Karma?

Was texting with a friend of mine and she (name changed for her safety) asked me out of the blue:

(Adara) do you believe in Karma?

I replied quickly as I was in the job at the time:

(Me) Sort of.  I believe that everything is connected.  I believe this to the point that the idea of karma is almost moot because when everything is connected, something strange happens.  There is no longer a 'me' and a 'you,' there is only 'us.'  If I hurt you, I am hurting us.  If I do good to you, I feel like I am doing good to myself.

...

This may not seem related, but bear with me.  There was a longitudinal study on monkeys in Japan where they gave them peeled mangos (which they loved) but gave them the mangos covered in sand (which they hated).  In secret, they taught one child monkey how to wash the mango in the stream of their community pen.  This monkey showed the others, but the older monkeys did not listen to her.  They continued to pick the grains out with their fingers and shunned this new way of doing.  The other child monkeys listened though.  Along with our young heroine, they began to slowly understand her and wash their mangos in the stream.  The fad slowly, slowly caught on until about 50-60% of the population knew the technique and almost overnight all but the angriest of monkeys were in line washing their mangos peacefully in the stream.

Now the strange part.  They went to another pen on another island to duplicate their results.  They performed their control experiment where they gave them all the sandy mangos.  All the monkeys went down to the stream together, formed a little line, and washed their mangos as our heroine monkey was shown months earlier.  "Well fuck."

They went to yet another island separated by time and space where they were certain no monkeys may have been transferred or communicated with the other monkeys.  They performed their control.  Same result.  Monkeys at peace in single file washing mangos.

tl;dr, we are all connected.  Consciousness grids, spirits, god, whatever your explanation, it matters not.  What matters is that we are all in this together and we all share the same beating heart.  I love you, my dear readers.  And in doing so, I am loved.

Disturbing way the wind is blowing

The wind is blowing in a very disturbing way, my friends.  I read a series of articles yesterday whose combination sent my stomach through the floor in fear.  The first was about sightings and reports of military equipment being prepared across United States soil.  The second was regarding the possibility of the Boston Marathon Bombings as a false flag operation.  The third spoke of a similar string of connections and how they ended in another country.  

So the sightings and reports.  Trains carrying tanks all over the country, the military making a purchase of 3 times the number of bullets used in our wars overseas, policemen coming out and saying they are taking part in federal exercises learning how to lock down and perform operations on American soil, and leaked psyops reports relaying who to target and how... I can't remember all of them now, but the implications were scary.

From what I saw on the television at work, during the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing, the police shut down the city.  There were armored personnel carriers and enough riot gear to make the end of V for Vendetta look like a peaceful protest.  Where did it all come from?  Did the city of Boston really just have all that shit lying around?  Did they really have all those man hours available to deploy on the spot?  The connections line up.  They say that this was a live test of how a single city lockdown would look.  

I now have lost the country who this happened to, maybe Libya, but it went like this: the banks all got attacked by a computer virus.  The government response was to shut down the banks for a weekend to get the system back online with their best operatives on the case.  72 hours later, the country was under martial law.  It wasn't a computer virus, it was a ploy on both sides to contain and disable the people.

These articles in order are terrifying.

Yet there is still hope.  Today I was delivering supplies to the other store and ran into two men speaking.  They both looked poorer than dirt but one was giving wise council to the other.  As I approached, the counseled started to leave and I could not unlock my eyes from the counselor.  His eyes as well were locked on mine.  I was suddenly back on the streets of Santa Cruz on a cold, starry night.  There was electricity in the air as an elderly man spoke to the hearts of many.  Under the isolated stars we all felt connected.  In the frigid air, we banded together as souls and were warm.  And here I found myself staring at this destitute man in the summertime of San Francisco, unable to break this connection.  

"Hey, I know you... From somewhere."  Those were his words.  Both of us knew he was not talking about us.  

My suspicions confirmed, I was no longer shackled to his eyes.  I took a deep breath and smiled as I passed, "Yes.  Yes we do."

If we just remember where we all come from, there is hope for us even under the heel of such a force that would seek to oppress us so.  I have faith that connections like that will save us all and further bring us illuminated and enlightened into a new era.  Perhaps we needed this enemy to grow.  And if that is indeed so, this enemy may have my eternal thanks.

Nerdy rant

Hokay, prepare yourself.  Nerdy rant incoming.

