Dreams, By Steve

 Dreams… 11-16-23

Afternoons can be a great time to relax and take a break from the hustle of the day. Sitting down today

with a nice cold glass of tea with your feet propped up on the table on the back porch, my mind

wandered off and then for some reason filled with the fuzzy memory of last night’s dream. It was a crazy one, for sure.

The first thing I saw was my family, enjoying an outing together among a grove of trees overlooking a

stream of water flowing over rocks on its way to some lake or ocean. I was observing the group, not a

part of it, so my attention was focused on what they were doing and their reactions to one another,

rather than the interaction that normally involved me directly. It was odd to have the feeling of an

observer and not a participant – kind of like those odd moments when a party is happening, and you

become the outside observer; taking in the scene rather than helping to create it.

What made this more unique and odder was watching my two sons’ interaction. They were arguing

about Donald Trump, and both were yelling, waving their arms and hands around in a way that

suggested that they were more cheerleaders than merely expressing emotions. I caught myself laughing

until I caught part of the words flying about: they had each taken the opposite view of their waking

positions and to make it even more amusing, the conversation was centered around whether Trump

used a tanning bed or not. Then my laughing turned to amazement as I realized the basis for their

position lay in their appearance: one had a pinkish area around his eyes, clear evidence of a tanning bed.

That observation gave way to abandoning the exchange and shifting to my wife, sitting on the ground,

dressed in her mink coat, digging a small hole in the dirt with a gardening tool. My granddaughters

surrounded her as she explained, “the sides of the hole must be perfectly perpendicular if you even

hope the plant will grow properly.” Their attention – and silence – tempted me to interject some

wisdom into the scene, but knowing that this was their time together, I held back and instead, filed a

unique memory away, noting the girls’ silence.

Suddenly, there was a deafening boom! A sound that occurs in a dream, or my dreams at least, is an

unanticipated, unexpected happening. I hear people’s conversations on occasion, but sounds aren’t

usually something I recall after waking up from a dream. So, when a boom along with the sensory

impact hits, it makes an impression.

It didn’t change my status as an observer, though and my reaction was subdued in comparison to the

people in the scene. What occurred next was akin to a Three Stooges movie. Everyone began running

around bumping into each other, looking up to the sky and then down to the ground making sure they

weren’t about to be swallowed up by the earth. The blue skylight rapidly changed to an amber cloud

cover. A fleet of giant low, slow flying airships floated across the sky. So many that they appeared to be

almost touching one another, but somehow able to maintain an equal distance that formed a cartoon-

like picture of an old World War 2 propaganda poster. My exact thought was: OK, airplanes in dreams

mean something, but what?

With a flash, the sky cleared. When I turned my attention back to the ground, everything was baren: no

trees, no stream, no people, nothing. Only empty space covered in amber light. I laid down. Feeling

confused but content, I work up.