Right now at this moment I am sheltering in place. The news alert from the local university shows an active shooter within a mile of my office. The door is locked and I am here at my keyboard. No walk today at lunch. The walk was probably off because we have thunderstorms and a Torcon index of 4 meaning a 40 % chance of tornados.
Seems like a weird time to be talking about dreams but why not? Enforced and somewhat scary isolation is a perfect place to contemplate the meaning of dreams. As I hear the rain beat on the roof above I am left to wonder about the space inside of me. What it is in my mind that takes me to the odd places it does why my eyelids drop so solidly to end the day.
In the past three nights I have had the most vivid of dreams. Two stand out. In the first I was walking through a Walmart. This is not a place I usually go. I have been to Walmarts in towns where it is the store if you need anything. But where I live I have options and I don’t go there. Digression get thee away from me. In the REM induced visions I was having I was working my way to the center of the Walmart store and I came upon a Buddhist monastery. Suddenly I was with a dear friend. Not naming names this gent is the closest thing to a Buddha that I know. He is dispassionate and self deprecating, aware and learned but unflappable.
As we stood there looking at the temple someone began throwing cheap shoes and then fuggly lamps at the temple. As these rollback items hit the golden and red façade the temple began to collapse. Piece by piece the temple fell apart. The walls and filigree shattered on the ground. Shouting I urged my friend that we should run into the temple before the holy site was gone. He just smiled a knowing unworried smile and shook his head to indicate no. And then I woke up.
Okay I have not had any recent negative experiences at Walmart. Walmart is what it is. If you accept that fact you can make you own moral choices on how to deal with the place. Yes, I do have Buddhist leanings. Maybe the better term would be contemplative leanings. The hermits and monks of the Christian tradition speak to my soul also. So why would these two blend together in my dream? I mean I can get the imagery of crass cheap commercialism destroying faith, destroying enlightenment’s hope but my friend as an enlightened being? Geesh, I guess that might be the easiest to explain. You know he probably represents the whole the universe is inside of each of us line of thought. If he is Buddha in nature anyone can reach enlightenment.
Really I don’t do drugs. I don’t drink before bed. You know my mind must sure bury a great deal of what I am thinking to deal with later.
The other dream was much simpler. It went like this. I once had a romantic relationship with someone who lives thousands of miles from me. We have only recently reconnected via social media. We wish each other happy birthday when prompted by the little electronic notices. We have talked a little, when we were dating I treated her badly and I have always regretted it. I did apologize. My contrition was too long in coming.
However for some reason I had a dream involving her last night. It was very simple and straightforward. In the dream she was visiting MSU the university where we met and dated. She was there for a conference on Education and was staying at the University’s own hotel. Me,I was stopping by a local convenience store called Quality Dairy. In the dream she was picking up some Tylenol and we just bumped into her among the milk jugs and patent medicines. My old friend joked that all conferences like the current one gave her headaches.
I ditched my afternoon of work (this is how you know it was a dream) and we went across the street to a restaurant. Hell when I knew her it was a Shell Station and the Quality Dairy it was a Sunoco. We ambled over to the restaurant to talk because we wanted to catch up on each other’s lives. The dream ended there.
As I opened my eyes the damn cat was sitting on my chest and staring at me. 15 pounds of smirking green eyed sin was at 5:45 a.m. staring me down. The miserable furry bastard was trying to up the ante vis a vis getting fed.
The star of this second dream isn’t a person I think about regularly. A certain moment, a certain time and maybe she pops up. Usually such remembrances are tied to a walk on a particular part of campus or if I see a Mexican wedding blouse. Back then my hair was long and I used to wear the floral patterned linen blouses all the time. I scratched my head and thought why this person, why now.
As I have said the brain is a funny thing. On my Facebook stream there had been a picture of her with her daughter yesterday as I was checking out all the Mother’s Day posts. For some reason that image must have set a seed germinating in my head, maybe I was thinking I wanted to actually talk to her to see where life has taken her and if she is happy. If I didn't mention there was not inuendo or untoward acts in the dream.
Dreams come and dreams go, but it is fun to try and suss them out. .
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