One of the most amazing things about video games as an art medium is the ability to really put you inside a character.  While this is literally true, I am actually speaking to just how incredible that is.  I am implying that instead of simply watching and empathizing, you are actually thinking and deciding what to do as that character.  You are entirely in their shoes and living their emotions.  Their choices are yours to make, as are the responsibilities.  This is the ultimate power that video games possess and it could be used to an even higher extent than it is today. 

I recently had a heated discussion with a very, very dear friend of mine regarding the mechanical workings of a class in a game called Final Fantasy XIV.  The discussion was about the black mage class.  To give some background, these individuals pull their power from the source of chaos and destruction in the form of overpowering magical spells.  The lore of the game regards these individuals as constantly walking the knife's edge of destroying their foe and destroying themselves or those around them if they lack that acute presence of mind needed to control this force.  "All those who walk this path are destined for ruin.  It is just a matter of time."

To me, I want to see this imbedded in the very workings of the class.  The players should struggle with this so that they feel what it would truly be like to be a black mage in this world, not just hear it in the lore.  ... I am getting ahead of myself.  First let me speak to you of the cause for my rant.

Games are made with deep psychology in mind.  The developers not only need to balance the game so that one class is not insanely more powerful than another in an equal party role, but deeper than that, they want to release a game that is tailored to be liked by their gamers.  The average gamer hates waiting, they hate holding themselves back, they desire to unleash their potential.  Therefore, when the developers created this class, they designed it to give this class periods of heavily destructive burst damage followed by periods of lower damage while they recharge their stores to do it again.  Played perfectly (which involves a constant stream of both reactionary and optimized commands), overall damage is equal to a class with constant damage output, yet they are allowed to feel burstier.  This burstiness is risky as the enemies could determine they ought to be the target of their malice if they unload at the wrong time, yet they are still incredibly safe from such a fate.  

Even with this watered down safety, many players still see this class as having a "wet noodle" phase and don't like it.  Personally, I think that a higher risk, patience gameplay is exactly what those on this path ought to be fighting against to really understand the path that they tread according to the lore.  It should be incredibly easy to overdo it.  It should require patience and willpower to control the vast forces at their disposal so they truly respect the unstoppable chaos from which they draw their abilities as well as their inevitable fate as they walk this path.  

In the case of the monk class that has consistent damage, their play ought to reflect the dance and rhythm of their martial arts, gaining bonuses from the constant string of combos.  I could speak on every class here, but I will save you the headache.  The struggle here is creating a job that lets the player feel like the class that they play while still maintaining balance.  I won't sell them short, they give you a taste of each class through play alone and the game on a mathematical level has one of the simplest, yet most elegant damage balancing mechanics I have ever seen, but the core of gameplay creation is centered around the idea that every player should be constantly doing something because otherwise they will be bored.  ... This is a judgement of criminal incorrectness that is frankly insulting.  

To give you a live example of the kind of choice I wish to see, I will bring up the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  The game follows Jensen, a cop who gets severely crippled in service and rebuilt as an augmented super soldier against his will.  His conundrum is trying to single handedly get to the bottom of the great conspiracy surrounding his accident while not letting these new powers take away what is left of his humanity.  Tremendous developer effort went towards letting the player complete the story without a single person being killed or even alerted to your presence (outside of the cutscenes).  Many gamers despise this manner of play because, and I quote, "I feel like I am just walking-- I AM just walking through the game.  No combat, no encounters, just waiting for an opening to making my move."  I personally found this very rewarding.  At one point, a group of soldiers were sent to intercept me in a stair well.  I waited til they were at the right spot, made some noise so they would investigate, turned on a cloaking field, used my implants to make my landing perfectly silent, and used a third skill letting me fall from any height, and jumped silently and invisibly down the center to the bottom and walked out of what is supposed to be a five story, slow and steady descent through armed forces.  I got to use my head instead of my hand.  I love that in games.  

