Moving Portrait

 

I dreamt that I wanted to paint a picture.

I did not have a canvas, so I cut a piece out of a bed-sheet and stretched and tacked it over a frame.

When I commenced to paint, the sheet was soft under my brush, and the paint passed through the cloth. Not to worry, I put the paint on thick and built up paint on paint.

My subject was an old man. He had once been a boy and then a middle-aged man, before growing old.

Now you know yourself that the marks you put on the canvas are seldom the same as what you intended. When I reviewed my progress, I was alarmed to find that what I had painted was the boy. I grappled again with the task. Now it looked like the middle-aged man. I struggled on and finally captured the old man

I depicted the right hand as raised and the left hand across the waist. The fingers were to be stretched out, but they looked folded in. Not to worry, I worked over them and stretched them out.

A man, whose name was Seamus O'Reilly, was there. He looked at my picture and asked me, 

"What is it?"

What a question!

I looked at the picture. It was not a single solid image. Before my eyes it kept changing: young man, middle-aged man, old man. The hands kept opening and closing.

"I suppose you could say it is an optical illusion, " I said: "I offer the viewer conflicting visual clues, so (s)he will see as if the subject is growing from boy to man to old age and grasping at life."

We were in a Community Centre. The people were taking little interest in my creative work, regarding it as one would regard a child's scribble stuck on a fridge.

"It should be in a museum of Art," I said. " It should be in a room of it's own, and patrons should be charged  a fee to see it."

Interpretation: no need for psychics; when I look in the mirror, I see a boy or young man, but that's no what is really there.

The Silence Key

I describe elsewhere how I have re-discovered the benefits of breath-holding and silent breathing. Now, I dreamt that, when my wife and I arrived home from town, our keys would not open the door. Indeed, there was not even a keyhole.

I rang the door-bell, and then looked around for pebbles, in case Diarmuid was wearing his ear-phones and would not hear the bell.

But Diarmuid heard the bell all right and came and opened the door.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"O, there was something wrong with the door," said Diarmuid, "so I called Magog, and he put in a new door lock. Look, here's the master key," and he opened a little key safe that had been attached to the inside wall, wherein sat the "master key."

The Master Key was like a small paper-clip enclosed in see-through, solid plastic.

"Gosh," I thought, "So small, it would be lost in your pocket (or hand-bag)." But, then I saw it had a hole to which a key-ring could be fixed, so that was all right.

"Where's the key=hole?" I asked, for I could not see one.

"O no," said Diarmuid. "There's no key-hole. The Master Key is used to register the users. Once a user is registered, the lock automatically recognises him or her and automatically opens the door."

"So, how is a user registered?"

"Show the Master Key to the lock. When it clicks, state the user's Code Name, look into the lock and breathe normally for a minute."

"Normally?"

"Yes, no panting, snorting or snuffling."

"But, what is normal?"

"Remember," said Diarmuid, "Silent Breathing is the Key."

"And Code Name?"

"Well," said Diarmuid, "we could use Frank, Tess, Dermo, Tom, Neef, Shinner, Ron ..."

"Okay, give me the Master Key and I will try to register myself."

I showed the Master Key to the lock. Ir went click. I stood close to the lock and said "Krunchy." Then I  looked steadily at the lock, breathing silently for a minute, and was duly registered.

"Supposing there is an emergency, and people, who are not registered, want to get out?

"In that case," said Diarmuid, "There is an emergency Code Word anybody can use to open the door. I have registered 'Emerge' as the emergency Code Word."

We went in, and I found a letter addressed to me inside. 

"O No!" I exclaimed, "another medical appointment." This time it was an appointment at a clinic for a Metabolic Test, whatever that means.

I went to the clinic, and found I was to sit at a card table on an upright chair and answer a book of questions. There were about three hundred A4 sized pages in the book. This will take three hours, I thought. But soon I found that every question in the book had the same answer. Silent Breathing was the key, and I flew through the test, giving a silent breath as the answer to every question.

Land Office Reform

 Now that my prostate is somewhat enlarged, I often wake at night to go to the toilet. My dream-world provides me with a wake-up theme, often enwrapped in an elaborate adventure.

Last night, I dreamt I was back in the Land Registry, where I had worked for over 35 years. I could not go to my old room, but followed the flow of people to a large hall. On the way, I passed the gents' toilets, but they were closed. The Ladies' toilets were opened, but I passed on to the hall.

The hall was laid out as an extensive open-plan area. There was a large number of small tables, similar to card tables, each accompanied by a straight-backed chair. I found the table allocated to me. 

