I had a dream last night where I approached SF from Sausalito at night on the water. I was in a pick up truck with Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing and as we came over hill I was suddenly in a sea kayak at water level. The sun started hitting the city from the east with a dark sky behind it. The reflected lights off the buildings looked like fireworks. I remember in the dream trying to take a picture with my cell phone and knowing it wouldn’t do justice to the image. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen in my life.
When I work up I had this thought and tweeted it:
I wish I could show you the photos from the dream I just had. Gorgeous sunrise over SF while in a truck with @xeni coming from Marin.
— Spocko (@spockosbrain) April 16, 2013
I’m a photographer, I’ve done sea kayaking before. I just spent a while looking for a photo that captured that image, but couldn’t find one. The one above is the closest.
Now I could try and recreate it, but I really wish I could capture the image directly from my mind, and the wonderful feeling that went with it. I knew I was seeing something extraordinary and I wanted to share that beauty with others.
Earlier that night I had another dream.
In the dream I just had the people in Santa Barbara were celebrating Christmas. They were all friendly and laughed at my Bush imitation.
— Spocko (@spockosbrain) April 16, 2013
Both of these dreams can be attributed to the new SyFy TV show Defiance and the recent Boston bombing.
The show was just okay and was filled with standardSF action tropes. But it had one thing that I really liked.
The town of Defiance (formerly Saint Louis) celebrated humans and aliens people who, after a long war, finally said, ‘Enough’ and put down their weapons. The show portrays humans and aliens living together in a community where we don’t judge people by the shape of their heads or planet of origin, but by the content of their character.
When we find out who was behind this bombing, let’s keep in mind that an entire race of people, nation, region, city or state were not behind this. If the person is a brown person, (let’s say from Iran) we should have the sense to not go after all brown people and bomb Iran. Just like if the bomber is a white male from Mississippi, we should have the sense to not go after all white males and bomb Mississippi.
America doesn’t have to be the country that attacks an entire state because of the actions of a small number of people from there. Or worse, the state next to it. That would be kind of crazy. We are better than that. If we haven’t been that in the past, we can be again in the future.
Photo by David Yu, attribution license via Creative Commons
