The Dream

As told by Hillard Graves, 38:

As a boy I had a recurring dream. I had the ability to fly, but if I went too high I would lose control and some force would pull me ever upwards into the stars and deep space. It was like my soul was being lifted from my body and I felt nothing but black, existential terror. I could no longer control my body and was being pulled toward some appetite I neither understood nor saw. Everything I knew and loved was gone, and as I was pulled further and further away I felt more and more transparent, and then I would see a dim, terrifying red glow in the distance and I knew it was for me, and it was always at this point in the dream that I woke up screaming.

And then one time, just as the red glow was starting to appear, a powerful man’s voice, one that I was sure was exterior to me in every conceivable way, said COBRA STRIKE. It was a divine command. I know of no other way to put it. It was my only way out. And so I started to yell COBRA STRIKE and point my fingers in the direction of obstacles and threats, and each time I did so they burst into flames and exploded, and my dream became a video game, one in which I was in control. Strange, though, to have that terrifying dream 25 times or more, and then to have that voice break through my consciousness and offer me the key to salvation. Not a day goes by that I do no think about that voice and the mysterious providence it provided me.

As told by Robert Dugger, 46:

“I hate Donald Trump. I’ve always hated him. I find there to be absolutely nothing appealing about him. Not a thing. He’s a monster. A lizard monster. This has always been my disposition toward him.

In my dream I was an invisible observer of him. Upon advice gleaned from an old episode of Oprah, Trump had started to Journal in an effort to explore his thoughts and feelings regarding impeachment, the Syrian debacle, Putin and all the other catastrophes that have followed in his wake. He sat there at his desk about to write a Gratitude Entry, and I couldn’t wait to read it, imaging his entry to be childish, noxious and shallow. I was almost feeling giddy, looking forward to telling friends about it later on.

THINGS I AM GRATEFUL FOR TODAY:

And then he wrote, “A mote of dust caught in the sunlight falling through the window.”

The words appearing in beautiful, attentive script.

I did not want this to be true. I could not believe it was true.

And then I woke up, wanting to excise whatever part of me had generated sympathy for this man. I tried to shower it off, but it lingered like smoke. I walked though my day astonished and uncertain, which I have come to understand, is not such a bad way to live your days.”

As told by Bruce Gamble, 43:

“ I had one dream about her when I was a younger man, in my early 20’s. Just one. We fell recklessly, fully in love. I had no idea who she was. I mean, she wasn’t a celebrity or an assembly of people I knew, but was wholly unique, unblemished by any “architecture” on my part. And when I saw her dancing at the party it was the moment I had been waiting for my entire life. She was my destiny.

When I looked into her eyes I could see for miles and miles, everything there was to know about her was within them. It was so real. All the sensations, all the excitement, vitality and anticipation of falling in love were flooding me, both of us. It was not a simulation of love, it was an intense experience of love. Everything was just beginning, the whole rush of a glowing future waiting before us, and then “dream logic” appeared and she had to leave, but I wasn’t upset. I knew we would see one another again. I knew I would have her to look forward to, and that all of what I experienced in that, what? 90 seconds of dreaming, was true.

And so I have carried this woman, the idea of her, in my heart for 20 years now. I have been waiting for her, but she never returned, in either the dream world or this one that we now stand upon, and then a week ago I dreamt that she called me on the phone. Her voice older now, she said, “In another life, my love.” And that was all.

The Flash is seated outside on a small chair beneath the shade of a tree. All around him toddlers sit crosslegged while the supervisor directs their questions to The Flash.

This is what all the therapists at my Pulmonary Rehab Class are telling us. There’s more moisture in the air and that makes it heavier, harder to breathe in, harder to push out. The class, made up of roughly a dozen people, most of them twenty years older than myself, are struggling. People sit slumped, breathing hard. Scratchy, hospital towels around their neck, dixie cups full of water in their hands.

The instructor continues to lead us through our paces, but gently. Beside me a woman in a wheelchair has fallen asleep. The intimacy of that. To look over and see the flaked, yellowed skin exposed above her black socks. Her face relaxed to the point of formlessness. Her glasses smudged, fallen. What dreams now forming and dispersing within. And across the room a very elderly man, so old and thin he looks like a fledgling, has fallen asleep, too. Almost fetal in his wheelchair. And the instructor says something with her eyes, perhaps, and we all begin to exercise so gently. Nobody speaks. Everything softer, everything hushed. And as we pretend to jog in our seated places, we’ve become as silent as ninjas. As cats hunting. As clouds touching in the skies above.

Jones and I are standing on the sidewalk and I am asking him about his dream from the previous night.

What was it about, Jones? 
Santa.
What was he doing?
He was bringing presents.
Did you get to open any?
Yes! There were chocolate eggs, and inside of them was apple juice!

A cold, open morning passing through us. Jones has a red lollipop in his cheek, the stem sticking out like a cigarette. All confidence and swagger he moves up the street like a gangster. He’s looking for a stick. The right stick. All gatherings of plants and bushes must be explored. He holds back the branches of one bush, “Come, Daddy, Come!” He has opened a door that I must pass through, and together we emerge into a new world, journey mystical realms, enter jungles, descend to lakes with lizards and stars. And then Jones standing there. Watching me looking back, all the branches and vines and climbing things now wrapped around him like they did not want to give him up, like he still belonged to their world and not mine. And the bottle collectors are out this morning. They scavenge in the alleys, the glass clinking in their bags like wind chimes from across water.

It was packed with children, as you might expect, but still, it remained a sweet and manageable excursion. Jones was an explosion of excitement, running from one tank to the next, his finger pointing, his face animated by the most desperate urgency, “Look, look, mommydaddy, look!!” And a fish would glide mysteriously past, unaware of this constructed universe in which it lived. A world not quite of this world, beautiful and narcotic, it manifested around us like the dream it most surely was. And then we came upon the eels, and something in them sent a shudder into Jones’ soul and he was done with the aquatic for the day. “No more fish,” he yelled, running off to the Christmas tree in the foyer, to the decorative presents beneath, certain in his heart that each one contained a universe constructed for him alone.

Jones wakes up early from a nightmare.

“Hulk was fighting Spiderman and it made me upset and I cried.”

His heart so pure and simple, still so light.

Outside, it is just starting to snow. As I push the stroller up the street tiny snowflakes hit our faces. Impossibly intricate worlds dissolving upon contact. And Jones is happy, his tongue out, trying to catch them all. Joy now, all residue of his nightmare obliterated. The rest of us, the adults, we can travel decades, lifetimes with ours.

A woman passes smartly by. She is fresh, ready for work, for whatever might emerge into her day. This is the best version of herself that she is offering the world, everything still immaculate and hopeful at this hour. She smiles when she sees us, her lipstick perfectly red, perfectly expensive. And Jones points past her at a Santa Claus that sits on a roof, and beneath there is a large sun room attached to the house. Inside there are two nuns, both of them wearing African dresses, all golds and browns and bright white teeth. They are decorating for Christmas and they are happy, smiling and chatting with one another as they hang tinsel from a tree. It was as if somebody were saying, “Here, I give you beauty.” And to see this moment, to imagine the journeys that brought these women to this sweet, almost invisible point in time was a gift that had been laid in our path. Like light flaring unexpectedly before us, an encouragement for this, and all the days to follow.