An
interpretation of dreams
A few
days ago, I had a dream. I woke up, my back aching from either the rigorous
exercise regime forced upon me by the imperative of lowering government health
care costs or some other physiological condition. The dream itself wasn’t
important, simply my subconscious justifying sensations of my conscious.
However, conversing first with my sister, and then Simona (my wife), I realized
there were similarities in all our dreams, experienced at approximately the
same time. Since it seemed a little strange for coincidence, I examine several
similarities and apparent themes and thought I’d write them down. I know admittedly
little about the interpretation of dreams and capitulate that this may just be
another huge helping of my characteristic confirmation bias.
In my
dream, I was going somewhere. I was with a few others I didn’t know. We were
compelled to depart our meeting place, I vaguely remember, to alert another
household of something. Time was of the essence, so we jumped into a beater
American pick-up. An older model made of steel. We were careening down a gravel
road in a sparsely settled outpost, one not unlike the skeletal remains of
mining towns in the Rockies on I-70 west of Denver. As we rounded a corner, the
back end slid out and I apologized as we, first slipped, and then tumbled down
a hill. I woke up after acknowledging that I and my comrades had survived
relatively intact. Just a few scrapes and bruises, and my twisted back.
Simona
also had a dream with an automobile as the focal object. In her dream—details,
of course, less vivid in translation—she was driving down a stair case. As she
approached a landing, another car obstructed the path. She hit the gas and
wedged herself between the wall and the impediment, badly damaging both, but
succeeding in her passage.
My
sister explained that she, and I and others, were the prey of a vicious serial
killer. She spent most of her dream trying to avoid a certain death. However,
she confronted this menace on more than one occasion. When she did, it
transformed into a mouse that resembled Brain, the comical menace hell bent on
conquering the world, a quiet genius of dubious motive.
She also
explained that her life-partner had a strange dream of his own. In it, he transformed
periodically, under what conditions he did not disclose, into dog. And every
time he strutted off to his own rhythm, he would encounter more and more dogs
until, together, they formed a formidable pack.
Now, If
I had to employ speculation in the interpretation of these dreams—and in
hearing of these second two from members of our tribe separated by the expanse
of the continent, I determined there must be some story of which these comprise
chapters—I’d give them a revolutionary twist. And I would order the pieces into
a narrative as follows.
*We are
being pursued by an evil force that seeks to destroy us. But when it is exposed
to light, those that cannot chisel the façade see something smart. Capitalism
seeks to consume us and we are made ignorant by the myths of efficiency,
progress and inevitability.
*To
fight this menace, we must seek those who share our passions, our ideologies
and our vision for true equality through transcendent love. We must build our
army from these volunteers and we must embrace the fierceness of wild dogs.
*On our
road, we must make hard choices. We will certainly have to choose sacrifice, of
our possessions and of our comfort in maintaining order through easy choices.
It is, after all, our own fear and inability to act in faith that has thus
prevented our congealing into a coherent revolutionary force.
*Finally,
we have little time. We don’t know when the bend in the road is going to be too
tight for the speed at which we must move. We don’t know if we are going to make
it to the future unmolested. However, if we can fall back onto the resilient
communities (this is how I interpreted an old steel pick-up truck from the age
of good craftsmanship)—our families, churches or whatever institutions we find
most humanizing—we will have no trouble crawling from the heap of a mistake and
continuing on toward the journey.
Reading some
words of Emma Goldman the other day, it occurred to me that my own growing
interest in the spiritual mystery teachings and anarchist political thought and
practice are really two sides of the same coin.
The
mystery teachings and anarchy are not ends, but processes of learning and love.
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