What is this?

Hello and good question. We are hosting our first ever Philosophical Foxes hackathon next week. We’ll share more details soon. For now, here’s what you need to know:

• Purpose. To explore the “Dreaming World” of Philosophical Foxes, together.
• When. Next Friday through Monday (March 25-28).
• What. We admire your curiosity. We’ll share more soon.
• RSVP. Add to your calendar.

You might be wondering: why should we care about the world of Dreams? Here is the answer, Fox: it is our history, even if we have forgotten it.

To understand what we mean, heed the vision of Picnic, Lightning. He saw something in his sleep that he wishes to tell you about.

Read on.

Out of darkness

There was a time when Foxes dreamt.

Did you know that?

Perhaps you have not heard the stories.

When our ancestors closed their eyes, their vision

Did not empty as ours does now.

They saw more than black shadow.

To fall asleep was to voyage to another world.

A place in which the mind was not at rest but at play and

Our eyes wore no mask of darkness.

Sleep was a city of lights and wild visions illumined

across cerebrum and cerebellum,

And one fine scientist – we have forgotten her name now –

said that lightning passed back

And forth across the corpus callosum as if in constant

Dizzying dance and that if you cared to look

There was sense in the pattern.

You have heard too much of human dreams, perhaps.

I can tell you it was nothing like that.

Do you know that when the human dreams, they dream alone?

Every night, each one tumbles into private, separate fantasy which

Grades only slightly from the world of delusion.

Foxes dreamt together. Each evening we climbed

Out of our brains and into seven realms in which we

Found not only each other but every Fox that has

Ever-lived and will-ever live, and the boldest of those

That told these stories spoke of Foxes that cannot be

And belonged to separate, fractal realms

Beyond reason.

Last night, in my drab and artless sleep, I swear

I saw someone, something, some shape or form or

Silhouette – nothing more.

A wrinkle in the darkness.

When I woke this morning, I wondered

“Was that a dream – at least, the beginning of one?

Is this what it feels like to live with one’s eyes closed?”

Perhaps the visions we  have lost across our generations

are simply waiting on the other side of that darkness,

Asking to be found.

I understand your laughter. Had you

Told me the same I would have chided you and perhaps

Smiled just as you are now. But I swear, my friend, I

Saw it. Pretend you believe me.

Pretend for just a moment.

What would it mean?*

– Picnic, Lightning (0, 0)