The one thing that game was lacking was any punishment for upgrading your implants.  I found it almost comical when Jensen would talk about how he never asked for any of this and would brood on his implants when I, as a player, was a kid in a candy store waiting for the cash to buy the next one, relishing in no longer worrying about silly human constraints like breathing or being seen anymore.  If I were to design the game, the more upgrades you purchase, the more constraints would be put on your dialogue options.  Jensen would not even have access to the empathetic, human responses as he would be losing touch with humanity!  From a developer's stance this is silly-- why create all these powers if you deem it an appropriate path to avoid getting them-- why give the players a world of opportunities and superhuman abilities and then tell them not to use it?  Because that is what the character struggles with!  The idea behind Jensen is his struggle to retain his humanity while being thrust into this situation where he is more than tempted to embrace them.  Most gamers will dive into and embrace these powers and experience an epic yarn of a man who discovers a truth that can change the world but has lost everything in achieving it.  Those willing will attempt to really experience Jensen's plight.  They will struggle with temptation, knowing their augs can be unlocked at any point.  They will spend their hard earned cash on preparing for missions with equipment instead of hardware.  They will cry when their only-human abilities lead to the death of Malik.  For doing so, they will not only watch and participate in, but truly live the story of a man whose burning soul compromises nothing, even in the face of incredible sacrifice-- a man whose search for the truth creates a revolution and transforms the entire world.  

Take a risk and see where gaming can take storytelling.  

Going to work stoned

Today I had the most unusual knowledge of exactly where my boss was going to be.  He had to take care of his son, so he was out.  In celebration and as it is something I've never experienced before, I ate some weed butter before work just to test out how this whole thing goes.  Not a lot, but enough to ease my muscles and put me in a philosophical pot stupor.  It was a very interesting experience.  All of my friends at work and at school in my hometown finally made sense.  Half of the city suddenly made sense.  When working on weed, there is this ease of working coupled with this block to working super hard.  So while working was super easy and enjoyable, I could not work at the speed I normally do.  I found myself believing that one person ought not do more than one man's work.

...  Doing more than one man's work...  Reminds me of a story I was told not long ago.  It goes like this: a businessman was visiting a Caribbean Island during his retirement.  Being old and wise, he sat people watching and talked easily with strangers.  He spoke with a fisherman coming back from a day of fishing.  "Whatcha got there?"

"Two tuna and a whitefish," the fisherman freely replies.

"For sport?"

"For my family for tonight and tomorrow.  My wife is a cook and my boy eats a lot," he admits with a jolly laugh.

"Wow, and how long did that take you?"

"Maybe two hours."

The businessman guffaws, "What do you do for the rest of the day?"

"I play with my boy, help my wife cook, take care of my home and garden, siesta with my wife, and watch the sunset with my dog."

"That sounds wonderful, but why don't you fish for longer?  You could work just 6 hours and start saving for a second boat.  Once you got that, you could exponentiate your profits and create an army to control the price of fish!"

The fisherman scratches his head to recall his elementary grasp of mathematics and asks, "What would I do with all those profits?" 

"Why, you could retire at 50 at the rate I see business here!  Then you could relax and play with your boy and siesta with your wife and watch the sunset with--" the businessman's voice trails off and he pauses in deep contemplation.  He returns to reality and looks up at the young fisherman, who now appears a wise scholar in the midday sun of the Caribbean.

The fisherman smiles and shoulders his net, "I hope you enjoy your time here on this island.  If you will excuse me, I have some very important business to attend to with my wife."  

His eyebrows double up and down and he leaves the businessman to his thoughts.  

Doing more than one man's work is like this.  The old man seeks to do more.  The young fisherman seeks only to do what is his to do.  There are benefits to both mentalities, but we live in a world dominated by one mindset and not the other.  Working as I had today taught me this.

Kirk/Spock fanfic dream

I don't know if I was horny or what, but I had a fanfic dream about Kirk and Spock.  

It started off like most of the Star Trek episodes where our favorite interracial gay couple is exploring a planet's anomaly.  The anomaly was a wave of mass unexplained deforestations followed by intense vegetative growth.  The boys hoped to find the mechanism for the growth to replicate on dying ecosystems.  After plotting regions of the anomaly, they predict where it will happen next.  

Kirk talks to some ambassadors coincidentally in the area while Spock does some reconnaissance.  Kirk's talk becomes heavily philosophical and the forest around this beach begins to die.  Spock notes this on radio, but all contact with Kirk has been lost.  Kirk starts becoming a light entity through this talk.  His life signs don't really fail, but his body becomes catatonic while his spirit moves on.  He can't shake the sensation of being a cat, yet he holds onto his physical projection.  

The mechanism for this miraculous growth is these elders feed off the energy of a hijacked spirit and channeling it into an area.  Nothing malicious, these ambassadors dive deep and truly convince those spirits to give themselves to the land.  Kirk is NOT convinced, but his spirit is so strong that the ambassadors get greedy and try to force it.  The forest begins to grow.  Kirk's life signs fall in parallel to the growth and the Enterprise agrees the connection cannot be coincidence.  Spock gets captured trying to recover Kirk's body.  

