Dreams

Dream World Reunion

Post image for Dream World Reunion

January 25, 2012

Thankfully no one can see our dreams. In these impenetrable realms we have no choice but to watch bizarre and disjointed narratives starring ourselves in roles not of our choosing. Like everyone I suppose, I want to attach meaning to my dreams. But aren’t they random shards of memory reassembled into stories that never were and never meant to be?

Then again such thinking keeps me from enjoying, even reveling in, reunions with loved ones and friends, some dead for decades. Take last night’s encounter with high school buddies: two with whom I still talk, one who died from injuries in a college accident — his paralyzed legs withered but his smile back, and inevitably the girl who exited the dream with too much unsaid. If asked to write the plot’s highlights, I would deliver an empty page. Only the actors go unforgotten.

Maybe like all others the dream was merely the brain clearing its cache and rebooting for the next day, an automatic mental house cleaning. I choose to think last night’s dream was more. Upon waking a feeling lingered for a few moments then slipped away. Putting it to words now doesn’t bring back the feeling but captures why it felt so good: unburdened by the weight of so many years, we were together again.

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Unfettered and alive

January 23, 2010

“I felt unfettered and alive.” That lyric from Joni Mitchell’s song, “Free Man in Paris,” sprang to mind during this video. Then came this thought: would I dare be an eagle for a day if given the chance?

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Like most people, I’ve had dreams of flying. Even more vivid are dreams of jumping as gravity relaxes its grip. First I’m able to dunk a basketball, a feat impossible even in my youth. Then the jumps take me to treetops and views of a much larger world. Embracing this new power, I bound higher and higher, but with the certainty that I’ll land gently whenever I want. The joy of these moments transcends those of my waking life. In such dreams, however, fear inevitably sets in: what if gravity releases me, and I can’t return?

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An Unspoiled Mind

February 19, 2009

Sometimes I need reminding how wonderful life is for those not yet afflicted with cynicism. The reminder came from our son, Atticus. “Where do dreams go?” he asked soon after waking this morning — a question I don’t recall contemplating at any age. Then he answered his question: “A dream is a cloud with tiny bubbles that comes out of your skin and pops back into the sky.”

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Flickering images

April 20, 2008

Seeing the haunting movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly two days ago was timely given the title I’d chosen for my blog. Because of the film I think and look at the world differently, and that’s as grand a recommendation as I can make.      

Watching the film with my wife, Suzame, I couldn’t help but think of my life as I contemplated the fate of Jean-Dominique Bauby. It’s a selfish response, I suppose, but isn’t that what art often accomplishes? It not only lingers but burrows into the receptive viewer.

Now I have to read Bauby’s memoir, though mindful of the controversy regarding differing portrayals in the movie and book. However, I’m not linking to articles about the controversy because reading them would spoil some parts of the film for you. 

I’ve grown to enjoy reading books on which movies are based after seeing the films. My most recent example is No Country for Old Men. Much of the dialogue is verbatim from Cormac McCarthy’s book, which I bought within a few days of seeing the movie, mostly because I wanted to learn more about the dream Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) relates at the end. I wasn’t disappointed.  Here’s an excerpt from the dream, in which he’s seen his dead father:      

. . . it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback going through the mountains of a night. Going through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in the horn in the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.

Darkness and dread then a flash of illumination and hope. Is it a waiting reality or fanciful and fleeting?

As for the film version of Bauby’s story, seeing the world from his rare circumstances and perspective reminds me of looking through a cracked window. Incomplete and blurred images flicker then flow into sharp focus in moments of bracing clarity. At the shifting refraction of light, what he sees changes again. 

Like memory. 

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