Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
I once heard a comedian say, “Unless your name is Martin Luther King, Jr., I don’t want to hear about your dream.” Freud, astrologers, image-hungry poets, and new significant others are interested in a dream from the previous night, but most of us zone out, perhaps starting to check our mental “to do” lists, when someone insists on telling us their dream.
Ironically, I review my “to do” lists in my dreams, and then get to work solving absurd problems. Just last night, for example, I asked former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky to run to the deli to pick me up a sandwich, I enlisted my students to come up with pub quiz question topics in choir practice, and I was so late for a meeting that I didn’t realize that my bicycle had no brakes. So many apprehensions!
I suppose some people (maybe retired people?) have short, or even absent, lists of action items, and thus they don’t have what some productivity specialists, such as David Allen in his book Getting Things Done, call “open loops.” (The term “open loops” deserves disambiguation, for it has other meanings in other contexts.) But those of us who foolishly try to remember in our heads everything that has to get done, instead of depending upon an air-tight system, such as what David Allen espouses, will find ourselves haunted by symbolic representations of our various practical obligations in our dreams.
Perhaps this is why Wallace Stevens said, “A pension is the salary we earn for all the work we do in our dreams.” Of course, other poets resented Stevens for his insurance agency vice president salary and his pensions, for he was the most well-off of all American poets, meaning that he could afford to say that “Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.” As you would expect from an American, he also said, “The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.”
So with a busy life and a busy dreamlife of errands and obligations, I find it such a relief to join a group of friends in Chestnut Park every Sunday morning at 9:00 for an hour of meditation. While walking the one and a half miles to the park, maskless, near no one, I seemed to inhale every known allergen that the stiff winds could blow my way. But when I sat down amidst (but at least six feet apart from) a group of meditators, the mask I wore protected my closed mouth not only from unlikely Covid 19 exposure, but also from whatever was making me sneeze so violently during my travels.
The feeling of relief, of sanctuary, was mental, as well as physical. Beneath the swaying trees, I heard the gong sound and then settled into myself, finally able to breathe easily, and to focus on my own sense of attentive belongingness. Noting and slowing my heartbeat, I began to count my breaths in cycles of 21. This may sound like an easy task, but in my first months (and perhaps years) of meditating, my mind would inevitably wander off before I got to ten or even 15 breaths, resulting in my having to start over. These days, I notice when my mind wants to go somewhere – to attach itself to some past or imagined moment of delight or anguish – and then I gently usher it back to the task at hand, observing the breath, and adding one more incremental eupneal step towards 21.
The time is fleeting, but I appreciate these moments of equilibrium, and relief from the attention one pays to the world’s (or the self’s) woes, and to one’s increasingly complex duties. When one can’t realize true respite, even in sleep, the meditator’s cushion becomes a life preserver.
I hope you can join us for our asynchronous Pub Quiz this evening. I will send out 31 questions and 31 answers this evening to all my subscribers. Some will get to see the show on video! Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, perhaps, as well as the following: cyborgs, belonging (see above), leaps and landers, Oscar-winners, great Scotts, timber, real-life doctors, slams, purported thefts, remorse, fast and slow pitches, seeds, European neighbors, carousels, people who disagree with themselves, college basketball, the opportunity to work with animals, candidates, short enterprises, running in spats, home insurance claims, old ladies, California locales, smarts, stadiums, aviators, Greeks, the Electoral College, and Shakespeare.
Thanks as always to our regular subscribers. People supporting this venture on Patreon sustain this entire enterprise. I would love to welcome more of you, if you would like to gain all the benefits of sponsorship. Thanks especially to The Outside Agitators, Quizimodo, The Original Vincibles, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos.
Stay safe, stay curious, and, as Frank Lloyd Wright says, “stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”
Best,
Dr. Andy
Your Quizmaster
https://www.yourquizmaster.com
https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster
P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Unusual Words. What do we call a broad, flat, flexible blade used to mix, spread and lift material, including foods, drugs, plaster and paints?
- Pop Culture – Television. What James Spader crime thriller television series was recently renewed for a ninth season?
- Anagram. What famous naturalist has the word INTERVIEWS as an anagram of his name?