430: Every Damn Morning
Every Damn Morning |
Title text: There was something about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill... |
Explanation
Cueball has had a wondrous and striking dream, but is unable to recount it to Megan, as he has forgotten it. The title of the strip suggest that this is a regular occurrence: he wakes up with vivid memories of elaborate and fascinating dreamscapes, but is unable to tell anyone about it, because the memories fade so quickly, he's lost almost everything before he gets the chance.
The title text is a reference to C.S. Lewis's novel The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, in which Lucy Pevensie reads a story that “refreshes her spirit” – “That is the loveliest story I’ve ever read or ever shall read in my whole life. Oh, I wish I could have gone on reading it for ten years.” – but afterwards can only remember that it had something to do with "a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill."
An effort to remember dreams was made in 269: TCMP.
Transcript
- [In the background, a vivid dream scene is apparent, including mountains, a city with a mushroom cloud, a zeppelin where one person has knocked another off, another person climbing on or off the blimp on a rope, another blimp anchoring to a city in the background, one Cueball and Megan holding hands, one Cueball looking at the person on the rope, one Cueball and Megan sword fighting over a cup of spilled liquid, another set looking at a laptop, another set hugging, another set sliding down a separate rope from the blimp and a last set falling. In the far right there is a third blimp flying over a mountain range. All in all, this seems very much like an apocalypse and not something one would forget easily. In the inset, Cueball awakens, very surprised.]
- Cueball: !!!
- [Dream's edges are fading, mountains, city, and zeppelin less clear. In the inset, Cueball is seen running down stairs.]
- [Zeppelin, city, and mountains are very hazy and unclear. The people can still be seen. In the inset, Cueball gets the attention of Megan, who is sitting at a breakfast table.]
- [The dream has completely faded, only the outlines of three people can still be seen. In the inset, Cueball looks confused.]
Discussion
Reminds me a bit of, The Dark is Rising, the alt text does. Not sure why. 173.245.52.206 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
The "some people interacting" all seem to be Cueball & Megan, doing various things. Wwoods (talk) 18:27, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
This perfectly explains my theory for the origin of Deja vu! You have a dream, but because you don't bother thinking about it when you wake up (The act of thinking about it moves it from your short term memory to your long term memory), it fades away to some inaccessible place in your brain. (It's not deleted. Nothing is ever deleted. It's just archived) Then, you see something in real live which, just for a split second, brings back the memory of your dream. But it disappears as soon as it appeared, before you can register it. This leaves you wondering what it is that feels so familiar.
If you suffer from lots of deja vu, try remembering your dreams first thing in the morning. Hannodb (talk) 09:19, 10 July 2014 (UTC + 2)
I have heard that most dreaming is associated with the right side of the brain (for example, right inferior parietal cortex: http://www.dreamscience.org/idx_science_of_dreaming_section-3.htm). If this is true, it would make sense that, upon awakening, the visual imagery of dreams is not transmitted well across the corpus callosum to the left side of the brain, where most language skills reside. If you cannot efficiently translate the images into words, you can't communicate them in words. Being quite complex and unusual, the dreams would then fade from memory.
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A possible alternate explanation for the dream in the comic, which actually ties into the title text; most of the people in the comic are calm; the giant "mushroom cloud" can also, due to the black and white nature of the comic, be interpretated as a giant tree with ring-shaped construction around it. Most of the people appear to be more or less calm, which implies that there isn't really an emergency. Also, there is a guy with a knocked over cup, being threatened by a girl with a sword, and everybody is on what appears to be a hill. Alternatively, the tree or one of the cities was built on a hill. Amaroq (KitsunePhoenix) (talk) 05:56, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Honestly, I interpreted it as Cueball and Megan living in a nuclear warzone where a bomb went off every morning and Cueball got really annoyed at how loud it was and how it was disrupting his sleep. 108.162.215.70 04:10, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Funnily enough, I remember my dreams clearly, and sometimes remember them for days afterwards, even if they are totally insignificant. Does this happen to anyone else? Beanie (talk) 14:18, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
I think the tree in the title text to referring to the fact that the mushroom cloud looks like a tree. If the dream faded enough, one might see the mushroom cloud as a tree. BlackBeret (talk) 17:30, 18 October 2021 (UTC)