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hafoc
Anyone who has read my books knows dreams are important to me. Maybe that's because I seldom remember them.
I've had a couple dreams I remember that had mystical significance, more or less. One was a dream I blogged about here, where I went to bed very sad because I hadn't met my guardian animal, or totem, or whatever you want to call it-- and dreamed that the trees around the house were angry at me and yet were protecting me.
I now think in part they were angry because I'm one of those nasty biting animal things, but on the other hand I've done quite a bit to proetct them, and they me. So we're more or less at peace. We animals and plants have to kill each other in order to live. Trees know that; they're pretty wise about things.
The rest of their anger, then, was that I really knew they were my source of strength and peace, my spiritual guides if you will. Always have been. I've known that since I was a kid, but I figured a totem animal had to be an ANIMAL, you see. Such a chauvanist!
Another one was where I met my pack, and we communicated. We didn't speak to each other, but I could tell by a head bob, the angle at which a head was cocked, an eyeblink at a precise moment, that they were glad to see me, glad that I had found my way back to them. Then I slipped into another dream-- there was a metallic-blue Dodge pickup parked right outside the cabin where I was sleeping at the moment, and I was afraid.
As soon as I woke up that day I got into my own pickup to drive to the village to get groceries. As I came to the main road, I was sort of doing a rolling stop, glanced right, all OK, glanced left-- and that same blasted metallic-blue Dodge pickup barreled past at about 30 over the speed limit.
I would like to say the dream was a premonition, that I was extra careful because of it, that it saved my life. Kind of like an episode out of my favorite Thurber story, _The Luck of Jad Peters_ -- I recommend it to you if you've never read it, it's a hoot. But alas, no. I'm far too compulsive to actually run a stop sign. That pickup wouldn't have hit me regardless. Nevertheless, ya never know. It is a bit spooky.
Then there are the dreams about running. Others dream of flying, but I dream of running effortlessly, in what feels like slow motion-- about thirty feet to the stride. I love those dreams.
But most of the dreams I remember are of chaos and frustration. Which is appropriate, because those two (especially frustration) seem to be my life's dominant tone.
Like one about a week ago where I was on a commuter airliner full of people going to see one of my many former homes. The little old man in the seat behind me kept poking me in the neck, gently, with a sewing needle. I let him do it-- I tried to get him to stop, but he was Japanese and couldn't understand me. Besides, it was for my own good, sort of-- he was tacking my collar down with stitches. Those canvas shirts I like so much, the collars never WILL stay down properly.
Or more recently, I was on the abandoned railroad grade behind our office, trying to find some place-- an abandoned settlement, I think. I was trying to guide three other people there, and the only compass I had was the tiny one built into a certain pocket watch I carry with me in my briefcase. The compass wasn't accurate, and wasn't easy to read, and that was before the pocket watch started morphing into other objects. First it was a glass ashtray, then one of those aqua-colored glass telegraph wire insulators you find along abandoned railroad grades up here sometimes, then it became the 1905-era ink bottle that my coworker gave me. He dug it up on the site of one of the old logging camps around here. Which is kind of interesting to me, because of family history. The odds that my great grandfather saw that ink bottle when it was new are essentially zero, and yet he was a lumberjack in some of those camps.
My sister the mathematician had dreams that were very orderly, sometimes. I remember her telling me that as a kid she had a period of about three weeks where the same monster would come to her in her dreams, every single night. The monster would say "Good eve-r-ning" in its best Alferd Hitchcock voice, and announce / introduce the nightmare she was going to have that night.
My other sister once woke from a dream, when Mom and I were talking outside her room. She came out saying "Where is it? Where is it?"
"Where is what?"
"The tape."
"What tape?"
"The invisible mending tape I just invented! It's completely invisible. Well, I put it down somewhere, and now I can't find it!"
But she swears she never had that dream. I must have dreamed it.
I've had a couple dreams I remember that had mystical significance, more or less. One was a dream I blogged about here, where I went to bed very sad because I hadn't met my guardian animal, or totem, or whatever you want to call it-- and dreamed that the trees around the house were angry at me and yet were protecting me.
I now think in part they were angry because I'm one of those nasty biting animal things, but on the other hand I've done quite a bit to proetct them, and they me. So we're more or less at peace. We animals and plants have to kill each other in order to live. Trees know that; they're pretty wise about things.
The rest of their anger, then, was that I really knew they were my source of strength and peace, my spiritual guides if you will. Always have been. I've known that since I was a kid, but I figured a totem animal had to be an ANIMAL, you see. Such a chauvanist!
Another one was where I met my pack, and we communicated. We didn't speak to each other, but I could tell by a head bob, the angle at which a head was cocked, an eyeblink at a precise moment, that they were glad to see me, glad that I had found my way back to them. Then I slipped into another dream-- there was a metallic-blue Dodge pickup parked right outside the cabin where I was sleeping at the moment, and I was afraid.
As soon as I woke up that day I got into my own pickup to drive to the village to get groceries. As I came to the main road, I was sort of doing a rolling stop, glanced right, all OK, glanced left-- and that same blasted metallic-blue Dodge pickup barreled past at about 30 over the speed limit.
I would like to say the dream was a premonition, that I was extra careful because of it, that it saved my life. Kind of like an episode out of my favorite Thurber story, _The Luck of Jad Peters_ -- I recommend it to you if you've never read it, it's a hoot. But alas, no. I'm far too compulsive to actually run a stop sign. That pickup wouldn't have hit me regardless. Nevertheless, ya never know. It is a bit spooky.
Then there are the dreams about running. Others dream of flying, but I dream of running effortlessly, in what feels like slow motion-- about thirty feet to the stride. I love those dreams.
But most of the dreams I remember are of chaos and frustration. Which is appropriate, because those two (especially frustration) seem to be my life's dominant tone.
Like one about a week ago where I was on a commuter airliner full of people going to see one of my many former homes. The little old man in the seat behind me kept poking me in the neck, gently, with a sewing needle. I let him do it-- I tried to get him to stop, but he was Japanese and couldn't understand me. Besides, it was for my own good, sort of-- he was tacking my collar down with stitches. Those canvas shirts I like so much, the collars never WILL stay down properly.
Or more recently, I was on the abandoned railroad grade behind our office, trying to find some place-- an abandoned settlement, I think. I was trying to guide three other people there, and the only compass I had was the tiny one built into a certain pocket watch I carry with me in my briefcase. The compass wasn't accurate, and wasn't easy to read, and that was before the pocket watch started morphing into other objects. First it was a glass ashtray, then one of those aqua-colored glass telegraph wire insulators you find along abandoned railroad grades up here sometimes, then it became the 1905-era ink bottle that my coworker gave me. He dug it up on the site of one of the old logging camps around here. Which is kind of interesting to me, because of family history. The odds that my great grandfather saw that ink bottle when it was new are essentially zero, and yet he was a lumberjack in some of those camps.
My sister the mathematician had dreams that were very orderly, sometimes. I remember her telling me that as a kid she had a period of about three weeks where the same monster would come to her in her dreams, every single night. The monster would say "Good eve-r-ning" in its best Alferd Hitchcock voice, and announce / introduce the nightmare she was going to have that night.
My other sister once woke from a dream, when Mom and I were talking outside her room. She came out saying "Where is it? Where is it?"
"Where is what?"
"The tape."
"What tape?"
"The invisible mending tape I just invented! It's completely invisible. Well, I put it down somewhere, and now I can't find it!"
But she swears she never had that dream. I must have dreamed it.
