Origin of Specious

 Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a social media platform called Myspace where I kept a blog called Ao Vivo. That's Portuguese. Recently, I was reviewing some of the posts I'd written from it and this one scrolled into view. I don't recall writing it, but then I write a lot of things I don't recall writing ... or thinking ... or in this case, dreaming. This is from a series of posts I called Tales from the Nine. Most likely, it was written in or around 2005.

On The Origin of Specious...

 

Would someone please explain to me why, if dreams are merely garbage sorting mechanisms, they can't just do it like it's done in the waking world? Why is it necessary to resymbolise and change the paperwork to look like something else? Perhaps, I say blithely, they work just like private enterprise and bad government bureaus; everything has to "look good" and "balance" at the end of the day, so the owner/manager does the obvious...cheats.

 

Last night, or rather just before I woke up this morning, which happened to be nearly not morning as I arose quite late because my job at the Nine has shrunk like a man's penis in very cold water. The hours there have become nearly invisible...sorry I digress. The dream.

 

Very late this morning I had this dream.

 

What the dream involved, as I am sure you guessed by now, was my chasing a very beautiful woman and having to compete for her with a guy who was strong and handsome and not very bright. She was genuinely interested in me, but, in the way of dreams, had some long-term, ongoing connection with the other guy, who wanted her to see him as something more than a boy-toy with large lifting muscles and great hair.

 

Since she felt so guilty not thinking about him as anything other than a nice ornament, and he did have the unfortunate habit of getting excited and ... um ... well ... getting and excited and ... sort of ... losing control of his ... um ... child producing apparatus ... with all the attendant side effects ... did I say that right? Anyway, she felt guilty for just once in a while hanging on his arm because she thought it was sort of encouraging him, which she told me she didn't really want to do, but there it was. He was a lovely chap to have hanging on her arm, but exchanging ideas and conversation were ... well ... hmm ... let me put it this way, he had limited originality. So she seemed attracted to my somewhat greater mental capacity. And I must say she made a nice ornament for me.

 

And now you say, ha HA!! He just said she was an ornament and now he has told us what we really want to know! And you might be right, but let me finish.

 

Yes, she was quite beautiful with one of those girly-girl sort of shapes, and I'll leave it to your imagination what kind of shape that is, because she was in my dream and I don't want to clutter my ideers of beauty with whatever you happen to conjure up. So beautiful ... and able to carry on conversation, and here's the problem, in a limited sort of way.

 

Yes her old friend, the big-muscular-perfect-hair fellow, couldn't have carried on a conversation if his life depended on putting a complete sentence together, was indeed limited. Not to mention the unfortunate side effects of his propensity for excitement, which made him even less verbal and, in fact, had quite the opposite effect. Whenever, and that was quite often, he got excited, he started issuing the kind of sounds unknown since, say, the age of pre-tool making capacity. Not the complicated system of grunts we call language. No. It was just the grunts without the complication. I suppose that is a very round about way of saying he became very non-verbal, which, together with all the other side effects made him just a tad messy to be around. But, he said scientifically, a very interesting and mostly cheerful specimen. But, and here is the big but, nay, I have said the wrong thing, here is the large exception ... she herself, while better at conversing about most things, seemed to steer the conversation continually back to the same things, which were, in this order, the big guy's conversational limitations, I originally missed a key typing this and wrote 'imitations', which, when you think about it, is kind of what he did ... sorry ... the second thing, and ... ahem ... her lengthy period of estrus.

 

Now, I ask you, why would my masculine brain contrive to turn some awake-time thing into such a symbol? But it gets stranger, Stranger.

 

At near about the three-quarter point in dream time, I found out from this beautiful creature (her) that the other beautiful creature (him) was, in spite of his manly look, actually part ... and I feel so silly telling you this, but with red-face glowing, here it is ... he was actually part something else. And this is really how the conversation in the dream went. When she told me he was actually part something else and from her conspiratorial tone when she said it, I assumed it had to be something really unusual. Like Lithuanian. Not so, said she, and she looked at him like the old friend he was, admiring the bulging biceps and pectorals, he is half lion. ... Blink ... Blink ... Blink.

 

"Lion??" I asked with my nearly scientific intelligence trying to recatagorise whole families and genuses and phylums, etc. Yes, I was thinking, thinking, thinking. How could two such species get anything like a hybrid like this? Was this possible?? Naturally, I immediately thought, he has to be, you know, like a mule ... sort of. But at least mules come from creatures that look somewhat alike! Lions and humans? Or, at least I added thoughtfully, human-like. But the oddest thing was, in spite of my questioning, I took her at her word, or words, whatever. So we sat there, on a little cement retaining wall, (see? I told you dreams have strange symbols!) discussing this; is this miscegenation? Anyway, as we had our little chat, we watched him get more and more excited until, sure enough, just like a cat, he started to spray. Please forgive my bluntness, I myself was quite taken aback. But that's not all! As she and I spoke, I admired how clever she was to know this and, in a fit of my own excitement, asked what her own background might be.

 

I can tell you I nearly became inarticulate myself. In the course of this retaining wall talk, she admitted that she was also the result of a combination effort. Blink ... Blink ... Blink ... But, but, but, I stuttered, you don't look like anything but a rather attractive woman! Yes, said she, I AM rather attractive, aren't I? And here she coyly batted her eyelashes at me. And here was where the conversational shift shifted, to her oncoming estrus cycle. Again.

 

Forgive me for asking, I tried as non-judgemental and casual a tone as possible, but just ... what ... kind ... particular ... particular kind ... what particular kind of combination ethnicity are you?

 

"Well", she said moving quite close, so that our bodies, or at least our legs were touching, and she did it quite smoothly, so I almost didn't notice, "well ... I am half hyena".

 

You remember how inarticulate I said muscle boy was? Well, that's how inarticulate I was at this point, but only at this point. Then she threw in the rest.

 

"I will be reaching estrus in about a minute and a half." Eyes batted, body undulated.

 

I wanted to ask her, so I did, if that's why she couldn't, wasn't, didn't seem much interested in the other fellow, after all, lions and hyenas never did get along too well.

 

And she said, and I quote, undulating a little more and eyelids beginning to look like those signal lights they use on ships, "it thertainly ith."

 

Now, I must tell you, I have another part of my ever-so-active brain that keeps a monitor on dreams, reminding me that I am dreaming. This is called the 'lucid dreamer', for those of you who care about such things. Well, when she answered me in that girly-girl lisp, my lucid dreamer kicked in, and told me that, yes, I was dreaming but to be very cautious. It also told me, that while maybe the lion part and the hyena part couldn't make a go of it, maybe the human parts could. On the other hand, was it possible for a human/human and a hyena/human? I thought not.

 

After all, I told myself in a Groucho Marx voice, a hyena is still a hyena.

 

Even when it's a lion hyena.