dreaming occurs, the dreamer must be cautious to let the dream delusions continue but be conscious enough to recognize them. This process might be seen as the balance between reason and emotion. While maintaining this balance, the amygdala and parahippocampal cortex might be less intensely activated. To continue the intensity of the dream hallucinations, it is expected the pons and the parieto-occipital junction stay active. The act of lucid dreaming has a very large impact on the conscious and subconscious mind. Since dreaming is a subconscious act and thinking is a conscious act, thinking while dreaming merges the two, allowing one more control over their subconscious mind. This can then lead to many benefits like being able to think while sleeping, therefore giving one more time to act while being awake.

The human brain: a machine infintely more complex than a computer, although, of course, the computer is a mechanical replication of the human brain. I have read that there are seminars and self-help manuals to induce lucid dreaming and to that I have one question: Why?

On to other matters: Gotta love this review of “Mr. Bukowski’s Wild Ride” posted by “Anonymous” at Barnes and Noble online:

Reader Rating See Detailed Ratings

Posted August 29, 2008, 4:10 AM EST: Thi fellow, ROGER JACOBS, can’t write, so he put Buk’s name in the title in a vain attempt to attract attention. What sort of book is this? It fails on all levels. It is not funny. The humour is forced and could only appeal to politically correct home-schooled dweebs.

And, finally, there’s this intriguing opening to a Jonathan Lethem short story, “Lostronaut”, in the November 17 edition of the New Yorker:

Dearest Chase,

I am trying to “feel” November, yours and mine. I’ll make an imaginary diorama, like something from grade school, an attempt to win a secret science fair of the heart: Janice and Chase’s November. A mind’s-eye miniature I can peer into. (I won’t mention this project to the Captain, or to the Russians, or to anyone else. We all know too much about one another’s little projects up here.) Is it cold yet? Is Manhattan beautiful? Have they put up the Christmas tree, or is it too soon? (I know you loathe Rockefeller Center.) Do you ever go to the Chinese garden at the Met, with the tiny gurgling waterfall, where we once went and laid our heads together on a stone and fell asleep? (I don’t know if I want to know whether you go there without me or not, so don’t answer that question.) Do I sound idiotic? Forgive me, I’m going a little bonkers up here. Since the antifreeze leak—explosion, really—things have not been right. I’m sure Mission Control will have tried to keep any panic to a minimum—that’s in their training, and, even more, it’s in their nature. (Hello, Ted! And how are you, Arun? Are you sipping Ceylon as you read this?) Even among us six, we’ve quit discussing the incident—there’s always the new day’s tasks to think of. But in truth we nearly lost both the Den and the Greenhouse. And, without the Greenhouse, no food. And no air. No us. Northern Lights just an elaborate mausoleum, or perhaps a floating lab for an experiment in zero-gravity mummification.

That is all for now …

Oops. Before I forget: nice-looking press release from PR Log for “Carver’s Cafe”.