A Few Significant Latin Works

I do not claim that the works I mention in this post are the most significant works in the Latin language. As the decades roll by, I find lists of the most significant this or that to be less and less significant. The best such lists can be is interesting in some way, and hopefully some readers will find this post interesting.

The Vulgate Bible, or biblia sacra vulgata, is a Latin version of the Old and New Testament and some Old Testament apocrypha, made by St Jerome and some other, unknown individuals in the late 4th and early 5th centuries from Hebrew, Greek and earlier Latin sources.

It was the primary version of the Bible used by the Catholic Church until the 20th century, and it also happens to be quite beautifully written. Some have thought that the term "Vulgate" means that the Latin style of this version of the bible is somehow vulgar, but this is an error; "Vulgate" simply refers to the fact that it has been translated into Latin.

Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, or The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, is a history of England written around 730 by the writer known as the Venerable Bede. Bede wrote on a great many subjects, but his history is by far the best-known, most widely-read of his works. It covers the history of England from Caesar' invasion in 55 BC to Bede's own day. Historians of England generally agree that their profession began with Bede, and that his history is one of the great works of Dark Age Western Europe. Writing in the 12th century, William of Malmesbury, considered by many to be one of the very best Medieval historians in Europe, not just in England, said that he considered his work to be a continuation of Bede's history, and expressed the hope that he might be a not wholly unworthy successor.

Remaining in England: Magna Carta is highly revered by many English people as the core of their legal system, and indeed many of the principles of English law such as the right to trial by jury, and the principle that all, including the English monarch, are answerable to the law, were first formally expressed in writing in this document. It was first written in 1215, and at first it failed at what it was intended to do. Magna Carta was written in an attempt to end a war between King John and the barons of England. It did not end that war, and it was immediately declared invalid by the Pope. However, revised versions were written beginning in 1217 and continue to be written to this day, and, if not a direct source of contemporary principles of jurisprudence, it continues to be a powerful symbol of the rule of law and of justice fairly meted out, in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom. It seems rather important to some historians to refer to the document in the linguistically correct Latin version as "Magna Carta" rather than in the often-heard phrase "the Magna Carta," so I'm following their preference and mentioning it.

De Insulis Indiae supra Gangem nuper inventis, Of the Islands of India Beyond the Ganges Newly Discovered, is one of several titles which refer to the Latin translation of the letter written in Spanish reporting on Christopher Columbus' first transatlantic voyage to Isabelle of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. The author of the letter claims to be Columbus himself, writing on the return trip to Spain in February 1493. Leander de Cosco notes in the introduction to the translation that he finished it on the 29th of April, 1493. Already in May 1493 the first edition of the Latin translation had been published in Rome. 6 more editions were printed in Rome, Basel, Paris and Antwerp before the end of 1493.

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, was written by Isaac Newton, and first published in 1687. Newton published revised editions in 1713 and 1726. In this work Newton expounded the principles of what is still called Newtonian physics, and still used in all sorts of practical applications up to and including space flight. The Apollo 8 mission orbited the moon, and on its return to Earth mission control passed on a child's question, "Who's driving the spaceship now?" to mission pilot William Anders, who famously replied, “I think Isaac Newton is doing most of the driving now.”

The Carolingian Renaissance

Apart from the effect Charlemagne had on politics, education and literacy in general, art, architecture -- you must take a look at the Palace of Aachen if you're ever in the area -- and the beginnings of German literature, his impact on Classical studies was immense. Here is a list, given by LD Reynolds in the introduction to Texts and Transmission, 1983, p xxviii, of authors and anonymous works of the Latin Classics for which we possess 9th-century manuscripts:

Agrimensores, Ammianus, Apicius, Apuleius, Aratea, Ausonius, Avianus, Caelius, Aurelianus, Caesar, Celsus, Censorinus, Charisius, Cicero, Claudian, Columella, Curtius Rufus, Donatus, Eutropius, Faventius, Florus, Frontinus, Gellius, Grattius, Historia Augusta, Horace, Hyginus, Justinus, Juvenal, Livy, Lucan, Lucretius, Macrobius, Martial, Martianus Capella, Pomponius Mela, Nemesianus, Nonius Marcellus, Notitia dignitatum, Ovid, Palladius, Julius Paris, Persius, Petronius, Phaedrus, the Elder and Younger Pliny, Publius, Querolus, Quintilian, Rhetores latini minores, Rhetorica ad Herennium, Sallust, the Elder and Younger Seneca, Q Serenus, Servius, Solinus, Statius, Suetonius, Tacitus, Terence, Valerius Flaccus, Valerius Maximus, Vergil, Vibius Sequester and Vitruvius.

