I was woken the other day by someone whispering these words in my ear. It's lucky I live on my own and know the way of foxes or my life could have become unbearable. Imagine, you could never be absolutely sure it had been a dream, and you would start to say things like, 'I'll make the tea and coffee, and do all the cooking! It's such fun.' and 'The track that runs beside the main road looks so much nicer than the cliff top path.' Forever glancing over your shoulder and fearful of falling asleep.
The space where dream slides into reality is usually a safe and reassuring place, but not always. But the rewards outweigh the drawbacks. There are those times when you can read scores like those in the video clip a few entries back and be swept away by the music, or walk in fields and deserts where the colours and textures are more intense and real than here in the natural world.
But then we have to wake up.
I remember telling Kit stories when he was little: never ending stories that just went on and on, the way never ending stories do, and eventually I'd fall asleep and continue telling the tale in nonsensical dream language. The same thing is happening now as I read The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia - I'm up to vol. 4, the 20th Cent. and the last book. - only it is the text that becomes nonsensical dream text and I carry on reading until I suddenly realise and snap awake, or drift into real sleep and the book falls from my hands.
I am finally emerging from a two day drug and alcohol stupor after the bad news about the job. News that hit the ego like the sharp rap of a teaspoon that fractures the top of the breakfast eggo, spilling yolk down the shell.
Sorry, there are obviously still odd molecules drifting through the bloodstream like so many Nano-Kon-Tikis. Sorry again.
Reading the history of times you have lived through is fascinating and often surprising as more previously secret documents get released. The strange thing about SEA seems to the odd mixture of capitalism, socialism, traditionalism and pragmatism. Perhaps the histories were shaped as much by globalisation and the end of the Cold War as they were by their own rulers. Even isolationist Burma changed direction from time to time.
Some common factors are the retention of wealth and power by elite groups, the growth of a middle class and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Despite all the terrible wars, famines and revolutions they have all slowly moved in roughly the same direction.
In other words they have become more like us.
The End of History perhaps?
A new religion in Singapore?
A brand new monotheism?
It has worshippers island-wide,
Its name is moneytheism.
The space where dream slides into reality is usually a safe and reassuring place, but not always. But the rewards outweigh the drawbacks. There are those times when you can read scores like those in the video clip a few entries back and be swept away by the music, or walk in fields and deserts where the colours and textures are more intense and real than here in the natural world.
But then we have to wake up.
I remember telling Kit stories when he was little: never ending stories that just went on and on, the way never ending stories do, and eventually I'd fall asleep and continue telling the tale in nonsensical dream language. The same thing is happening now as I read The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia - I'm up to vol. 4, the 20th Cent. and the last book. - only it is the text that becomes nonsensical dream text and I carry on reading until I suddenly realise and snap awake, or drift into real sleep and the book falls from my hands.
I am finally emerging from a two day drug and alcohol stupor after the bad news about the job. News that hit the ego like the sharp rap of a teaspoon that fractures the top of the breakfast eggo, spilling yolk down the shell.
Sorry, there are obviously still odd molecules drifting through the bloodstream like so many Nano-Kon-Tikis. Sorry again.
Reading the history of times you have lived through is fascinating and often surprising as more previously secret documents get released. The strange thing about SEA seems to the odd mixture of capitalism, socialism, traditionalism and pragmatism. Perhaps the histories were shaped as much by globalisation and the end of the Cold War as they were by their own rulers. Even isolationist Burma changed direction from time to time.
Some common factors are the retention of wealth and power by elite groups, the growth of a middle class and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Despite all the terrible wars, famines and revolutions they have all slowly moved in roughly the same direction.
In other words they have become more like us.
The End of History perhaps?
A new religion in Singapore?
A brand new monotheism?
It has worshippers island-wide,
Its name is moneytheism.