After my name, the tag said "Leader." I knew instantly what this meant. It meant that in future, people would not be sending cases to me, as trained lawyer, for decision, but would look to me for guidance in deciding cases themselves. Decision by esoteric knowledge-heads would be replaced by decisions by ordinary staff following clear instructions. (Instead of deciding cases, experts would in future decide case-types). I sat on my chair and waited.

Imagine if this principle were applied to the Justice System! A person found stealing or in possession of drugs would be dealt with on the spot. A policeman would simply take him/her in charge and deliver him/her to a reform centre for treatment, the police working under guidance of experts. How much more efficient this would be than the courts' system!

I recall a case where two youths attempted to rob a local shop. The shop-lady grappled with them and held onto one until the police arrived. The police collected the second youth, took them to the station, charged them, and released them for later prosecution. Next day they were back mocking the shop-lady, saying "It will be your word against ours," and so it was. In court, the shop-lady was asked to point out the perpetrators (although she had physically delivered them to the police) and the defence made sure to have some look-alikes in court. Entirely a farcical system!

My father had been a policeman, and retired in the very year I began to study law. I asked him what were the offences for which he made most arrests. He said "Drunk and Disorderly," and "Behaviour likely to lead to a Breach of the Peace." In these cases, perpetrators were usually held overnight in the station and then released without charge. Peace was upheld. But now policemen stand idly by while the peace is disturbed and later refer perpetrators to an inefficient courts system.

Back to my dream.

A man approached the podium. To my surprise, it was my brother, Jerry, an outsider to the Land Registry. He said:

"My name is Jerry Killeen. The management team have requested me to take charge of the restructuring process."

This had great significance to me. Jerry is an accountant who had previously been involved in the restructuring of several companies, including

• United Biscuits, which had amalgamated several independent biscuit companies. A tin of biscuits could not be costed, because of the "Broken Biscuit" privilege, i.e., the right of workers at all levels, both in the manufacturing and in the distribution, to take tins of supposedly broken biscuits. Jerry was part of a team that, with cooperation of the trade unions, replaced the privileges by an increase in salary, and thereby made the biscuit business more efficient.
• Dublin Port and Docks Board, where he was part of a team that replaced the right of individual dockers to take ownership of the loading and unloading of ships by a rational system.

Jerry went on :

"You will have noticed that everything has changed. However, nothing has changed."

In the case of United Biscuits, although restructured, it remained a biscuit company. In the case of the Port and Docks Board, it remained a loader and unloader of ships. In the case of the Land Registry, it would remain a registry of titles, only restructured on the inside.

I did not stay to hear the  rest of  Jerry's speech. At this point, I noticed that the Gents' toilets had been re-opened, so I rose and headed for the toilet. This was the signal to my body to wake up. I woke up and actually headed for the toilet.

A Mountain Air

 One of the places in my dream world is a hut at the foot of a wild, misty mountain, where I spend the life of a hermit, with just one set of (old) clothes, a fireplace, a timber bench for a bed and sacks for bed covers, and I live on fish from the mountain lake, roots, bilberries, and leaves.

Recently I dreamt that I heard a lonely flute tune floating down off the mountain. I listened for a while, then I took out my tin whistle and played along, developing the tune. 

Waking, I remembered the dream, but had to re-imagine the dream tune;

A Mountain Air

Like-well's Tome

 I dreamt I was in some Alpine place, high up on a slope. Across the valley were massive mountains, dotted with many an interesting site: cliffs, forests, villages, churches and so on, and below in the valley many other equally lovely and interesting things, as well as a lake with cruisers and rowing boats, but all at too great a distance to be other than a blob on a picture of the mountains.

I had my camera with me, which had a very limited zoom. I also had a massive hard-covered book, called Lecheuelle's Phototectomy, if I recollect correctly, which contained massive technical instructions on how to make the most of  photography in that place, which was totally useless to me.

One of our party was a woman named Anne. She kept on saying to me, "Let me have a look .... Can I have it again for a moment ... You should take the village over there .... You should take the little church .... You should take the village dancers ..."

I got completely annoyed with her (piling up tasks for me, all quite impossible to carry out);. I got angry, and I said,

"If you want to capture something, just point and click. Don't tell me about it, just do it."

Now, in my waking state, I realise that my subconscious mind was up to its old verbal, punning, tricks. "Lecheuelle's," posing as a French/ Germanic name, is merely a misspelling of "Like-well's," and "Phototectomy", no doubt is just "A tome about the techniques of photography." 

"Like-well's Tome," about the technical details of photography, represents my accumulation of technical knowledge that has become quite useless to me in this "Point and Click" world. 