And, as Reynolds points out ibid, there were once even more 9th century manuscripts, which the 15th-century Humanists discovered and then lost. And it may be that still more 9th-century manuscripts have come to light since 1983, I'm not sure. Compare this with the 7th century, from which survives (ibid, p xvi) a fragment of Lucan as the solitary Classical artifact.

Some lists of manuscripts have more significance than others. The above list shows how one monarch transformed the study of Classical Latin, because almost all of the 9th-century manuscripts in that list were made in monasteries and school either newly built or rejuvenated, mostly the former, on Charlemagne's orders.

Countless Classical scholars over the past 1200 years have been immensely grateful for the Carolingian minuscule, the form of handwriting developed in Charlemagne's time which has made reading those 9th-century manuscripts so much easier than so many manuscripts written both earlier and later.

All of this makes Charlemagne's own case more poignant: although he was said to have spoken Latin, Arabic and Greek in addition to his native German -- which may seem less farfetched to you when consider that his empire bordered on Arab-controlled Spain to the south-west and Greek Byzantium to the east -- he never quite mastered writing. Einhard describes how, late in his life, he did his writing lessons in bed before going to sleep, but never did quite get the hang of it. Some people don't believe Einhard's description. To me it rings true. I suppose the question must remain unsolved for now.

Another question which can't be answered, in part because it's difficult to quantify, is, which single person has done the most to rescue the literature of ancient Rome. Some have said Cassidorius. Others have said Poggio, but we know that those people are half-educated bozos. Perhaps I'm biased, perhaps I've been taken in by by the lingering effects of some medieval legends, but to me, it's always seemed clear that it was Charlemagne.

Peak Oil and Peak Oil Demand

The term "peak oil" has been used since the 1950's to refer to the time in the future when mankind will begin to run out of petroleum. The "peak" refers to the point where maximum production of oil no longer keeps pace with worldwide demand. Since the 1950's some economists and oil-industry analysts, sometimes regarded as chronic pessimists by their colleagues, have been warning about this time when the world will begin to run out of oil, foreseeing massive worldwide economic collapse in a world which needs oil to live. People like Bob Lutz had phrases like "$60 a gallon for gasoline" and "fighting in the streets over scraps of meat" on their lips. When Lutz spearheaded the project to make the Chevrolet Volt, the first electric vehicle ever willingly manufactured by General Motors, he didn't believe global warming was real. I don't know what he thinks about it now. He's not a complete moron, by no means. He's just spent his entire long life in a very conservative culture.

More recently, however, another term has begun to be used: "peak oil demand." This refers to the time in the future when worldwide demand for oil will begin to decrease. When it came to peak oil, there was always great disagreement among experts. It's hard to tell how much of the world's oil can be practically mined. There are factors such as future improvement in oil-extraction technology. There is now much more of a consensus about peak oil demand: the great majority of those who specialize in such things predict that somewhere between the 2020's and the 2040's, demand will begin to decrease. There are a few who say that peak oil demand will NEVER occur. These people are either lying, to prop up oil futures or for some other reasons, or they are awfully optimistic, if they really believe that the global demand for and consumption of oil will rise FOREVER. I think such optimism would just about have to include the belief that climate change is a Chinese hoax.

I think we can disregard the peak-oil-demand-will-never-happen crowd as a crazy fringe, although their numbers may be large enough to be a problem, like the numbers of climate-change deniers.

