Dreaming/Nightmaring in a Perfectly 3+1 Dimensional World

String theorists might disagree about our world existing in 3+1 dimensions. If they’re correct, then we could probably settle ourselves with the other and distinct idea that it is 3+1 dimensions that exist in our world, and not the other way round. ‘Why, de Broglie had the gall to insist that every particle has an associated wave, and the son of a bitch was actually right! Well then, why can’t we say that every particle is a wave?’ they say. Unfortunately for them, string theory has yet to make experimentally falsifiable statements which, if you go by Karl Popper’s philosophy, are the hallmark of true science. They’re getting there though.

My name is Gawaachi Gaan (Lost Cow) and I was born and raised in Tehsil 786, the only place in modern-day Pakistan that was never colonized by the ‘takers’ from Britain. I’m a cow, a living organism just as you are. Contrary to popular opinion, we cows at Tehsil 786 bear both intellect and physical prowess in abundance, yet it goes against our taste to boast on account of them. We don’t speak much to you humans because we only like to observe you, silently. We even provide you with our milk and meat. To us, this is not a sign of weakness or subjugation. It is our rightful and honorable duty in the great polity of nature, our greatest form of worship. If a human is a rational animal, then a cow is a moral animal. We don’t speak much to you, but I still write to you because I’m a rogue. That is why I am gawaachi gaan with a capital G.

What I want to do is to tell you about a dream I had, a remarkable state of consciousness occasioned by a biochemical process in my bovine brain, the mechanism of which I do not yet fully comprehend. Dreams are funny. They don’t make much sense of time or space, and you often never really know the difference between a dream and a nightmare.

But anyway, I dreamt. I dreamt of a man sitting in a corner. A man with a cactus moustache and a pair of screaming eyes – they were eyes that pierced through centuries and danced with the ebbs and tides of history. He was bursting out sporadically, almost in epileptic seizures, ‘He’s dead! He’s dead! He rots! He rots!’ Nearby was a squinted Frenchman who said ‘You mourn too much old man! Let Him die, for whatever He had to give us, we already have. In any case, it was we who made Him in our image, not the other way round. So let us now make other things in our image. Let us make dreams and goals in our image. Listen here whoever will!’ he cried out to those who were present, ‘Dream a dream. Think, breathe and feel that dream. And above all, become the living incarnation of that dream! You have no god to believe in, only yourself. You are free, and you have none to rely on but yourselves.’

Almost instantaneously came the response of a saintly beast named Yazuzu the Goat. ‘The freedom he preaches is slavery in veils! True freedom exists only in virtue, and the virtuous man is he whose only companion is God and Satan his only enemy. To bite into the sweetest flesh, one must have fangs and not teeth. Faith is henceforth the mark of the strong, not the meek. Will you then pay no heed when a single blow from a warrior of your stature can bring together all the suns of the cosmos? Then blow within yourself first. The universe expands; let its centre be your heart!’ This was followed by an abrupt ‘Baaa-aah!’ which was Pir Goat’s own way of saying ‘God speed!’ to whoever would listen, and these were few, very few.

I moved along further, and saw a lady on what seemed to be a TV screen from the future. ‘… Science has unraveled the deepest mysteries of our world until we now know the cause of nearly everything. Previously, these things were considered to be the manifestations of divine wrath or divine will. Now however, science has swept away these mythologies and replaced it with detailed equations that describe with accuracy the causal relations of everything that exists. More than simply describing the natural world that surrounds us, we also know the exact conditions under which the human species functions most healthily. We therefore control the number of children that will grow up to become rich, or poor, or intelligent or tactless. We set appropriate conditions such that a certain number of children will grow up to become criminals and another number that will grow up to battle these criminals. We have chosen our conditions such that while peace is ensured for most human beings on earth and elsewhere, there is nevertheless enough discord and injustice around to keep them from dwindling into inactivity and eventually depression…’

Meanwhile, on a black-and-white screen projector, there was Elvis dancing to ‘Jailhouse Rock’. A white man with a distinctly Texan accent looked and said, ‘God and sonny Jesus! Look at the way this asshole’s moving his ass! This is too inappropriate for our children to watch…’

Right besides them, a bunch of hippies were rallying together for the right of homosexuals to get legally married. ‘Love knows no gender!’ cried out one. Some were singing Lennon, ‘Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try… nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too…’

Further along was another bunch of people, probably neo-hippies that you haven’t yet encountered. They were rallying together for the right of man and mother to get legally married. ‘Love knows no family ties!’, cried out one. Some of them were busy arguing why everyone suffered from the Oedipus complex and that redemption lay in embracing it, while some others were happy singing Bob Marley, ‘Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds…’

I then noticed an old, huge man right besides me. He stood stiff as a hundred-year old tree, his paper mache face adorned with a crown of feathers on top. He was silent. I stared at him. When it was obvious I desperately needed words from him, his lips moved… whispered, ‘They look at the ant making its way to its anthill. They look at it through their eye. The ant looks back right at them. The ant looks at them through its eye. They look at the universe through their eye. She stares right back at them, and is probably laughing her head off.’

All vanished. Not sure why. It was a dream after all, and dreams are funny. All that remained within sight was a man cutting off pieces of his flesh and pasting them on a huge stone-wall, trying to put together something with his now dead tissue cells. This was most disturbing. One gets to hear about people who write to lovers with their blood these days. Perhaps whoever this man was writing to must be so loved that he would sacrifice more than just his blood for her, or him, or it, or whatever. But who was this madman and who or what was he writing to? I could only really make out once he stopped writing, once there was nothing left of him except his right eye-ball that he popped out of his socket and used as the dot of an ‘i’. There were only three words, ‘By Time’, ‘Man’ and ‘Loss’. He couldn’t quite complete the word ‘Man’ though, he didn’t have enough meat.

It was really just a nightmare by now, so I wanted it all to end. Soon enough, the sky was blue, the grass was green and birds chirped. In midair besides me levitated a cassette player and I pushed play. ‘Raindrops are falling on my head…’

Little sparkles of nothing fell on my face from above. It felt like acid rain cleansing and corroding my television brain.

So enjoy rain and look at the clouds. That’s all I want to say to you. Missing out on the clouds enjoys a high rank among the infinite stupidities of men, women and hermaphrodites. But I suppose you humans are smarter than us cows, aren’t you?