I know that I am among the elite, worldly elite, group of humans who is comfortable in the knowledge that I will have something to eat tomorrow, and the next day.
I feel this security should be a part of a world-wide minimum standard of living.
I am also not persecuted for my age/race/religion/gender/political beliefs, or financial status. This makes me what: Top 1 in 100,000 of the world's population?
How large is my responsibility for this?
I think this is what I was created for.
I have recurring dreams sometimes. They are very heartbreaking dreams.
The outcome is always that I can't save anyone.
On the edge of a canyon is a house-trailer with one half jutting out over the air and the other half on land. Inside the half on land is an old man with his beard grown to the table, he is catatonic. The inaccessible half has a window in which I can see a room full of red pillows and a tiffany lamp. There are a bunch (maybe 8?) kids playing with old-fashioned toys: stick-and-hoop, jumprope, and playing tag in the yard where I am standing. I know that I have to get the kids into the trailer before the sun goes down. The sun is across the canyon, and it is visibly moving downwards. Like in real-life.
The problem is: I'm made of nothing, and they are flesh. I reach out for the hula-hoop and it goes through my hand. I run into the trailer and start yelling at the old man - as though he were deaf- that I needed his help. It "is URGENT. Very URGENT." I see that he can't hear me, I stick my head out the trailer door and look right at the big orange sun as it's touching the horizon. I decide that I have to get 'her'. So I start edging my way over to the window. My toes barely hanging on to the little sheet-metal lip at the top of the skirting. My hands were grabbing the side-edges of the vertical sheet metal panels that serves as trailer siding. It was cutting into my fingers and I was so shaky and the flimsy ledge my toes were grasping was bending. I make myself not look down, I feel sick. All of a sudden I realize, the sun is halfway down, and now I'm becoming solid. That means the children are becoming ephemereal. I reach the window and look inside. It is 'me' sitting indian-style in the pillows. I bang on the window to get 'my' attention, but all 'I' do is pull the chain to turn off the tiffany lamp.
I am frustrated, but now I know that I have to do it myself, and hurry. I hustle my way back to the cliff's edge, since I'm now becoming heavy. I jump towards the cliff as soon as I think I can make it, scramble up the edge and grab the hoop. It becomes solid, I loop it over the heads of the kids, but they have faded too far, I wasted time and missed the exact moment when the children and I were of the same substance. . .
I realize that I have failed. The sun has gone down and I missed them. The heartache feels like swallowing a big rock, a bowling ball.
A couple of times I woke up sobbing.
Othertimes:
I walk back into the trailer and stare at the old man while anger fills up inside of me. I expand, I can feel the spark in my eyes, and the murderous energy that is swelling in my chest, so I blast off. I intentionally hit the ceiling in the corner to make the trailer go over the cliff, and I take off flying.
(Note: In my dreams there are two types of flying: One is like a rocket, where I blast off on my own energy. The second method of flying is where I have to climb up something and have faith that an updraft will catch me. This story is of the first type.)
MsAmber
3 comments:
From a psychological point, you should analyze every character's feelings in a dream. For example, how do you think the old man felt, why, and how does it relate to you (the dreamer). The children too. And of course the person's feelings that is you in the dream.
I've read somewhere that every character in your dream is in fact you. In short everything we dream about has to do with ourselves. It's our conscience nagging at us or warning us about ourselves; how we feel, how we perceive ourselves in the world, in our daily lives. And what we should change.
It's an efficient approach to dreams and it has helped me understand some things that once seemed too "eerie" to unscramble.
:-)
In my flying dreams I run and jump and keep myself in the air by gently lurching my body. I haven't had one in a long time, though.
Wow, that's a pretty vivid and emotional dream, MsAmber. I mean, to wake up sobbing says a lot for what you're going through while you're having it.
I guess there's something to say for people (like me) whose dreams make absolutely no sense. Though sometimes I wish they would.
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