The richest people in the world may lie now and then about what they believe, but their beliefs tend to be pretty practical. When they discuss peak oil demand in the financial media, they routinely mention factors such as changing technology. Trains and ships have been converting to electric-hybrid engines for some time, and are on their way to all-electric. Why? Because the people who own and operate trains and ships don't like to waste money. And of course, many trains have already been all-electric for a very long time. Amurrkins, note the wires just above the trains:

Electric cars will replace ones that burn gasoline or diesel, the only question is, how quickly. Solar and wind are already rapidly replacing coal, oil and gas for the purpose of generating electricity, why? Same as the answer about the trains and ships: because solar and wind are cheaper, and their cost savings over coal, oil and gas keep getting bigger.

Strangely, though, when experts get together in places like CNBC to discuss when peak oil demand will occur, there are certain very relevant things which they tend not to mention. Things like climate change, wetlands, lung cancer, wildfires, biodiversity and catastrophic storms.

Maybe they're only half-smart.

Some of the Primary Latin Sources for the Crusades from 1095 to 1187

Eyewitness and contemporary accounts of the Crusades in the period from Pope Urban II's speech at Clermont in 1095 which launched the First Crusade, to the loss of Jerusalem in 1187, were written in many languages including Greek, Arabic, Syriac, Coptic, Hebrew, Persian, Armenian, Georgian and Slavonic. The western European Crusaders themselves, and their compatriots, wrote in several languages besides Latin, most notably French, but also German and others.

In this essay I'm confining myself to a few items written in Latin, and there are many other significant Latin sources which could be named besides the ones I'll mention. To get a sense of the primary sources available for the study of the Crusades, one place to begin would be the bibliographies in the three volumes of Steven Runciman's History of the Crusades, and I repeat, that would be one place to begin. It has now been more than 65 years since Runciman published his account, and scholarship has by no means stood still in the meantime.

The Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum was written by an anonymous soldier serving under Bohemond of Taranto in the First Crusade. It begins with Pope Urban's speech in Clermont and concludes shortly after the Crusaders take Jerusalem in 1099. Some of the author's contemporaries derided him as a commoner and simpleton, which didn't stop them from using his account as a basis for their own, and seldom actually improving upon it factually.

Raymond of Aguilers became the Chaplain of Raymond of Toulouse during the First Crusade, and was also present at the taking of Jerusalem. His account, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Jerusalem, while filling out some details of the First Crusade, concentrates mostly on Raymond.

Fulcher of Chartres was the chaplain of Baldwin of Boulogne, who entered Jerusalem soon after it fell and became King Baldwin I of Jerusalem. Fulcher published the Gesta Francorum Iherusalem peregrinantium in three parts, in 1101, 1006 and 1127.

Three near-contemporary historians of the First Crusade, Ekkehard of Aura, Rudolph of Caen and Albert of Aix, did not participate in in it. Ekkehard and Rudolph arrived in the East years after Jerusalem was taken, and wrote accounts which did not add much to the record. Albert never was in the in the Holy Land. Around 1130 he published his account of the First Crusade and of the first years of the Kingdom Jerusalem, Liber Christianae expeditionis pro ereptione, emundatione, et restitutione sanctae Hierosolymitanae ecclesiae, which until the modern era was much admired for its prose style and considered authoritative. Modern scholars have found that Albert, although admirably energetic in bringing together numerous sources, was not particularly critical of them.

William of Tyre was born in the East shortly before 1130, and was Archbishop of Tyre from 1175 until his death in 1186. William relies heavily of Fulcher's account for events between 1095 and 1127; from there until it ends in 1184, his Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum is the most important Latin account of the events in the Holy Land, and -- by far -- the finest Latin work written by anyone who lived in the Crusader states. William has a breadth of vision, education and writing skill which rival those of any other Medieval Latin historian.

A brief anonymous account entitled Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum describes how Saladin conquered Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine.

Dream Log: Young Doctors in Love

I dreamed that I was an intern in a show somewhat like "Scrubs," and that I fell in love with another doctor.