Kirk watches Spock as a dog get taken away-- his ridiculous hair and eyebrows on a small brown dog fighting to thwart his captors.  It is at this point that Kirk's ridiculous intellect figures out the ploy.  He knows he will build a whole world with his spirit, but his heart tells him his purpose is so much greater.  He talks them into a knot in an attempt to dissuade their greed and have them let go.  Meanwhile, Spock escapes his captors and informs the crew of the dire news.  The captain is dead.  Scotty says, "you know it has to be done."  I am not sure the specific nature of these words, but they shook me deeply and I know Spock could not accept them.  Logic and emotion demand Kirk's release.  Why would Kirk agree to this?

No later, Kirk walks in with a smug fucking grin on his face.  "I saw you," he starts, somehow with more smirk than before: "you were a dog-- you ARE a dog."

Spock makes an incoherent noise somewhere between a logical rebuttal and an explosion of emotion.  

"You see, I am a cat.  Everyone fucking loves me.  You are a dog-- fierce and loyal, emotional to a fault, and forever attached to me like heads and tails on a coin."

The banter begins after a moment for Spock to recall ancient alien history: "20th century currency.  No longer applicable, but I see the connection.  Perhaps a simple simile regarding friends would be more appropriate."

Kirk's eye twinkles as he drops a smile that could melt even the remotest moons...  Aaaaand I think the public narration of this dream should end here.

Dancing and sexual energy

The other weekend, one of my roommates received a surprise dance lesson.  Full of good food and enjoying the evening in our dimly lit living room under the fog and stars.  I watched along, giggling through my wine haze.  She struggled to figure out how to move her body in the ways needed to emulate dancing.  The irony, more than anything, made the night so very enjoyable for me.  You see, my roommate is a very sexual person.  She can ramble for ages on the virtues of simply giving yourself to the moment and surrendering to the joy of sex.  I can never understand.  She sighs and tries to tell me again and again.  And now here we were in the reverse.  She cannot grasp what I so simply do.  Dance is less about learning how to move your body, it is about surrendering to the music and letting your body channel those emotions.  As with sex, a bag of tricks never hurts to have, but the key isn't in formula, it is in the cornucopia of the soul's surrender.

I still don't understand how sexual energy works-- to give to feel to channel to ankh to surrender to embrace... They are all simply movements to me that I try to wrap my conscious around doing.  Yet dancing I understand-- not movements, surrenders.

Through my wine haze, I could not help but laugh.  Not at her, she is a student as are we all and she shall learn as will we all.  I could not help but laugh at another one of life's little ironies, showing up in my living room with a few good friends, a pile of good food, and a little bit of wine; dimly lit by a vase full of Christmas lights, yet on fire with the ever present love of the universe.

Gandhi quote

"First they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win."

This quote is about fighting unjust laws through group non-compliance.  Here is how it works:  let's say someone (who shall go unnamed) has made it illegal or otherwise unfeasible for farmers to save their seeds.  According to the law or insane circumstance, they must now buy another batch of seeds in order to plant another harvest instead of being able to use seeds to spread crop.  To fight this law, a few individuals stand up and practice non-compliance. What Gandhi says in this quote is that the moment they stop ignoring you and meet this non-compliance with violence or oppression, you will win.  

It may not happen right away.  The very first person to stand up to this most unnatural law might be silently shut down or otherwise legally bullied into submission.  However, she may also have caused one more person to question whether or not this law was just.  The cycle continues.  More people start thinking and find the law unjust.  Soon all the farmers of a town rally together and all save their seed.  How do the local enforcers respond?  Do they arrest all of them and instantly take away a town's food production?  They know it will cause a stir and they know it will affect them as well, yet the order comes from on high-- they cannot let this show of defiance go unchecked.  The lawmakers stand up and show their true colors.  And now everyone can see it.  The law becomes seen as unjust because the true reason for the law has come to light.  It is now known that the law has a greater import than the protection of the people.  Change soon follows as it has throughout all our histories.

This is what Gandhi was talking about.  First they ignore you [or silence you so others remain ignorant], then they fight you, and then you win.  It is not about overcoming their laws.  It is about lifting the veil pulled over the people's eyes, shedding light on the truth hidden therein, and enlightening the world.  Never once is a single punch thrown, yet the oppressor is vanquished.  Never once is retaliation used, yet justice is met.  This is the kind of justice I want my children to know, this is the kind of conflict resolution I want the future to believe in.  Children watch, follow in suit, and then understand.  Always in that order.  If we want them to have peace, we must practice it so they watch it.  Watch it so they become it.  Become it so they understand it.  The future begins and ends with you, my dear readers and friends.  Choose your actions wisely, for they shape the future more than we give them credit for.

