Magic carpet ride

I daydream a fair bit.

Not intentionally, and it often creeps up on me at unexpected and inopportune times.  Like, for example, I was conducting an interview of a prospective engineering graduate with the HR manager in my office, and my mind was instantly catapulted into the completely plausible scenario of our Australian CEO belting out Tub-thumping by Chumbawamba over the intercom.  I am still incredibly impressed at how cool I remained on the exterior while I exploded with gales of laughter on the inside.

I think, now, that a lot of it has to do with the relative dearth of mental stimulation I have been getting at work this year compared to past years.  I thrive on stimulation and challenge, and they've been in short supply.  Apparently, I've been compensating when not fully engaged.

I don't daydream nearly as much at home, for instance.  There, I am constantly bombarded by the mental challenge of holding hands with my wife and, with our two free hands, battling back the entropic maelstrom of two babies, two dogs, and a house hell-bent on getting its picture beside 'squalour' in the dictionary.  We also have to (want to?) try to be nice to each other, raise our kids with consideration for their respective futures and individuality, not kill the dogs, and attempt to squeeze in some nookie every now and again.

My mind is quite thoroughly engaged.

Not all my daydreaming is impromptu.  I have a couple recurring themes that, every time they show up, have another layer or detail added.  Some have been recurring for years and have nearly taken on a life of their own.  In fact, were I somehow to be thrust into the reality of one, I would not find it so unco strange as to be unable to function nearly normally within it.

Here's one that crops up almost every day during the 15 to 30 minutes it takes me to drive home from work.  Some of the details will come as no surprise to those who know me.

In my dream I am the leader of a group of five vigilante Jedi knights.  Or, at least, we have Jedi-like powers.  And lightsabres.  The other four members frequently rotate between various people I know, and never stay constant.  I am the only constant.  We don't go by our real names but have call signs to preserve our secret identities.  I'm not sure what mine is yet; that detail hasn't worked itself out.  And even though we're vigilantes, we work for the cause of Good and are generally altruistic, though we do dish out the occasional well-deserved smackdown.

In order to promote global do-goodery, we have to go places.  You'd think, being Jedi and all, we'd fly around the world in X-Wing fighters or Jedi Starfighters.  That's simply not the case.  No, we get around by zooming thither and yon in pimped out Avro Arrows.  The Arrow, in its day, would have been the world's premiere air superiority fighter.  And it was Canadian.  And there was a whole lot of political intrigue behind the then-Conservative government's quashing of the program before the jets went into production.  (Most of the popular blame rests on pressure from the USA, who allegedly didn't want competition, even from an ally.)  Being so very nearly great and slowly fading into history has made it incredibly iconic.  I think that's why it intruded into my daydream.  So I went with it.

In my dream, we sometimes fly into the tail end of International Air Shows and surprise the crowd.  They always go nuts.

These aren't ordinary Arrows, oh no.  They're also Transformers.  Each one of the five morphs from its standard fighter configuration into that of a monstrous mechanized mandroid, sort of like that really cool Citroen car commercial.  (Or those fighter jets from Robotech, if you're familiar with the cartoon series.)  Imagine the fear born in the hearts of our foes when a 10-storey iron giant comes a-stompin'!

We have to have some place to hide our headquarters lest evil-doers seek us out, so we have a secret base nestled in a crater on the dark side of the moon.  (Thus free from prying telescopes too; I've actually thought about that.  We listen to lots of Pink Floyd.)  Our Arrows are space-worthy, of course.  We haven't, to date, encountered any aliens, nor ventured further into the solar system, not wanting to leave Earth undefended and all.

We have accomplished quite a bit in a relatively short time.  Usama bin Laden has been dealt with, for example.  None of that messy court wrangling like Saddam -- bin's dead.  We generally tend to keep out of Afghanistan for some reason.  We would like to ensure that the Northwest Passage is kept sovereign to Canada and that the country be remunerated for any degree of exploitation of its convenience.  (Faster than the Panama Canal, after all.)  The drug trade from South America has slowed substantially.  A good number of bad men in Darfur have been 'compromised'.  Same with Rwanda.  We helped out a whole lot of people during Katrina.  Held back the waters, as it were.  (We are Jedi.)  A bunch of other cool stuff.  We currently have 'intentions' regarding Kim Jong-il.

That's most of it, but I've left out a few details I'll keep to myself -- the stranger ones.  It's my daydream.

For the record, I've only ever smoked marijuana a small handful of times, and not recently.

Comments

[Mark]

Those dang Jedi daydreams. I must admit (well, not really, but it's late an inhibitions are at an extreme low), when I'm working out on the elliptical "bike," I sometimes close my eyes and pretend I'm running through the woods evading the cylons' grasp.

Yeah, I know, weird. But, we with active imaginations just can't help it. Life must be more fun for us, I would guess.

[Simon]

Weird, yes. And most other people would have no idea what the heck 'cylons' are.

Geek.

[Alec Lynch]

Only discovered Cylons this year but have very quickly decided they are a worthy topic of imagined adventure. My traditional daydreaming always came whenever--human opponents being unavailable--I'd be practicing tennis against a wall. Very easy to imagine I was a knight holding a pass against a stream of enemies while my allies made their escape. Damn wall usually won in the end.

So Simon, one detail I'm sure you worked out: what colour light sabre? :)

[Simon]

Alec, I haven't kept up with the new Battlestar series, but I do know enough that the new cylons are a darn sight more attractive than their 1980s forebears.

And: it's blue. Had to go with the original that flashed up on the screen in 1977 and sparked my initial desire to BE a Jedi knight.

[Moksha Gren]

Wow, Simon. Jedi, Transformers, secret moon bases, air shows in obscure jets from aviation lore and covert military and humanitarian action all wrapped up in a Pink Floyd soundtrack? That's quite the one-stop smorgasbord of geekdom. I knew there was a reason I started reading your blog, oh Kindred Spirit.

My Jedi tend to sit around and philosophize alot. Too much action in my daydream makes me a dangerous driver since I find it hard to hold still while I imagine swinging a light saber.

[Linda]

Think maybe you need to get a little tokin' done? I'm kidding. I think it's delightful that you admit to this. A lot of people who don't spend as much time in our heads as we do would just think we're bonkers...

[JuJuBee]

Wow.

[Paul]

Wow! add some slash elements, and you'd have the workings of a very sucessful fan-fic series.

[TerriTorial]

Impressive. VERY impressive.

[Mark]

TerriTorial - I think you meant:

"Impressive. MOST impressive."