Holling: All I remember is you said I had to burn my paintings.
Chris: It's not your painting anymore, Holling. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it. Ok, Holling, Native Americans make these little sand sculptures, right? They spend days just sprinkling these little colored bits of sand into this painting. Now, when they're all finished, they destroy it, they scatter it to all four winds. You know why? Because they know what's important, Holling. Now come on, you're gonna feel a whole lot better when this is all over, believe me.
[They burn the painting]
You feel that, Holling? Huh? You feel that catharsis? That letting go of ego? You're a free man, Holling Vincoeur! You make a little room for yourself to experience this, buddy!
teeth. Eat that roughage. Pop those vitamins. Wear sensible shoes. We homo sapiens carry around a heavy psychic knapsack. Consciousness. We all know we're going to be asked to get off the merry-go-round someday. Best we can do is keep the corpse beautiful, right? What is the "right stuff" anyway? Crossing a double yellow on your hog or looking a 30-year mortgage flat in the face? The long haul--I'm going to need some clean undies, got my toothbrush, got my library card. What'd the man say? A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Right?
- Chris in the morning, coming to terms with long life
borealis is the fire of warriors cooking up their enemies in big old pots.
Among the Inuuit, they believe that he's some bad-ass spirit who's most likely going to sweep down and pluck out your eyes or cut off your head. Among some of the other Alaska natives, they say he ain't so tough. You whistle at the aurora, they say, and he's going to dance to your tune.
- Chris on the air
It's brain waves surfing on synaptic junctions. If your radio can go out
because of sun spots, why can't your cerebellum? It's all a matter of
reception and it seems to me these signals are going to get crossed somehow. It's all logical.
- Chris to the poker table guys about dreams
Ed: I don't know, something.
Adam: You want to know what it means? I'll tell you what it means. The universe is a hostile place, Chigliak. You think Nature is some Disney movie? Nature is a killer. Nature is a bitch. It's feeding time out there 24 hours a day, every step that you take is a gamble with death. If it isn't getting hit with lightning today, it's an earthquake tomorrow or some deer tick carrying Lime disease. Either way, you're ending up on the wrong end of the food chain.
Ed: That's rather upsetting.
Adam: Well, it's supposed to be upsetting, you moron! Check out the Declaration of Independence! You think it promises happiness? No no no, it talks about the "pursuit of happiness." The PURSUIT! We've become a nation of wimps! We think we're entitled to everything, we want to legislate ourselves into some cozy little cocoon. Well, forget it, Nature Boy. There are no guarantees. Life is nasty, broodish, and short. Ecce Homo.
- Adam to Ed, on being struck by lightning
Holling: Couldn't they leak out?
- Joel to Holling, about Maggie having Holling's dreams
Both you guys, with your mortgages and your term life insurance and your
webber kettles. Ant. Ant. All of you, you're all a bunch of little, busy, blind ants. All y'all. Saving up for your rainy days. Scratching up your acorns for the winter. You look at me and you think, "What a piece of pathetic trash out there in that leaky trailer." No spoon, no fork, no prospects. But, you know why? Cause I'm a grasshopper. Ant. Grasshopper. Ant. Grasshopper. Ant. Grasshopper. Ant. Grasshopper. Ant!
- Chris in the bar, before being thrown out
That's from Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude. It seems there's precedence for this dream swapping. Is it really so out there? Maybe we just dream each other's dreams all the time. Isn't that netherworld of the unconscious truly collective? Aren't your fears my fears? Aren't your wants my wants? Don't we all drink from the same human cup? Here's what Karl Jung had to say about it.
"All consciousness separates, but in dreams we put on that likeness of that more universal, truer more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There, he is still the hole and the hole is in him, indistinguishable from nature....Out of the all-uniting depths, a dream arises, be it ever so childish, grotesque and immoral."
- Chris reads from "One Hundred Years of Solitude"
- Ed on the air
