Dreaming...

I just read a book about a woman who believed so strongly in the messages of dreams that while other families were discussing the events of their day at the dinner table, her family discussed their dreams.  I've tried in the past to write down my dreams, not only in hopes of some mystical message from beyond, but also in an attempt to get story ideas.  But most of the time I have not a clue what my dreams mean.  The dream I just woke up from, however, was so clear as to be considered cliche.

I was on vacation, walking through a gift shop in some old stone building, when I spotted an older man outside- a friend from the writing conference I attended last May (for real).  In this dream, like most of my dreams, the people don't have faces.  That sounds creepy, but it's not.  They have human forms, but that's not really what I see.  In my dreams I sense people more than see them.  This person looked nothing like anyone I really know and I associated no name with him.  But he gave off the feeling that he was older, male, and a writing friend.  So, I go outside the shop to talk to him, and he tells me that this famous author- again an older male with no name or face- is going repelling off the building and then shouts to the guy that I want to go too.  Immediately I start to feel nauseated.

The author handed me a carabiner ( I only know this word because I googled it), and as I put it on my belt loop, like I would with the one that holds my All Access credentials at my husband's shows, I was thinking- how is this going to keep me safe?  He started walking toward the wall of the building we were going to repel down, and I began my defense, my mind quickly arranging all of the reasons I should not do this.  Then I thought of Gilmore Girls, and the episode where Rory jumps off of a seven-story high platform as part of her journalistic investigation into the Life and Death Brigade.  At first, she was afraid- until Logan, her source and future boyfriend, tells her this:

"It's your choice.  People can live a hundred years without really living for a minute.  You climb up here with me it's one less minute you haven't lived."


That's when I decided I have to do it.  So, we walk around the side of the building, when suddenly we hear a huge loud bang and see what looks like red and blue fireworks in the sky.  Everyone around us starts running and somehow I end up in front of a tv, where a woman named Lucas starts reporting that some fighter jets were getting into formation and hit each other.  Then, a discussion I recently had with my friend- in real life- comes flooding back to mind.  As she drove me to the airport to go see my husband the other week, I admitted to her that I was scared of flying since watching umpteen 9/11 documentaries, including the very real reenactment of United 93, the plane that nosedived into the ground in Pennsylvania.  I remembered thinking, why add to the chances of death?  They are already all around you.  If I stay on the ground, at least they are diminished somewhat.  But my friend told me she doesn't worry when she travels, which is often, because people fly all the time without incident.

From there, I walked back to the gift shop where the dream had begun.  Now there was a big lake in front of it that I had to swim through to get there.  After walking in, I noticed Search and Rescue workers were swimming all around.  It took me a second to realize they were collecting evidence, and calling out to bystanders for help.  The vomitous feeling quickly returned and I jumped out of the water, afraid of seeing body parts.  Instead, I walked alongside the river, picking up tiny pieces of red plastic and metal.  "Pick up everything you see, everything," the workers called.  So I did.


To me, the meaning behind this dream is pathetically obvious.  I don't think it was just happenstance that the people asking me to jump were my writing friends.  I don't find it at all perplexing that I related writing with thoughts of jumping and fear and dying and self-conservation.  I never thought I would quote the gospel according to Logan Huntzberger, one of my least favorite GG characters, but insight sometimes comes in surprising packages.

Random cat in a coffee shop in Micanopy.  And a link to the scene to which I make reference:


You Jump I Jump, Jack