“Dreams don’t come true. Dreams are true.” So says Q-Jo Huffington, erstwhile friend and tarot-reading sidekick of Gwendolyn Mati, the protagonist (who happens to be you) in Tom Robbins’ farcical novel, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas.

In an unusual literary device, (second person, present tense), Robbins fashions the story in such a way that you are, in fact, Gwendolyn Mati, which puts you in the position of living the narrative from the inside out.

Robbins, of course, being the Master of Metaphor and the Ace of Analogy, manages to stretch three hectic days of action into nearly 400 pages of prose.

The book is ostensibly the tale of a corner-cutting stockbroker suddenly on the skids in the rain-slicked streets of Seattle due to a market crash.

But sandwiched between the lines of the story you find thoughtful soliloquies on everything from the arcana of economic policy to the nature of life, love, and the mysteries of the universe.

We’ve barely got our feet wet in this romp through the rains of Seattle, so the fate of André the ape and the denouement of Gwen’s inevitable rendezvous with the mysterious Larry Diamond (just back from Timbuktu) lies ahead.

(I say ‘we’ because on occasion Isabelle and I will read the same book at the same time in our respective native tongues, me in English, her in French, giving us the opportunity to play in the land of language by swapping semantics and discussing definitions at our leisure.)

In this story, Q-Jo, (or “The Huff“ as she is affectionately known), seems to be in charge of bringing the wisdom. Through her tarot-reading insight, (which belies Robbins’ deep-dive into the Western metaphysics of the deck), we glean the salient observation that money and love exhibit the same mercurial properties in our puny human hands. To wit: the harder we grasp, the more likely they are to slip away.

Circling back to Q-Jo’s premise, let’s unpack that a little bit. Taken literally, the idea that dreams are true actually makes sense. You are asleep, your subconscious mind takes you on an adventure, it’s a fact that you were dreaming, and you, as the dreamer, perceived everything that happened in the dream to be true at the time you dreamed it.

Can we mere mortals transform the higher adventures found in the depth of our subconscious minds into the reality of our day-to-day life? Therein lies the rub, and the dance which is our birthright and privilege to enjoy.

Much love till next Monday!

M+

Mark Metz
Director of the Dance First Association
Publisher of Conscious Dancer Magazine