The hospital where we worked looked as if it might have been built in the 1920's or earlier: a lot of grey bricks on the outside, a lot lacquered wood and Parcheesi-patterned tile on the inside. The building was huge, and we doctors got a fairly good workout running from ward to ward.

I don't actually know anything about medicine, so there's nothing to tell you our actual work.

We got caught up in zany situations.

For example: a large group of doctors, nurses, orderlies and other hospital employees came around a corner in a hallway, and there in a small cafeteria were a bunch of thugs well-known and frightening to us. They were wearing brightly-colored zoot suits. We ran past them to a stairway door, but when we opened the door we saw that someone had reversed the staircase, so that the only way to go through the door was to jump one story down.

For another example: I met a gentleman out in front of the hospital who said that he was looking for my boss, my boss had some explaining to do. I assumed that he meant my immediate superior, and I directed the man toward his office, thinking that this might be amusing to watch. But the more the man talked about the man who had some explaining to do, the less it seemed like my superior. All of a sudden I realized that he was not talking about the supervisor of interns to whom I reported, but the director of the entire hospital, a man I found to be much more frightening and less fun, and so I literally ran away.

That evening, another intern and I were getting increasingly touchy-feelly, and then all of a sudden we were full-on snogging.

snog
/snäɡ/

informal•British
verb
verb: snog; 3rd person present: snogs; past tense: snogged; past participle: snogged; gerund or present participle: snogging

kiss and caress amorously.
"the pair were snogging on the sofa"

noun
noun: snog; plural noun: snogs

an act or spell of amorous kissing and caressing.
"he gave her a proper snog, not just a peck"

At this point we were not certain that anyone had seen us. We said sensible-sounding things about not letting a relationship interfere with our jobs, and how there were good reasons why such relationships were frowned upon and seen as unprofessional, and so forth.

I went home and went to sleep, and had beautiful dreams about her.

That's right: I dreamed that I fell asleep and had dreams. In the dreams she was naked in a rain forest.

The next morning, first thing at work, although I was supposed to be doing other things, I went looking for her. My heart was pounding. I was so afraid that maybe she had meant those things she had said about being "sensible." I had said the same things, but I had been completely insincere. I didn't care about this job or any job, compared to being with her. Being with her was fundamentally more important.

Then I rounded a corner in the hallway and there she was, looking a bit more disheveled than usual, which made her look even more heartbreakingly beautiful than ever. I assumed that there was no possible way that I looked completely normal.

Before I could do anything or say a word she was in my arms with her head resting against my chest. We held each other so gently yet were so closely entwined at the same time. Some lyrics from a Suzanne Vega song ran through my head: "Hold me like a baby that will not fall asleep." She said sweet things, and I heard and felt each word at the same time, felt it vibrate on my chest. I lifted her up and we snogged for a while, then I set her back on her feet and she put her head on my chest again and said that she loved me. I said it back.

The rest of the dream consisted basically of us holding hands, and occasionally snogging, and waiting for someone to officially tell us that we were in trouble. Occasionally we would make an attempt to do our jobs, but we just stared uncomprehending at computer screens, impaired because we were brand-new in love.

And then I woke up.

Dream Log: Ultimate Fighting Against Ben Affleck on "Reality" TV

I dreamed I was on a "reality" TV show. I write it like that because I can think of few things which have less authenticity than these types of shows, made by penny-pinching morons who save money by not hiring any people who are actually qualified to make good entertainment: actors, directors, writers, cinematographers, editors -- artists in general. Tim Robbins' character in The Player was already making fun of these kinds of shows in 1992, years before they began to exist.

As I say, actors appear relatively rarely on such shows. Especially actors whose careers are going well. And so I was very surprised to see Ben Affleck as a contestant on this show. Ben seemed to be in a very bad mood all through this dream -- maybe because of some long series of unfortunate events in his life which had resulted in him appearing on a reality show.

It was also surprising that I was on the show. Firstly because I really sincerely would prefer not to. And strike two, I'm not at all famous.

I didn't recognize anyone in the entire dream except Mr Affleck and myself.

