I have a number of recurring dreams. They affect me strongly, but I don’t know what to make of them.
One involves being alone in a boat, moving along a coastline, among huge rock outcroppings. The water is deep, deep blue, and the rocks tower above me, in columns and cliffs with natural arches and caves cut into them from the ocean waves. The water is calm and blue, and the whole place is reminiscient of Lake Powell, perhaps, but I have a sense that it is the Pacific. I search up and down along the coastline endlessly, looking for someone…
In another, I find myself in hell. It sucks, but its not fire and brimstone. Its more hopless despair and oppressive in its eternity. I sit with my father atop a massive stone scuplture — it is hundreds of stories high — we are literally sitting on the shoulders of satan. the space above is enormous, almost indeterminite in size, but cavelike, enclosed with no exit. Below us, a burning plain stretches out, and the pitiful souls drudge through their torment despondently as if in an enormous prison yard. The colors are black and red, orange and yellow, as if a cave lit by firelight.
Suddenly, the sculpture comes crashing down, and falling, my father and I learn we can fly. But flying in this cave, there is no joy in it, for where will we go?
In a third, I am back in school. I am late for class. I haven’t done my homework. I have not been to class for some time, and I’m not even sure where it meets. I am dashing down to campus, and wandering around among the buildings, searching for the place I’m supposed to be, in a panic, because I don’t know what I’ll do once I get there, I’m so unprepared. Sometimes I do eventually find the class, sit down in the back, but I’m totally confused, because I haven’t prepared, I don’t know what they’re talking about. Sometimes they’re collecting homework — which I haven’t done. Sometimes they’re preparing to take a test, but I can’t recall a single answer.
I have already written about the fourth dream several times over several years. In my dream, I am recalling a past, primitive life, and we are a tribe of hunter/farmers. I am returning from the hunt with my two sons, and coming around a bluff, I smell the supper my wife is preparing over the fire, among our village of mud huts, encircled by small plots of planted grain and fruits. I am filled with a sense of joy and well-being and love, to be coming home, and I am happy in my life.