i debated on posting this one. It is a little personal, and i’m not sure just how much i want to put my very personal thoughts and feelings out there. But as i enter this month contemplating putting the website posts on a subscription basis, i have come to the conclusion i need to put more of me on the line. This is not because i think i’m something special, far from it. But i have long felt the older generation, my mother and father before me, and now me, have a great deal of thoughts generated by a ton of experience, others, especially younger others, might take to help them make better decisions along their road trip. So, with some trepidation, i decided to go ahead with this one.
My father dreamed a lot also, but he never discussed the dreams themselves. He would say he “dreamed a lot last night,” or “i had terrible dreams last night,” but he never told me what the dream was about.
i have horrible dreams too. Mine usually are about Maureen ignoring or rebuffing me for someone more handsome, more debonair, classier, and i am helpless to convince her otherwise. She is downright mean to me, and i wake up disconsolate, mad at her before i realize it was a dream.
i used to have dreams about some horrible threat chasing me, and i could only run in slow motion. i also used to dream about playing golf and not being able to tee the ball up while the other golfers played on without me or were disgusted with me for not being able to get to the point of swinging the club.
When i was facilitating the Navy seminar on leadership for senior officers, i would dream about some yahoo in the seminar, rejecting the principles of effective leadership and my being unable to articulate the real answer, feeling powerless.
And occasionally, i still will have some bad dreams about urinating, only to wake up and realize i have to go to the bathroom. i would prefer to just wake up.
Sometimes the really bad dreams will repeat themselves for a while.
I have good dreams. Rarely, i will dream of old girl friends and i talking, just talking, nothing unseemly.
When i was young, i occasionally dreamed of being able to fly and can distinctly remember one when i flew over our house and yard on Castle Heights Avenue. Except for that childhood dream, i never remember the particulars of the dream even immediately after i wake up.
But last night, i had a dream i remembered, at least the meat of it. It was a good dream. When i awoke from the dream in the middle of the night, i lay in the bed and tried to recall all i could about the dream in detail.
Unlike most of my dreams, this one was complex. It began with me out in a park with large beautiful buildings like Balboa Park. Balboa Park is the subject of my next Democrat column and a poem in progress. i can understand how that came into my subconscious mind.
i was writing a story and it turned into a newspaper story. Then, i became both myself and Clark Kent, the reporter for The Daily Planet, and i became aware of some tragic but unknown event beginning to occur. i was accompanied closely by some guy (Jimmy Olsen?) and had to run away from him through plazas and hallways in one of the buildings, finally cloistering myself in a closet, which turned out to be an empty tower. I changed (but never saw my outfit) and flew up inside the tower where a large vent covered the top. I broke the seal and pushed the vent out and over where it clanged to a stone floor far below, revealing my departure and possibly disclosing my identity to the guy following me.
Unperturbed, i flew and then floated into what appeared to be a political rally. In the bandstand with a number of people, Ronald Reagan was endorsing some candidate, and i disrupted the endorsement, although why or how i did that was vague.
Having accomplished my good deed (i think), i am not sure why, but my super powers were apparently drained, and suddenly, i was walking in a pretty land, although there was this sense of something evil after me.
i sought refuge in what turned out to be my castle where an elephant opened the gate to admit me and i was greeted by my old friend Cass, my Labrador whose ashes are under my flag at the top of our hill.
With Cass at my side, i went inside and found my way to the master bedroom suite. Maureen, in a beautiful gown, was there. We kissed and held each other. Then we went to bed for the night: she lying down on a massive and beautiful king bed and i lying in a single bed with a luxurious feather mattress. After i lay down, i began to worry about attackers entering the open door to the suite, but before i could close it. our daughter (the dream did not let me know if it was Blythe or Sarah) entered as a child of about three or four. She and Cass climbed into the bed with me. Both snuggled with me under a thick and comfortable cover, and we went to sleep.
And then, i woke up.
Who needs movies or television?