This was one of those "reality" shows which are also competitions. We contestants had been divided into about a half dozen teams, and there were about a half dozen members on each team. Just coincidentally, or so it seemed to me, I happened to be sitting next to Ben Affleck as the show's host explained the next round of the competition: ultimate fighting. We would all engage in mixed-martial arts fighting, each one of us versus one person from another team.

Ben Affleck had broken some rule, and was fined $20. He seemed quite annoyed, but promptly fished a $20 bill out of his pocket and handed it to the host. The host seemed to think for a minute, and then he handed the $20 bill to me.

I didn't want to annoy Ben Affleck, but I put the $20 bill in my pocket, because I didn't know what else to do.

It was a strange looking $20 bill: it wasn't green at all. It was white. Perhaps that's actually not strange. I haven't been keeping up to the minute with the changing appearance of US currency.

After a while I fished the $20 bill out of my pocket and handed it to Ben Affleck. This seemed to make him even more angry than he already had been. I didn't know why. But I suspect that if I tried to reach out to him and communicate about the incident, tried to reassure him that I meant neither to cheat not to insult him, I would only make him angrier. This sort of situation -- unintentionally angering someone and not knowing what to do to make things right, is very familiar to me, because I am autistic and have great difficulty reading non-verbal communication.

I didn't know whether the show's host had intended all along to stir things up between me and Ben Affleck, or if he noticed the tension between us and changed plans on the spot because of that. Whatever the reason, he announced that Ben Affleck and I would face each other in the first round of ultimate fighting.

In waking life, I've been working out for the past 2 months with a 100-pound dead ball, and I have found it to be a great conditioning tool, and I feel very strong. In the dream I also felt very strong. As we all started getting physically, and, above all, it seemed to me, mentally ready to engage in this combat, there was a lot of talk among the contestants about the match between me and Ben Affleck. Many people remarked that I outweighed Ben Affleck, which would give me an edge, but that he was younger and seemed to be in much better condition.

Although in many situations, as I've said, I'm very unskilled in reading non-verbal communication, in this situation, before the ultimate fights were to begin, it seemed very clear to me that almost all of the contestants, male and female alike, were 1) terrified, because they were utterly unprepared for this sort of fighting; 2) in denial about being afraid; and 3) exhibiting great amounts of machismo in order to try to convince themselves and their opponents that they were very well-prepared.

I thought that trying to convince myself or anyone else that I wasn't afraid would be a waste of the short time I had to prepare. I ignored the macho displays as much as I could, and tried to prepared mentally for the match. I had very little in terms of ideas of what to do. I never watch ultimate fighting. I came up with a 3-part plan: 1) pretend to be interested in punching and kicking right from the start, when in reality I would be waiting for Ben Affleck to over-extend himself with a punch or kick; and 2) try to grab his arm or leg which he had exposed by the overly-aggressive punch or kick; and 3) hold that limb under under one arm while beating him with the other fist.

It worked: Ben Affleck made a huge roundhouse kick, I was able to grab his leg and hold it fast under one arm, then I charged until he fell on his back, never letting go of the leg, and with him on his back and me above I punched him in the face over and over until the referee stopped the fight and declared me to be the winner.

As we both stood up on very wobbly legs, the host announced that the bout -- he used the word "bout" -- had lasted 12 seconds. Blood was streaming from Ben Affleck's nose. I looked at him and spread my arms in an offer of a post-fight hug, because I've seen boxers hug often after fights. He accepted the hug. I still said nothing, because I was still didn't know why he was angry, and I still was worried about making him more angry.

Then I woke up.

Dream Blog: Glass Half-Empty, Glass Half-Full

In real life, I haven't had Medicaid for the past two months, or food stamps for longer than that. The Michigan Department of Human Services stopped giving me both of those benefits, without just cause, and a law firm which represents me has been trying to get my benefits back, and I've been wondering what was taking so long. Specifically, I had begun to wonder whether the paralegal handling my case was completely incompetent. I had been getting increasingly frustrated about this, and last night, I had a nightmare about it. I dreamed that the Michigan DHS was in the dingy basement of an old house, and that, in the middle of the night, some DHS employees and I went to that basement.

