Dreaming Dreams

I have very vivid dreams.

No, not every night, but frequently enough that it's a little odd. Not unlike myself. Some might call them lucid dreams, but I describe them as 'vivid' because they are detailed, colorful, intense, well sequenced and sometimes I can remember them very well. If they were lucid, I probably wouldn't be having them.

I've spoken to friends who say they 'never dream', but I'm pretty sure everyone dreams even if they can't remember them. I've read that people have three to five dreams per night, others say eight to ten. For sure no one knows why we do it. Personally, I think we're just sorting through stuff and filing new stuff accordingly. We get a lot of input all day from our senses, so we have to clean out our temp files and cookies and junk like that. But if that were true, where would new ideas in dreams come from?

So, in this dream, my wife Deb and I were driving west on Route 202 North. Right away, you might think, "Obviously, it must be a dream, you can't drive west on a North-South road". Ah, but you have to remember, I live in the Philadelphia area and the way roads are laid out here makes NO SENSE to ANYONE. Some roads circle aimlessly or loop over themselves. It probably would have startled me awake if I saw myself driving north on Route 202 North although there are places where you can do that.

It was night and it was clear and the full moon was hanging at about 3 o'clock. We noticed two other bright lights approaching the moon from the right. The larger one, about one quarter the size of the moon and about the same brightness was coming down from the right and a bright pinpoint of light was coming up from the right converging toward the moon. The other cars were slowing down and stopping because of this little show so I did as well until we were stopped right in the roadway.

I thought to myself that due to the laws of perspective, if the lights were close enough, I was seeing an illusion that someone even a short distance away could not see in the same way. But while the show was going on, I heard the announcer on the radio say that we were experiencing a very unusual weather event. There were no storms, no clouds, just calm weather all over the Earth. That's impossible, of course, that's not the way the world works.

Meanwhile, the two lights had begun to circle the moon, chasing one another about a half-moon-diameter away from the disk of the moon. So, I'm thinking furiously, "This must be extra-terrestrial, and THIS is how they choose to get our attention?" But then, I thought, "Well, what would YOU do, knucklehead?"

Then the voice on the radio changes, "We're going to select someone to speak for us, you should pay very close attention to this person." (The actual quote was '...close attention to him' but if you think I would post such a sexist alien remark in this blog, well, you have another think coming.) But I recall thinking, "No preamble? No 'Hello, Earthlings'? No 'So, how's it going?' Boy, these guys are terse!" It could be they had a lot of places to cover, you know? They were too busy for pleasantries. And I thought to myself, "This is the night side of the Earth, what's going on over on the day side?" But I never found out.

Now my dream does a quick cut, a scene shift just like in a movie, and a very relaxed, unassuming guy is addressing a room full of very important people. He's sitting in a chair on the stage, with his fingers laced together behind his neck and he's got the ankle of his right leg crossed over on the knee of his left leg (what they call 'four square'). This guy hasn't got a care in the world, he feels safe.

And he's talking to these VERY important people, religious leaders, politicians, money people, you know the type. And he's telling them the straight scoop. He's telling the religious guys, "Hey, some of you had some good ideas but you're all wrong. Some of you wronger than others and some of you really wrong. So, stop abusing the people and stop taking advantage of them." And then he told off the money people and he told off the political leaders and everybody else in the room. Everybody. And the end of the movie was that he turned to me (the camera) and smiled.

Now, I ask you, where did this stuff come from? Do I have a little tumor growing and pushing this stuff out. Or is it just random delusions created by synapses cleaning up their loose connections? But then, why the symmetry? Why the beginning and end, the (sort of) plot? Boy, I wish I knew what dreams were all about.

I can tell you that when I woke up after this dream, the image of one of my photographs popped into my head. It was in the park called Craters of the Moon in Idaho. It's a desolate, rocky place with precious little vegetation, but if you look really closely in the foreground, you'll see that even in a landscape like this one, there is the chance for rebirth.

Maybe the economy will pick up after all.

Twenty-five Things

Here is a list of twenty-five things about me - in no particular order and of no particular value.

1. When I was younger, it used to bother me that I was so tall. Now, it is what it is.

2. I could watch the movie Airplane! over and over again, continuously.

3. When my right hand was crushed in the Navy and my index finger was nearly severed, my reaction was only mild annoyance.

4. I probably worked too much during the early part of my career. In one two year period, I worked three years. That's too much.

5. I am very happy with how my children turned out, I wish I'd had something to do with it.

6. I wish I had the opportunity to ask family history questions of my parents and grandparents. But that's not going to happen.

7. I find genealogical research to be like what Hal was referring to in 2001 A Space Odyssey when he said, "I am putting myself to the fullest possible use which is all I think that any conscious entity can hope to do."

8. I hate it when I have no one to blame but myself.

9. Writing in this blog is surprisingly satisfying.

10. My cursive writing was so bad when I was young that I have been printing everything I've written my whole life.

11. I am not Mr. Spock.

12. My taste in music has been evolving. I seem to enjoy things of a more mellow nature now. For heaven's sake, what's up with that?

13. Alcohol is a gift that I find difficult to refuse.

14. I know enough about Microsoft Windows and the tools necessary to support it to be an effective systems administrator. What do normal people do when their home computer goes all 'Windows' on them?

15. I have had many, many different jobs in my life but I've been with my current company for 31 years.

16. I really like glazed doughnuts.

17. I have a vision for Maryland genealogy where everyone's family history connects to everyone elses in a single metadatabase. I have the same vision for all the Kleyleins in the world.

18. I have very vivid dreams and sometimes I can remember them in great detail.

19. My favorite color is blue.

20. I have been walking since I was eight months old.

21. I have been to almost every state in the United States.

22. Simon and Garfunkel were right when they said, "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

23. If I had actually kept a 'Journal of Unexpected Results', I would be on volume three hundred by now.

24. I once won a Caribbean vacation just by dropping my name in one of those 'Win a Prize' boxes at an appliance store.

25. I have learned that you never know what will happen next.

Bonus: I have been sending out a 'QUOTE OF THE DAY' for twelve years. Today's quote was:

"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."

- Burke Breathed, Bloom County