Free Energy

 I dreamt that Philomena next door was in our house chatting with my wife (as neighbours often do).

When Phil mentioned that her mobile phone had become very hot in her pocket, I decided to insert my male, scientific, view-point into the conversation.

"Well," I said, "your phone works, of course, off microwaves. Microwaves are a form of energy, and often convert into heat. They can also be converted, do you know, into electricity.

"Over a hundred years ago, in fact, Nikola Tesla erected a very tall aerial in America to transmit electricity by microwaves across the Atlantic."

"But it didn't work, did it?" said Phil.

"O yes, it did," said I. "It worked until his bank pulled the plug on the finance. When the banker heard Nikola say he would deliver free electricity to Africa, the bank withdrew the money and the project stopped. The banker wanted to make millions, not give stuff away for free. 

"In fact, they are now doing that very thing in Africa. In Nairobi, where my sister works, the slum-dwellers all have smart-phones, but they don't have electricity; so the phone companies provide them with chargers that charge their phones from the microwaves transmitted through the air.

"So, you could set up a receiver in your garden to receive microwaves and convert them into electricity."

"So, I would have to set up a big tall Antenna in my garden," said Phil.

"O No," I said. "The transmitter must be a shaft, a tall aerial, but the receptor should be a bowl-shaped receiver."

"Well," said Phil, "I have a very large Pyrex bowl that I never use, because it is far too big for anything. We could use that."

"I was really thinking of something larger still, but we could use your Pyrex bowl as a proto-type."

So, next thing, Philomena and I were constructing a microwave receiver from her Pyrex bowl. I bored a hold in the bottom of the bowl, because it would be outside and we did not want it to fill with water. Next, I pasted the outside with glue and wound yards and yards of copper wire round and round the bowl, making it into a great bowl-shaped coil.  

I tested it with a sensitive voltmeter, and found that there was, indeed, a difference in potential between the start and end points of the coil. Then we attached the extremities to a direct-current battery-charger and commenced to charge batteries using our device. (All battery-chargers are direct current, but the commercial ones incorporate a device to convert DC to AC). 

All this happened in the dream, of course, not in reality.

Computer island

 I dreamt I went to stay on an island off the west coast of Ireland where, in the dream, my sister had gone to do a computer course. This was an unusual computer course set up by an American, from Silicon Valley, California, who had gone to live on the island, where he "worked from home" providing software to client companies in America. His specialty was motion, and his course was based on the innovations he had developed.

I, on the other hand, was only concerned in capturing the essence of the island in a painting. 

My sister persuaded me, nevertheless, to attend at one of the computer classes. To my surprise, I was subjected to a long and penetrating interview by the American, where I exercised considerable restraint in not answering, "mind your own business."

Following the interview, the American said to the gathering, inter alia, 

"Krunchie will be assigned to programming the movement of the currach in the sea environment," which sounded to me more like a life-time commitment than a casual few days course. I did not, in other words feel committed to the task. (A "Currach" is a small sea-worthy boat used by fishermen on the west coast of Ireland).

Next, the American had me watch several videos describing the mathematics of movement, in particular, the mathematics of helicopter and drone movements. I was dismayed and perplexed at the task, but he said, 

"You don't have to master this maths. That has already been done by others who spent lifetimes on it. What we have to do is lift the appropriate bits into our programs."

So next, I had to view videos of currachs traversing the choppy waters off the west of Ireland, and spend a day physically learning how to manipulate a currach. 

Then I was left to the task of describing the movements of the currach in the American's software. Well, I can tell you I was not going to put my heart and soul into it, but lifted the existing movement software from other places, dumped the results on my master and "left the building."

Word came to me that the American was surprised with the speed of my response and delighted with the quality of my work.

I concentrated on my painting project, making many sketches of the island, the island people,  the "intruders." Myself in pensive mood, currachs in the water, and so on.

My sister viewed my work, but said,

"Your motive is not really to describe the island, or the people, but to express the loneliness, the isolation, in fact the contented loneliness in your heart."

Suddenly I understood the picture I needed to paint. I set up a very large canvas, five foot by four foot, and, with broad strokes, quickly painted a scene: a light, creamy-grey sky with broad streaks of light blue, a grey-green island with blotches of creamy-grey rocks and brighter green grassy patches, and, at the bottom, a grey-green sea with strips of white foam. The reason for the large canvas was that the human figure in the middle of the scene could be presented fully and not just as a blob. It is mainly the figure that suggested the "contented loneliness." While no attempt was made to make it a sel-portrait, the commentators quickly identified me in the figure.