A Disturbing Dream Somehow, I received a message of a Nopel Prize award, and I had to send a fax answer about my participation. The fax machine stood in the lobby of my childhood school, and I could not figure out how to use it. Right behind me in the queue was my ex-wife's new partner, and he helped me get the machine working. Sometime later I was at a family reunion, where we waited for the main guests to appear. While we were waiting a UPS man came in and I had to sign for a huge package. He reminded me of the cheerful Iranian delivering man who brought packets out to me back home. The mail man got the signature and drove the package in onto a hand truck, and it occurred to me that it was fortunate, it happened during these banquet facilities, because otherwise it could not have come through the door. Unpacking the big box it looked like a paper maché model of a hilly landscape in brown and green. There was a cave, where black smoke was coming out. It struck me that the environment around the black hole got the whole thing to look like a womb. Included in the package was a note that I had to report back once more about participating in the awards ceremony for the fax had not gone through. Now I was not so eager anyway, for what could such a Nopel price well be, spelled in this strange way? Well, my son Thorbjørn was also present, so he could send the confirmation that this time should be with a text message... Then I did not get more of the story, because I woke up and had to go to the toilet, like so many other times during the night. Afterwards, I could not sleep because I had a violent fit of coughing as part of my long-term cold. Therefore, I had time to memorize the weird dream so I was able to remember it when I woke up late the next morning. Now I have written it down before it completely disappears into the mists of oblivion. I often get dreams that I realize I have dreamt when I have to get up and pee, but they disappear immediately because I usually find it easy to sleep on. Often the dream before I get up is something where I go around in a public place and look for a free toilet, but they are usually in use or completely filthy. Well, that kind of dreams one can understand when you have to urinate, but what about this strange dream I now had experienced? I tried to think of what I had done the day before provoking these thoughts, and I had reviewing candidates for possible posting on my website update scrolled past one album on the shelf, 'Miss and Flier' by a certain Jonas Wagner. I took it out and wondered a little about the case. This Wagner had received some reward for the album, but after that, no one had heard anything from him in the field of epic comics. A sort of hit and run situation. Another way to deal with the media I came to think about when I stood with my yellowish ‘SEJD special’ magazine with a collection of Daan Jippes’ comics pages from which I chose a story for scanning. Here is an artist who can do anything, so making a single episode or just a page or two in a certain style is enough, then rather move on to a new attempt with a new style in order to satisfy an urge also being able to replicate that other design. I had also found a memorable story about Uncle Scrooge, I had intended to refer to during the update. A story about a man who forgets everything but not the ability to carve out a materialistic profit regardless of the existing conditions. Finally, I had following up on my novel about civilization's collapse watched Daniel Schmidt’s documentary on cosmological ideas, ‘Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds’. It analyzes and joins a number of religious and spiritual philosophical worldviews, judging what they have in common and how far we in our time have come from these altruistic thoughts and replaced them with short-term fulfillment of never ending desire for material needs based on skewed priorities. This almost meditative presentation was set to music and images of an almost unseen beauty and aesthetics leading the viewer into a sphere of exceptional balance and harmony and thus distancing itself from almost anything in the field of documentaries. It is likely that my preparedness regarding special dreams during the following night had become extra active, because normally I forget quickly everything I have dreamt. I have in each of my books usually a reference list of other works I have used for inspiration or information, and here comes my big DVD collection in handy. Often I have to go back to review a movie or a documentary to find out what has made an impression on me. In the case of the book about civilization's collapse, that list expanded even more. It is a topic, I have thought a lot about over the years. I went on to the website I had found, where there was a copy of Ray Bradbury's short story from 1951 'Last Night of the World' published in the February issue of Esquire. It was also a dream, but in a different way. Ray Bradbury was a poet and could describe the most frightful things in an almost lyrical way, which actually reconciled with the thoughts the evening's documentary had raised in me. "What would you do if you knew this was the last night of the world?" She turned the handle of the silver coffeepot toward him and placed the two cups in their saucers. "Well, better start thinking about it," he said. They sat awhile not touching their coffee. Then they lifted it slowly and drank, looking at each other. "Do we deserve this?" she said. The girls were laughing in the parlor as they waved their hands and tumbled down their house of blocks. "I always imagined people would be screaming in the streets at a time like this." They washed the dishes carefully and stacked them away with especial neatness. At eight-thirty the girls were put to bed and kissed good night, and the little lights by their beds turned on and the door left a trifle open. "I wonder," said the husband, coming out and looking back, standing there with his pipe for a moment. They sat and read the papers and talked and listened to some radio music and then sat together by the fireplace looking at the charcoal embers as the clock struck ten-thirty and eleven and eleven-thirty. They thought of all the other people in the world who had spent their evening, each in their own special way. "Well," he said at last. He kissed his wife for a long time. They went through the house and turned out the lights and locked the doors, and went into the bedroom and stood in the night cool darkness undressing. She took the spread from the bed and folded it carefully over a chair, as always, and pushed back the covers. "The sheets are so cool and clean and nice," she said.
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