A Dream

I don’t recall very many of my dreams. Maybe that’s because the waking variety kind are near enough to explode my head! Anyway, I did have two dreams a number of years ago that were, in an odd kind of way, influential upon my life.

This is a recollection of one of them.

This was around 1997 or so, and I had just recently moved to California. I'm hanging out with my favorite grandfather in that dreamy world (in actuality he had died five or so years before) – a great and charismatic guy who owned a bar in New York in the 50s that people like Joe DiMaggio used to hang out at. Anyway, we're hanging in some kind of Euro style pub, having a good time, drinking ale and enjoying ourselves immensely (which was weird in that he died before my Of Age days).

Then it's night and we're on this path leading up to a large house that's in the middle of nowhere -- it's like completely blank around it. Creepy, right? There's a park bench in front of the gate to the house and my grandfather sits down. He indicates for me to head into the house. I ask him to come with me. "No, you must go alone," he says.

I walk through the gate and up the front porch steps. I look back, and he waves, a knowing look in his eye. It's fucking super vivid and super real -- I still fucking remember all of this, and as I mentioned, I rarely remember dreams anymore.

I'm scared, nervous, anxious, but determined, I open the front door. It's one of those houses where there's a staircase as soon as you open the front door. Except THIS staircase is carpeted red and seems to go up and up into Eternity. A dim light appears somewhere up there. I take a few tentative steps up the stairs.

But it's too much, I can't take it. I turn around and start to go back. But something in me knows that I must turn around. Finally, I do...

And there's a scalding flash of light that kind of sears me to my very soul. Floating before me is an enormous newborn infant floating before me, an insanely bright and ethereal glow emanating from every pore of this brilliant child. Its eyes are a shocking blue and I know they see me to my very depths. They're all knowing, all seeing, omniscient...

It's all too much for me. I close my eyes and scream and scream.

And then I woke up, panting for breath.

<<<<<>>>>>

I spent a lot of time thinking about that dream. What I took from it -- and maybe this sounds crazy, but it's what worked and was worthwhile and meaningful to me -- was that the brilliant infant was me. Its blue eyes are my blue eyes. It meant that I had just begun on the path, and that I had a long way to go.

But that you have to take the first step to get anywhere.