Last night I had an unusual dream. In it, species evolved by mixing their genes with those of the creatures they came in contact with. One of the prominent subjects of the dream was a small race of squid-monkeys. They had gray tentacles, brown fur, typical monkey-like faces, and spent most of their time hanging from the bottoms of wharves and buoys and eating fish and bananas. What, do you think, is the significance of this imagery?
(Also there were giant fish with human heads.)
Yours,
Jonathan
Jonathan,As I have indicated in columns past, I am not much one for dreams. Save my one exceptional experience with night visions of the not-real, I have no experience with this dream state. As such, my firstmost temptation is to dismiss your question as one which I am incapable of properly addressing— truly a small class of queries, my Dedicated Readership is no doubt eager to note.
Have you not noted the bare fact that my sobriquet is not "Joseph," my habits neither desert-dwelling nor wilderness wandering, my mating-tentacle unshorn and my technicolor dreaming coat entirely in absence? Were you pharoah, I could by no means explain the dire foreboding that sevenfold bovine dreams must bear you.
For that matter, you might note the absence of bangles and spangles on my person, the dirth of turbans or head scarves, my missing crystal ball and not-in-attendance dirty, thieving spawnlings. Do I travel the countryside in a gypsy cart? Am I trapped in a glass, quarter-gobbling machine?
Furthermore, my tank is not adorned with a reclining couch, nor graced with soft music, nor attended by a clock which might ring once an hour, alerting my non-existent patients to the state of "out time being up for this week."
Which is to say, I am not the interpreter of dreams that you might best seek. All of this taken to within the accounting, I further bear to mind the knowledge that, for example, it required the attentions of the foreign Frenchman of Tocqueville to see the Democracy in America, so to it is possible that my entirely exterior perspective might lend gentle, but penetrating, insight into your sleep-delusion, its causes, and its meanings.
Our first step most be the elimination of the obvious. As such, I shall presume it safe to assume that you have not recently observed any such monkey-squids or fish-faced men. Preceding from that established fact, I propose the following interpretation of these dreams dwellers:
Most prominently noted in your description is the simple fact that these monkey-squids were clearly roustabout. How did they dispose of their days? In research? Artistic endeavor? In the general fiscal productivity of simple menial labor paid at an hourly rate? In any manner of labors beneficial to humanity or larger squid-monkeykind? By no means! They simply hung about 'neath the doc of the bay, wasting of their time.
As such, we have established this much: in the head of your dreams, the squid-monkeys represent the loathsomely slothful— slothful in that they have monkey-nature, but this sloth made loathsome by the infinite and grand potential embodied in their squidbits. The question— now that we have established that which they monkey-squids re-present— is How do you feel about these simian-cephalopoda? In your dream, are they a thing upon which you reflect as the judging third-person, or a community to which you belong, as the co-conspiratorial first-person? If the latter case, are you comfortable— even at the home— in your lazy-chimptastic-poly-brachiated role, or do you loath yourself and your cohort for your collective useful-less-ness? These are the question of the moment, whose immediacy is obvious.
Of course, the role of the giant man-faced fishes is quite clear: even if you are unwilling to judge the slothful monkey-squidlitos, the jowly fish professionals (gupping their mouths, not unlike Alfred Hitchcock begging for his lollipopped candy stick) most certainly shall.
Although, upon further and more steady reflection, perhaps we might best to defer to the surface dwelling Semite Sigmoid Froid, who was wont to remark that, in many cases of the interpretation of dreams, a monkey-headed squidlette was just a monkey-headed squidlette, signifying nothing more nor less.
Of course, then, it behooves one to recall to mind that Dr. Froid oftimes dreamt of ardent rut-fests with troupes of just such male squidlettes, their engorged, tumescent mating tentacles palpitating his many artificial dream-orifices.
Which is to say, indeed, sometimes a cigar is but only a cigar, but other times it is most certainly a totemic penile fetish meant to satisfy the nascent— though never consciously reflected upon— desire to suckle the male member.
Indeed, as Mr. E.A. Poe of Boston, MA had the habit of noting, the evils of this world are manifold.
In All Confidentiality,
The Giant Squid
Post Scriptorum: Dearest conniving Sang has informed me that I do, indeed, have a coat of technicolor dreaming—and he does not refer to the offensive and horribly ill-fighting multi-armed jacket preserved from my "modern" days as special assistant to Ray Davies of the rolling rocker bandoleers known to you as The Kinks . No, not that horrendous rag, but instead to my very multi-colored skin upon which the vagueries of the microwave dreaming can be displayed.
Why does this matter?
If I had shoulders, I would I think shrug.
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