Lucid walking, and Carrotman Mushman

One of my collaborators on a blog about a quarter of a century ago, when blogs were still a novelty, used to use the online handle LucidWaking -- a play on "lucid dreaming" which I guess, based on the sheer number of search results it turns up now, has been independently discovered by lots and lots of people. Back then, people were constantly misreading it as Lucid Walking and asking what on earth that was supposed to mean.

Today I read a scene in Colin Wilson's Shadowlands in which the protagonist, under the influence of the chameleon men, finds himself able to enter a lucid dreaming state. He finds that if he tries to walk toward something in such a dream, he won't actually get any closer to it -- unless he walks in a specially-conscious way that he dubs "deliberate walking":

Another idea occurred to him. He tried concentrating hard, then walking toward the "circus tent." This worked; he could actually see the building coming closer, as it would in normal life.

The engagement of his will in the process of walking felt odd, a little like rowing a boat. . . . This "deliberate walking" brought a sense of effort and strain, but it was oddly satisfying.

He began practicing "deliberate walking" in the direction of the circus tent, and was pleased when each determined step took him closer.

So, all you who misread my associate's moniker all those years ago, consider yourselves vindicated. Lucid walking is, it turns out, a thing.

It's interesting that Wilson compares lucid walking to rowing a boat. As the old song informs us, in dreamland it is necessary to row your boat even down the stream, even though in waking life it would go downstream automatically, without the need for any deliberate action. The effort is oddly satisfying, though, so you'll likely find yourself rowing merrily.

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On a completely unrelated note (I think), William Wright has posted a couple of times recently about the Pixar character Lightning McQueen, who is an anthropomorphic racecar voiced by Owen Wilson. I was vaguely aware that there was a real racecar driver named Steve McQueen, so I looked him up. Here's the opening paragraph of his Wikipedia entry (boldface in the original):

Terrence Stephen McQueen (March 24, 1930 – November 7, 1980) was an American actor and racing driver. His antihero persona, emphasized during the height of the counterculture of the 1960s, made him a top box-office draw for his films of the 1960s and 1970s. He was nicknamed the "King of Cool" and used the alias Harvey Mushman in motor races.

Harvey Mushman! It doesn't get much more "king of cool" than that!

By coincidence, just yesterday someone brought up in conversation the 1950 Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey, the title being the name of the six-foot-three-and-a-half-inch invisible white rabbit who is the Stewart character's probably-imaginary best friend. So when I read about Steve McQueen's pseudonym, I was already primed to think of Harvey as the name of a rabbit.

Harvey is only the second individual named Mushman I've run across in my life. The first was Carrotman Mushman, one of the many stuffed monkeys my brother owned as a kid. He was given that name because the night before my brother got him, he had had a dream in which someone was chanting, "Carrotman Mushman! Carrotman Mushman!" over and over again. Carrotman also suggests a rabbit, carrots being that animal's stereotypical favorite food.

A monkey as a racecar driver makes me think of when Alex Carmichael proudly announced he had come up with an anagram of my full name: "I, jowly Chim-Chim, ate an Elvis." Due to a severe anime allergy, I didn't know until he explained it to me that Chim-Chim is the name of a racecar-driving monkey (or chimp, I guess) in Speed Racer.

Harvey Mushman also suggests Harry Marsh, used in the title of one of William Wright's recent posts.