The Ghost of Creative Catastrophe
Dreamed 2020/3/25 by Wayan
For Dave Smith, who survived
West Nile only to die of Covid
BEFORE BED
TV news: San Francisco had its first confirmed covid death today. Still, we went into lockdown and masking fast, and people are complying; I'm hoping our deathrate stays low. We'll see.
I stumble on a show about religious practices round the world. Three each week. Tonight:
THAT NIGHT
NOTES IN THE MORNING
Weird names for the ghost: today my friend Mike mentioned that 'delog' is a Buddhist term for a soul who's escaped hell... but maybe has some prison tattoos--and habits. I forgot what names the shaman in the dream used, so I mishmashed banshee and poltergeist. Rube, of course, is for Rube Goldberg (look his cartoons up) plus old circus slang: "Hey Rube!" as trouble, and "rube" as victim.
Hmm. All the letters in delog are in Goldberg. All the letters of dog are in delog, too. Well then!
I bet Jung would says this poltergeist is an inventive side of me, a trickster who's loves uproar. But I wonder. Doesn't it seem like a portrait of Covid? Not plague, typhoid or smallpox, yet a deft social disruptor punching way above its deathrate.
A YEAR LATER
The dream's oddly nonfatal chain of crashes seems clear now. San Francisco got Covid-19 early and saw plenty of cases, but the Bay Area deathrate stayed far below the (shameful) national or world averages. Can't credit vaccination; the rollout here was quite slow, as the state diverted vaccine to disastrous hotspots in the Central Valley and LA. We just listened to the science, wore masks, took our vitamins, ate our faddish, silly, California healthfood, and stayed home. And mostly lived.
Not my friend Dave. But most.
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