journal features

odd dream

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2004.10.26

I had a dream last night that a ne'er-do-well buddy and I stole a cement mixer or dumptruck or something. Everntually realizing that he wasn't going to make the turn he was attempting, my pal tried a skidding turn in the truck, and we were thrown off the road.

Strangely, this had the effect of throwing the police off of our trail. So we quietly waited for someone to find us. The scene of our crash changed from a semi-suburban area with small farm plots to a rugged semi-tropical mountainous road, and I was alone with the truck. While exploring the devestation around the truck, I discovered why my friend had really stolen the vehicle, and why there had been so many police in pursuit.

Tucked into a cargo rack on the side of the truck were The Important Documents. Then I knew what I had to do. I had to carry on alone with the papers, lest they fall into the hands of our pursuers.

Then I awoke.

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)