See You In My Dreams

"Can you do me a favor, Bobber?" I called to my wife before daybreak yesterday morning.

"Sure," she said. She was in our home office/crafting room, blearily checking her email, Facebook, Ucomics, getting in a quick game of Bejeweled, mayhaps before heading downstairs to breakfast.

"Can you Google the name 'Hans Muir' for me please?"

"Uh, sure," she said.

"I had a dream last night that you and I were watching some documentary about the history of law enforcement, and the credits rolled and there was one in big font that listed the director as Hans Muir."

There followed a brief period of silence, punctuated by some keyboard clicks.

"He's just some asshole," my wife officiously reported. "He's on Facebook."

"Well, of course he is. Who isn't?"

There is, apparently, only one Hans Muir on Facebook. He lives in Seattle and he seems like a pretty cool guy, from his open profile on Facebook that I probably shouldn't be reading or sharing with you. Yes, he's definitely cool-- even though he likes "The Colbert Report" and "The Daily Show." He's an artist, and I've been to his website, and his stuff is thought-provoking, bold, and energetic. He's three years younger than I.

And, one day, maybe in the not too distant future, he's going to Google himself, as we all do while eating cold pizza at 2:00am in our underwear and he'll find this blog post and he'll track me down and kill me.

Actually, he'll probably just send me a what-the-fuck email. And I will answer it, because I am crazy.

Hans Muir strikes me as kind of a granola-crunchy sort of guy, and I wonder if he is any relation to John Muir, who, according to Google Image, looks like this:



John Muir lived from 1838-1914, and he was pretty crunchy in his own right. An environmentalist and an early believer in the preservation of wildlife, Muir founded the Sierra Club, and he was a constant thorn in the balls of Congress, twisting and turning said thorn until Congress passed the National Park Bill in 1899, preserving Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks.

John Muir's mission in life, it seems, was to, "Save the American soul from total surrender to materialism."

That's only 58 characters (with spaces!) so you can tweet that from your Droid.

I'm pretty sure that this is the first dream I've ever had where I've dreamt about a specific name of a person that I've never met before and actually remembered it precisely enough to look it up. I don't think it especially means anything, but it's still kind of cool, because, today, I got to learn about two people, Hans Muir and John Muir, when, yesterday, I didn't know fuckall about either of them.

Being generally a narcissitic wreck, I am inevitably left to wonder if there are people out there dreaming and seeing my name. That would be kind of cool. They would Google me and see some fucking weird shit. And it would serve them right.

My father-in-law, a psychiatrist, recently told me of a dream he'd had where he was trying to get back home and was having some difficulty (he is obsessed with thinking he has dementia, and has always been absent-minded and generally lost) and one of his cars from his long-forgotten past was present in the dream.

"Which car was it?"

"Oh, I don't remember," he told me.

"Well, if you ever have the dream again, pay attention. I want to know which car it was," I said, in my charming, proto-Aspergian way.

Well, wouldn't you know that he had the dream again, and he remembered. Here is an email he sent to my wife two weeks ago:

Last night a '51 Ford convertible , my first car. This reminds me of "American Beauty" when the main character buys the first car he owned. I'm probably looking for what once made me happy, a simpler time when I was smart and fit and anything was possible. What next :a '67 Mustang or '73 Datsun 240Z? Should I call Car Talk for interpretations? I recall explaining the importance of cars to my analyst. Perhaps a paper on the dream car as self-object.

Let me know about the kitchen. You might need the sabre saw with a metal cutting blade for the sill plates. Dad.

Happy motoring, my dears. Sweet dreams. The next time you enjoy a walk in the park, thank John Muir. And, Hans-- no hard feelings. You're an amazing artist.