LAST NIGHT'S DREAM
I love dreaming. In my dreams, there is a whole other world. To me, it feels like I am getting two rides for the price of one: my physical life, and my dream life. I am quite certain that both are very real. I meet all kinds of characters in my dreams, and I sometimes travel to far away places – for free! No air miles to save, no passport to worry about – I just go. No travel time either, and no busy airports or fear of lost luggage.
Last night’s was a relatively boring dream really. It seemed I was looking after two little boys. British they were, and they wore grey flannel suits with short trousers. I don’t suppose little English boys wear short trousers anymore, but they did when I was young. Poor little things, they suffered terribly in the winter. They would wear long grey wool socks which never covered their knees, and were always falling down. Once they had been washed a couple of times, all the stretch went out of them. They often wore elastic garters (usually their Boy Scout garters, with a little green tag) to keep them up. In the winter, legs would be chapped and red. It didn’t make sense to me.
Anyway, last night in my dream, there were these two little English schoolboys, dressed as described. I don’t know what they were doing here with me, but it seemed they had been parked with me for a couple of weeks. Who owned them, I don’t know - and why me? Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t know anything about looking after little boys. But they were here in Canada , and I was stuck with them. I tried to palm them off with other people, of course (who wouldn’t?), but there were no takers.
They were strange little boys. They didn’t seem to be related, but they were very close to each other, and they didn’t mix very well with other children. They were quite self-contained and, when I think about it, didn’t really seem to notice anyone else. They stood by the ocean, throwing stones into the waves at sunset; shadowy, short-trousered, short-statured figures outlined against a red sky. They didn’t wear school caps. Perhaps it was because they were on holiday. A couple of mechants, they were. At least, that’s what sprang to mind about them. I somehow got the feeling they were from a remand home.
They kept talking about flying back to Victoria from Vancouver . They must have come here via Victoria . I was still puzzled about it all. I had no idea who they were, and didn’t even know their names, but I was relieved that their two weeks with me were coming to an end, and told them that their ticket back to Britain showed a Vancouver departure, so there would be no need for them to go to Victoria . They seemed a little disappointed. I had no idea why they would have airline tickets from Vancouver to Victoria . There is a perfectly good car ferry, which takes about one hour and thirty five minutes for the crossing. So that left two airline tickets that would be unused. I thought hard on this, trying to figure out a way that they wouldn’t be wasted.
I don’t know what happened to these boys in the end, because I woke up. I was rather disappointed that it wasn’t an exciting dream of the more mystical kind. I love those best. Then I started to wonder if there was some deep psychological significance to these two kids. I am sure the psychologists could have a field day. If the dream was about me, then I can see something of me in those two little boys, but I wouldn’t be caught dead in my school uniform, much less theirs. However, there could be something of me in the boys, although there is only one of me, isn’t there? I mean, I don’t think we are schizophrenic, and we never went to a remand home, so it couldn’t be about us, could it? It couldn’t, could it?
[Jean James]
2 Comments
Reader Comments (2)
Then, a book I read many years came into my consciousness. I meditated this morning so today I was more open to being receptive. The book was called The Homeless Mind and I have never forgotten it. I still have it. It is about how modern society is changing so rapidly, our minds have problems adapting because we each have our own reality - focus on chicken prices vs house prices - which we deal with in our own personal way. But modernity can simply be too overwhelming for many and our minds feel that they have no anchor, no grounding. In this vein, the homeless person who appears to be making a crazy decision to live on the streets may be a making a rational choice to simplify their lives and deal with the overwhelm. Building a home for their mind. Anyone who simplifies their life is doing this same thing.
While we try to figure out our place in modernity, our minds put up protective mask faces so that no one can see our confusion. Yet, we are all still homeless and the two boys you were sheltering represent the universal person. It may be that the Egyptian is the most free of all because in his poverty of freedom, he is constrained in a long-lived culture that has changed very little - until modern people with "freedom" change it - and a culture that is his home. Maybe he is the least homeless of all and perhaps, just as he wanted to help you find your place by marrying you, your role may be to help people like those little boys find their home. By helping others find their path, we often help ourselves too.
And so that's what your blogs helped me think about. I hope it is a good contribution to your blog.
In order to find our true selves, we have to strip the masks away, one at a time. Most are afraid to do it, because they no longer know their true self: their true essence. They don't know what they will find after they masks have been removed. Their sense of self is threatened.
It's not like that for Hamad. Hamad leads a simple life with the rules for living mapped out for him by his religion and society. Hamad is grateful for the most basic of life's fruits. He has not woven a complicated web of existence for himself. In Arab society, it is customary to marry your brother's widow, for example, and shelter and protect her. There is no social insurance in Egypt but, you know, nobody goes hungry. A beggar will be fed by a restaurant owner, rather than let the man go hungry, whereas we turn our backs on each other and a wandering beggar would be shoed away by the restaurant owner in the west. Hamad will always share his chicken, hard earned though it is.