Sweet Dreams

My Aunt Katie offered something in comments on a recent post this morning that was so intensely gratifying to my narcissism that I simply had to pull it up onto the main page, lest any of my more casual readers miss out on some rather extraordinary evidence of the deeply inspirational power of America’s favorite dog blog devoted to politics, pop culture, and basketball. (See this post for a previous example of my power to inspire flights of fancy and creativity among my legions of loyal fans, including my very youngest readers.) Here is what Katie, a brilliant feminist/queer theorist and recognized authority on, well, very nearly everything, had to say:

I had a dream last night, Roxie, and you, sort of, figured in it. After dreaming that I had changed the name of my course in the fall to Lesbian Communities, Queer Transdisciplinarities, and after falling asleep listening to a science fiction story in which a Martian was so absorbed in his artwork that he didn't notice he had died and continued to work on and on, straddling many worlds . . . .

Well, then I dreamed that your blog was crossing the transdisciplinary knowledge worlds and the worlds between us and the ancestors. Mark Twain was very eloquent on this subject and I suspect if you ask him it will turn out he deliberately infiltrated my dream world last night, too . . . .

So, Roxie, I think we should confer on you the order of crossing worlds, and that Mark Twain should do the honors at the awards ceremony. And that all of us should be grateful to have a fox terrier looking out for us and the ancestors, too.

Love, Katie (my Second Life cat Fenstalker says hi).

Katie also sent us an image she cooked up over in Second Life, where she has been spending a good bit of time recently, that looks cool and kinda feels like it goes along with the dream:


I have to admit that when the comment first popped up, I was a little confused. “Crossing transdiciplinary knowledge worlds,” I said to Moose. “That’s a good thing, right?”

“Oh, absolutely, Rox,” she assured me. “It’s what all the cool kids in the humanities are doing these days.”

“Ah, well then. And crossing the worlds between us and the ancestors?”

“Again, a very good thing. Katie’s dream recognizes our habit here in Roxie’s World of messing around with all kinds of boundaries in the interest of having fun, of making new senses of things, of seeing or creating connections between and among seemingly unrelated objects or ideas.”

“Really? We do all that?”

“Sure, we do, Rox! It’s your special talent! And Katie pays us the compliment of connecting the work and play we do around here with the fascinating scholarly work she is doing in what she calls the posthumanities.”

“Posthumanities – Is that about dogs?”

“In part,” Moose replied with a chuckle, “especially in the version pioneered by Katie’s great teacher, Donna Haraway. She is hugely into dogs.”

“But what about the Martian artist who was so absorbed in what he was doing that he didn’t realize he had died and just kept working? Does that mean love never dies?”

“Yes, Rox. That is exactly what that means,” Moose said, and then she turned aside and coughed a little.

“Moose?”

“Yes?” she said quietly.

“Do you ever dream of me?”

“Of course I do,” she said, with a brisk rub behind my ears, “and they are among the sweetest dreams I ever have, silly old girl.”

Watch the vid, kids. Let Roy Orbison sing you to sleep. And, as I’ve told you before, if you're not inspired to dream, you might as well be dead, so go ahead: Dream on me.