u2areloved

       “Visions” by Gaylord Ho (“Sculptor of Emotions”)**

      I was having a really good dream this morning.  Apparently on the rare hours I actually scratch out a patch of sleep, I hit the deep R.E.M. cycles pretty good.  My dreams are so vivid.  I remember many of them immediately after words.  If I ponder long enough to recall them once or twice that day, chances are I’ll be able to recall them several weeks from now.

Yes, I was having a great dream.  In it I saw someone I knew a long time ago.  In this alternate yet parallel universe that is so full of life while I am comatose still in real life, everything seems twice as real.   Surreal.  I’m convinced a dreamer came up with the term.

This person was leaving a long red brick building and was wearing an oversized jacket, kind of like a detective jacket.  A scarf was draped around his neck.  Sunglasses on.  I was standing about twenty yards  away.  I smiled.  It had been decades in real life since our paths crossed.  Yet in real life I hardly knew him at all.  It’s not a love story.  It’s an acquaintance.  And yet.

In dreams, it’s always so much more than meets the eye.  Somehow you just know the next day, the dream had a deeper meaning than what just what meets the eye, this dark and silent mysterious place in the mind.  A place where words seem to have been spoken, yet when remembered, it was more like they were simply conveyed.

“Hello!” it felt as though I was shouting.  My heart felt as if it was racing but only in my dream, but why?  In real life, our paths would simply run parallel, never to converge, passing one another unaware.   He simply smiled and waved back at me.  Then he abruptly turned his face and walked away.  Or perhaps glided; it’s the everyday waking moments we take for granted that are more fuzzy upon recall in dreams.  I remember specific details of faces and places, how I felt, colors and their intensity, but everyday things like walking and talking are hazy and out of focus.

Other things happen in dreams too.  We move forward and backwards in time.  We are more free, and unhindered by things like age, occupation, wealth or health, relational dynamics, or even gravity.    This ability for the mind to morph our everyday reality into a super reality seemingly and effortlessly combines all that we actually are, all that we fear, and all that we hope to be converges to make a kind of soup of our real life stories.

“Woof!” “Woof, woof!!”  It’s our new puppy.  In real life. 

My eyes open and try and focus like a zoom lens struggling to find the light in a dark room.  It takes a while for them to dial in on the clock face and another moment to read the time.  4:11 am.

It’s that lucid moment when my dream is the freshest, on the very tip of my consciousness—the moment of perfect total recall. 

This man of mystery simply waved and had already walked on.

     “Wait!  Come back!” I’m internally shouting.   COME BACK!  It’s too late.  He  fades.  The moment in time has passed. It’s too late.  I won’t ever know what would have happened next. 

I throw back the covers and jump into my sweats that are still in the dropped position of where I left them.   I grab my jacket draped over the chair.  I hurry downstairs and let the puppy out to do his business.  It’s 4:13 in the morning and I’m in my back yard feeling like Lord Byron contemplating my dream and wondering what might have been.  If only…..what might have been.

Why did the dream mean so much in my mind when it wouldn’t even register as memorable in real life?  Does God whisper something we can’t quite understand in our dreams?   Why this person?  Why now?  What does it all mean?  And how come I can’t I stop thinking about it?

       I stand outside in real life a little longer.  I’m barefooted.  It’s freezing!  I just want to hurry up and get back to my over-sized bed with its thousand plus thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and super soft fuzzy blankets.    I just want to finish what I started.  But I know I never will.

What’s true in life, is also true in our dreams.  We have to stay in the dream to finish it.   We can’t let interruptions wake us up.  Oh, how they compete for our time though, do they not?    Reality is cold.  It nips at our heels and pushes us towards uncomfortable.   Yes, reality bites.  Life is hard.  Life is busy.  With dreams this much is the minimal requirement:  Stay the course anyway.

I’m back upstairs again and cozily burrowed again under my sea of blankets.   Ah!  Softness.  Warmth.  The great aphrodisiac of the exhausted is calling me:   Sleep, sleep tonight.  And may your dreams be realized.

**(Artistic Credit:  The sculpture above entitled “Visions” is described as “An angel with crystal ball.  The angel gazes into a a crystal ball as she looks for truth and compassion.  The crystal ball represents the earth, the environment, and all mankind.  The angel contemplates the wonder of it all.”  It is on display at The Wyland Gallery in Orlando, FL at Walt Disney World’s Polynesian Resort.)