Christians

As usual, I was lamenting on the Internet and was given what I needed.  I was given a pretty awful picture of a scene of Jesus being beaten by some soldiers while carrying a cross.  The caption was, "the problem with many Christians is they believe they are this guy *pointing to Jesus* while acting like that guy *pointing to a particularly violent oppressor*."  I found the image slanderous, sometimes true, yet all in all simply missing one of the great points of life.

This great point is that in order for Jesus to have the impact he did, that oppression was kind of necessary.  It paved the way for him to transform from just some awesome hippy into a figure and an idea that changed history.  In the same way, no matter why or who, the various forms of oppression in our time are giving birth to a whole generation of heroes.  Jesuses and Jesusettes who, in standing up, have and will become ideas that change the lives of millions.  In our time, we live in yet another conflict that cultivates the human spirit in the same way a fresh coat of rain and death cultivates the forest.

We all have our parts to play in this great space opera aboard our giant organic spaceship orbiting a low-class star in the unimportant suburbs of our plain yet beautiful galaxy.  So don't shun the tiger for being the tiger any more than you would shun the flower for blooming or a star for exploding, instead focus on the voice of your heart.  It will tell you how to play your part-- for that part is the movement of one drop in a limitless ocean; one drop that is a part of the whole ocean creating waves that lap against the rocks of history.

Ownership

Especially after a few of my recent posts, I have been thinking of the problems that ail us and come back and come back to the same poisonous root again and again.  This root is the idea of ownership.  The CEO of Nestle corporation has recently made the statement that water should become privatized.  He says that water, like other foodstuffs, has a price to purify and distribute and the people should be aware of that price by paying for it at all times.

My mind wandered and explored as I listened to the responders.  The opposers of this thought-- what do they say?  They said that the right to water is the right to survive and it is inalienable.  My thoughts swirled like a great vortex.  Why was that statement so interesting?  Why did I keep asking myself about this simple rebuttal?

"To survive is a human right."  I knew something about it felt wrong.  Not that I disagree in the slightest.  I know it was intended with the right heart, but was nonetheless wrong.  I explored my thoughts.  The fundamental quality if life is not to survive, it is to thrive-- it is to grow and to create and experience beauty.  

Furthermore, if survival was a human right, then would not access to food be included in this assumption as well?  The whole idea of this statement was self-contradictory.  That is why my mind kept racing back to this thought!

The fact that one person can lay claim to the world is absurd.  This absurdity is one of the primary culprits that lays seed to many of the ills of humanity.  What is the solution?  I have no idea.  Yet I believe this thought is at least a start.

Empathy and dreams

Last night, I had a dream that I was playing a really old game with my stepbrother again.  Secret of Mana.  It was really difficult this time, the rules were different, and we played as different characters.  Yet it was more beautiful and awesome than I could have imagined on my own.

The weird part was waking up to him sending me a Facebook message (a mere 3 hours before) about us actually playing the same game and not even knowing it.  In my dream, when you died, you got vastly separated and the game is infinitely harder alone.  You pretty much hold a position and defend as the other person dodges arrows and bubble beams sprinting the whole way there.  Once back as a team, things were better, but still challenging enough to put fire in his eyes-- a sight I love to see in him.  Especially as the healer I am.  

I showed him my guild and he wants to join up with me.  I cannot express my gratitude.  I cannot express my joy.  I cannot express the glorious strangeness of connecting to another person through a dream.  As Zelda said, "Back when I was in Ganon's clutches, the psychic link between us was so strong.  You seem so distant now, guarding the triforce-- and me, the princess of all Hyrule.  But I will never forget the time we shared together in our dreams."  Spoilers, that is the last line of the book~

Thankfulness

I had an interesting moment with a friend recently.  He thanked me for wishing him luck and I was taken aback, "why would you thank me, silly?  That is just what I do!  Thanking me is like thanking the air for giving you breath."

We both stopped and I thought about what I had just said.  Why not thank the air for its bounty as we would the Earth for its, a man for their sacrifices, or <insert any deity or belief or the universe> for our life?  These simple things we can so easily be thankful for are often left out.  Why?