I went there with them hoping to get my case straightened out. However, it turned out that they were all idiots, and badly-behaved idiots to boot. They basically ransacked their own offices like unsupervised children. I had suggested to them that they could access my case via the computers on their desks. Instead, they used those computers to make all sorts of alterations to their own profiles. Nobody seemed to understand or care about what I was saying.

Eventually, I figured out that they weren't doing much at all with the computers. The files concerning themselves were on a very low-access level. Like children with no passwords or hacking aptitude, they were unable to access any files which meant anything. Physically, however, they made a God-awful mess of the offices. Paper, office supplies, break-room food and straight-up dirt were all over the office floors, and sticky fingerprints were acccumulating on all of the walls.

But then the nightmare part of the dream was over, and I began to think about a very beautiful woman. I had seen pictures and video of her online. I wasn't sure whether she was the actress Alice Eve --

-- or someone else. She looked a lot like Alice Eve, but she had a delightful, infectious smile and laugh which seemed like someone else. Eventually I figured out that the woman I was dreaming about was a combination of Alice Eve, the movie star, and Shannon Keenan --

-- the Irish YouTube star who tells people where to find crack in Dublin.

Perhaps I should explain: according to Wikipedia,

"Craic or crack is a term for news, gossip, fun, entertainment, and enjoyable conversation, particularly prominent in Ireland. It is often used with the definite article – the craic – as in the expression 'What's the craic?'"

The Irish pronounce crack or craic "crack." I'm pretty sure that Shannon Keenan doesn't smoke crack. At the very least, not very much of it. Probably none at all, if I had to guess. Although she can be seen getting drunk on several "Irish People Try [...]" videos on YouTube. Anyway, apart from a possible drinking problem, she seems to be a delightfully cheerful and energetic young lady.

So anyway, about the time that I figured out that I was dreaming about Alice Eve and Shannon Keenan, I woke up.

And then I saw that I had an email from the head of the law firm which represents me, explaining to me that, in the Trump era, Michigan DHS is doing their level best to screw over poor people in general, and that the paralegal handling my case has been working closely with her, the head of the law firm. So -- good news: my paralegal is not an idiot at all. Bad news: we are living under a fascist regime. Vote Democratic, and don't stop voting Democratic.

So, to interpret my dream: it started out with me worrying about my Medicaid; until, while fast asleep, I reminded myself that I'm an optimist living in a world full of beautiful, wonderful, intelligent, talented, extremely good-looking people like Alice Eve and Shannon Keenen -- neither of whom, I would guess if you held a gun to my head and forced me to guess, is addicted to crack cocaine, although Ms Keenen, with her truly delightful smile and laugh, does explore Dublin craic professionally.

(Crack cocaine, craic -- two different things!)

Dream Log: Spy Family

I dreamed that my immediate family were all still alive, and were working as spies together. Not real spies: the silly sort of spies you see in James Bond movies, or in "Alias," starring Jennifer Garner.

(Yep, those were all quite sensible disguises for a spy who needed to blend in and be unmemorable, uh-huh, sure.)

We were all about the ages we were in 1980, but in better shape. My Mom and Dad were in their 40's, and they looked good. Dad was balding and wore black-rimmed glasses, but he looked Patrick-Stewart-circa-1990-level good. He looked like he still ran really fast after balls on the tennis court. Muscles bulged out everywhere from under his tuxedos. Melodie, my older sister, ran communications behind the scenes:

Ty, my younger brother, who in real life is very alert and successful, in this dream was always spacing out. And since we were an absurd movie-style spy family, that meant I always had to watch him and keep him out of harm's way.

As the dream started, Ty and I were following Dad as he ran into a bank in a strip mall in the US, then through a door in the back of the lobby, then down some halls until we got to where the somewhat-unfriendly other spies were. Ty sat down on a sofa and spaced out, and I chased off everybody who tried to mess with him, while Dad talked to the bad guys. Dad was wearing a spiffy checked business suit, and what Ty and I wore -- didn't matter much. There was a lot macho tough talk, and there were a lot of threats made which were meant to be scary.

