I woke up this morning thinking about Jimmy Durante. It always amazes me when things like this happen. I mean, here I am, in 2021 and Jimmy Durante has been dead for 40 years. Besides all of that, his career as an actor and comedian was largely over before I really got rolling in this world. I was probably only eight years old or so when he finally faded from stage and television.
I remember him. Clearly. That big nose and that gravely voice. He always looked at you sideways and called himself the “Big Schnozola.” Jimmy sang that song “Inka Dinka Doo.” He even had a show on TV called “The Jimmy Durante Show,” but that ended in 1956. I wouldn’t be born for eight more years.
So, why on this morning did I open my eyes and there he was? Fresh on my mind, like he lived here.
My theory? I think something happened in my sleep state. Let me premise this entire conversation with another theory of mine. Humans are dense. Even the brightest, most brilliant, incredibly gifted minds, at this time in our evolution, are terribly dense. We have very little comprehension of how all of this works. Maybe in 10,000 years from now, if humans still exist, they will look back at us and think we were like slugs, just barely crawling out of the primordial slime. But, as it is, we humans are so terribly thick, we will destroy our planet and ourselves, most likely in the next 100 years or so.
Anyway. Happy Monday.
And now back to Jimmy and me. And sleep states.
We, humans, spend, in general, one-third of our lives sleeping. Scientists study sleep. They study dreams too. They have been studying these things for decades. And you know what they have found conclusively? Nadda. They come up with loads of theories. And then a year or two later, there is the news report which leads in with “New evidence suggests….”
Yes. That is how science works when you are a bunch of dullards. We find new evidence all the time. And we try to understand. We try so hard. And yet.
I have theories about us. We are energy. We’ve established that scientifically. We are just a bunch of tiny particles, being held together by little tiny electrons being shared between molecules. That’s it. Minuscule ionic exchanges. Without these, we’d just be particles floating everywhere. We can’t see these. Not with the naked eye. But when they join all together? WHOOP, there it is. A human, or a table, or a glass of chocolate milk.
So, our entire existence is an exchange of energy, all vibrating on different wavelengths. It takes many forms, and we’ve grown accustomed to seeing one plane of this existence, like trees, and basketballs, and Oprah Winfrey.
Yet, there are many dimensions we haven’t been able to comprehend. Sometimes, in our sleep, our dullard yet busy minds slow down enough that they can operate on another wavelength. A place where they are more adroit at experiencing these energies. We see some of these comings and goings, and we call them dreams. It is when our sleepy electrons start bending with other levels, and we go places and do things, that we never imagined were possible. We are suddenly young again, or flying, or eating peanut butter from spinning plates in the middle of a circus in Poland.
We wake. And we have no idea where we have been. Or, if we do remember, we have no idea “what it means.” Sometimes, dreams are so wonderful, we never want them to end. Other times, they can be frightening and make us scream awake.
And the dull, thick human mind sits there, in the dark, blinking. Wondering. “Why am I thinking about Jimmy Durante?”
And my guess is, we will never know. An Inka Dinka Doo.
===========
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe
===========
I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do.”
― Haruki Murakami
===========
“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
― Henry David Thoreau
===========
We are held together, barely. So dream on, baby.