Is not thankfulness its own reward?  Is not the emotion of thankfulness one that permeates the fabric of reality thanks to the power of our hearts?  I believe that being constantly aligned with this emotion is a great key to happiness and contentment in life.  So why the heck not?  

Thank you, air.  I enjoy breathing you.  I appreciate the trees from which you come from as they appreciate it and the animals that their air comes from.

I also enjoy my shower.  Thank you, shower.  You are a beautiful thing.  *goes to take a shower*

My last set of math classes

I muse often on these most auspicious of classes.  In my last years of college, only then am I shown the truth about mathematics and I cannot help but wonder why.  Why, I wonder, do we hide things so?  Why can we not be honest from the start?  As a teacher, I know this answer all too well.  If we simplify things at first, they are easier to grasp.  Give a student a complex physics problem, but to avoid complication, pretend it is a perfectly spherical cow with no wind resistance and they can figure out how much force necessary to trebuchet it unto its pen.  Even there though, the teacher is trying to be honest; trying to show them the true face of physics while simplifying it enough for their own hands to grasp.  With math, I feel it is like alchemy-- they teach you how to turn lead into gold without revealing the truth about lead, gold, and the nature behind all things. 

I use this simile lightly because the truth I have come to bear about mathematics is quite the opposite. I had been taught for so long this golden rule of algebra: What is done to one side must be done to the other to conserve equality.  My studies in even the simplest forms of philosophy (which is ironically the twin sister of math) have me picketing against this very rule.  Yet, the intricate beauty of this rule is taught from day one and onward.

Upon reaching where I have in my studies, I have come to believe this great, unchangeable rule is a great, big fallacy.  We are wrong!  Like Newton, our models are accurate, yet our fundamental understanding is missing a fundamental truth and it is all based on this single immutable idea placed in us during the very birth of our careers in math.  

This piece, this incredibly incepted lie, lays seed to more destruction than my heart can take.  

This inception has produced a society in which nothing can be free.  Certainly I am not naive enough to think that anything truly is-- even the sun has limits on the total energy it can produce, the earth as well has limits on the bounties it can provide, but there is a rejuvenating, growing element woven into the fabric of the universe that we ignore with this rigorously simple algebraic mentality.  At one point, the cost of farming the earth for food was a considerable endeavor, yet this unique element has seen birth of technology to eliminate want for a negligent cost.  Yet still we follow this vengeant rule for the gain of a few.

Ask a mathematician what dissonance plus harmony equals.  The answer is dissonance.  Ask a musician and they will tell you that in the right circumstances a little dissonance can create a well of intense beauty enough to bring complete strangers to their knees in tears.  This is the element of which I speak.  This spirit that transcends our natural laws and allows one plus one to equal the infinite of love-- this spirit is lost when we think mathematically without being taught the true true of mathematics.  

The truth of mathematics is that math is not a left-brained science.  It is a right brained art that needs the left brain to function correctly.  Find that balance, embrace that spirit, and you will not need me to show you how to find infinite with yourself and zero.

Dreams

First off, I have quite a number of posts I have but don't want to post until I revise them.  Not revising for mistakes, lord knows I make enough of those to fail me out of primary school thrice over, but for content.  I'm just not sure how to post the content in the correct way.  So I'll keep chuggin away on it.

As for today's post, it is just a reiteration of something I've said a thousand times.  I have amazing dreams.  I'm currently working on turning two of my dreams into full length stories.  Not only is there enough there, but there is enough to share to make the effort to me worth a whole lot.  I could take this one step further and say that there are enough of my dreams out there with coherence, substance, and intrigue that I could honestly make a living for myself as an author simply writing my dreams.

Last night I had a dream involving two ships.  At first, one ship carried the other, but as my enemies closed in, we eluded them by taking one ship one direction with a father as captain and the other ship in another direction with a son as captain, confusing my pursuers.

All that stuff aside, the unique part of the dream that I want to replicate in a story somewhere is what happened later on.  The scene was myself and the son of the captain (who was now a captain himself) are going down into the cargo hold to get some devices I need for eluding and, if necessary, combat.  Someone I knew NARRATED the scene as she thought it would happen.  The scene then restarted and proceeded with how it actually went down from my perspective with no narration.

Dream aside, how cool is that as an artistic device?  I don't necessarily plan on using the actual dream as a story, but that scene and how it lets you play with side characters at the same time as giving main characters non-cannon and out-of-perspective interactions is really quite fun.

Right-o.  Gonna go get Teriyaki Tofu from this place down the street at before they close at midnight.  Peace out, my friends.