Then suddenly we were not in the US, but in a luxury hotel in Europe somewhere near the Alps. Mom was wearing a formal dress, Dad and Ty and I all were in tuxes, and Melodie was back at communications ops at HG in a T-shirt and jeans.

It's my feeling that the clothes are much more important in James Bond movies than most people realize. In "Alias," of course, they dropped all pretense and went all-out with the clothes and hair. And it was glorious.

Mom and Dad got into a twin-propeller passenger plane that looked to have a couple dozen seats or so. Unless the seats were extra-large and luxurious. I took off the tux jacket, put on a bomber jacket and goggles, and rode outside, on one of the plane's wings. I know the hotel was near the alps, because soon after take-off we were over the Alps. I was on the wing for a surprise attack, because the bad guys inside the plane thought that only Mom and Dad were there.

I don't know where Ty was at this point. I got inside the plane in time to see Mom kicking some guys expertly with her high heels, and then there was no more fighting to be done. "Save some bad guys for me next time, okay, Mom?" I joked, and then all three of us got into skydiving gear and jumped out of the plane.

A Hummer met us on the mountainside where we landed, and that's where Ty had been: he was driving.

And it turned out that I had been wrong about Ty being spacy; rather, the whole time he had been concentrating on becoming the the world's greatest spy driver, motorcycle rider and pilot of both planes and boats. Now that he could reveal his true identity as world's great driver etc, his entire personality was different. He was sharp as a tack, and made no more effort to conceal it.

I was about to ask him why he had needed to keep any of this secret from us, his family, when we got to the entrance to the bad guys' lair underneath the Alps, and there was no time to talk: all four of us grabbed our submachine guns and ran top-speed to our firing positions.

Then the mountain turned into a monster and the whole dream completely changed from a silly entertaining spy movie into something very scary, and I woke up in a cold sweat. It's the closest I've had to an actual nightmare in a long time.

Dream Log: Awkward Closeness With Bernie & AOC

I dreamed that Bernie and AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were a couple. (Only in the dream! In waking life, I have no reason to suspect they're a couple.)

I dreamed that they and I were sharing a small house near the corner of 17th and Laurel in the Fort Sanders area of Knoxville, Tennessee, or to put it more precisely: they were renting the house, and renting a small room to me. I felt very cramped, very uncomfortable. I felt like the 3 of us were always on top of each other. I wanted to move out.

In real life, I lived in the Fort Sanders area for a number of years. I've most recently seen Knoxville in 1992. In those days, Fort Sanders was a residential neighborhood which ran from 11th Street to 24th Street, and its southern boundary was Cumberland Avenue. On the other side of Cumberland from 11th to 17th, the campus of the University of Tennessee was across Cumberland from the Fort, and from 17th to 24th there was the Strip, which consisted of stores, restaurants and bars on both sides of Cumberland.

I imagine it's possible that the area has changed quite a bit since 1992, but in my dream, it hadn't changed much at all.

In my dream, I had been hired by the Sanders 2020 campaign in some unclear capacity. It was unclear to me: I didn't know what my job responsibilities were.

I was hauling a backpack up the hill from the Strip. It was full of chains whose links were an inch and a half long and a quarter-inch thick. The pack was very heavy. Besides being difficult to carry up the hill, it was so heavy that I was concerned that the straps on the backpack would break.

I was not at all certain whether Bernie and AOC would have considered me carrying that backpack up that hill to be a good use of my time as a campaign employee, or not. They could have said Yes, that's fine, or No, why the Hell is he doing this, or Why doesn't he have a motor vehicle to do this, or Why is he messing with the chains at all -- no conceivable answer would have surprised me, because I couldn't read Bernie or AOC, I couldn't tell what they thought or felt about me or anyone or anything else.

I finally got the pack all the way up the hill and into the house. My muscles were aching all over my body.

Besides the 3 of us who were living there, Bernie, AOC and I, many people were coming and going in the small house: other campaign workers, volunteers, reporters, people from the Democratic Party, and Other People.

I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water, and then I woke up, and got a drink of water irl.