What do we do with our dreams?

Things of our dreams.  An Image I made some years ago. 

I had two very vivid dreams last night...  That is not out of the ordinary for me... but they were different than usual...   I woke up after the first one about 4 am...   it was about me making one of my goals, the second one was about making something mine.
I was on the mountain, standing there looking at all the flags going up and down the cliffs, in bright reds, whites and blues. Its an unfamiliar, foreboding place.  I was surrounded by strange people, speaking languages I can’t recognize. I could see how dark the edges of the rocks were all around me, and i could see it go on up above me, past the clouds.  I felt like I was nowhere. I was at Everest, at base camp on the Tibet / China side.  I can recognize it from pictures and documentaries, but in all the earth, this is its peak...  this is the hardest thing...  while I felt that I have come farther than I ever expected, I felt that l will never climb that mountain.  I stood at its foot and stared deeply into it.   Nothing I've ever felt in my waking life, felt like that... to stare into the abyss, to look upon it with favor, not disdain.  To be there with strangers and yet all alone before the summit of the highest point of the world.  The wind whipped so hard around me I couldn't hear anything but it and the banners snapping up the hills.  It was so surreal.  Even the smell of it was distinct.  I felt cold.  I felt weak.  I felt like my heart was giving out.  But I was there.  I remember that I walked to the edge of some bluff and looked out over nothing almost as far as I could see, and practically fell down on both knees before it.  Lost in thought, watching the flags and banners... the prayer cloths in the wind... the smoke going sideways from small fires... small little makeshift houses and buildings among the rocks and grass.  It was just open, nothing.  It was beautiful. It was beautiful because there was nothing, but there before me was the most majestic crag on this earth.  There was nothing stopping me from it except myself.   Somewhere a few minutes into being kneeled before it, is when I woke up.
A little miffed about waking up from that, I slowly drifted back to sleep.  I stopped to look at my phone, and noted it was 3:50am.
It became a little less typical of me to have a dream about everyday life.  I've definitely suffered from deja vu throughout my life.  I see small little pictures of things that I’ve come to realize weeks or months later are unfolding right before me.   As I grow older, I am experiencing longer bouts of it, but with less frequency.  As a kid, I saw a silver door knob, at a crooked angle: a month later in gym glass I fell, ramming my head into the wall, and sitting up I looked up to see that door knob. Other times I have seen road signs with sunsets behind them, or people walking and talking around me; all to find it all come true.  This time, it was a normal feeling.
I'm laying lengthwise on a brown leather couch [that I don't own], in a place that I don’t recognize [ie I don't own], but its clearly mine. My art is on the wall facing me. The walls are painted in colors I’d choose. Everything about this place feels comfortable to me. Its warm there. There is some sun light coming from behind me. And I feel that I belong. I hear a voice, softly, but don’t understand the words. I look down to realize I have someone laying in my lap covered in a blanket and she's staring up at me into my eyes.  I look at her and see she's biting her bottom lip.  She looks timid, but happy, and like she just woke up suddenly and was surprised to see me.  About as surprised as I was to see her like that.  The only thing I remember was reaching down, grabbing her with my left hand and squeezing her right where her but meets the back of her leg, as she rolls over. I begin brushing her hair out of her face with my right hand as she keeps looking at me with her big eyes. I keep my hand on the right side of her face, as I feel her rush in to kiss me.  I see her eyes close as our noses and foreheads touch and I kiss her.  It feels like the most romantic thing I have ever done in my life, and I feel her tears with my right hand, even though I know she is completely happy. That's when I wake up.   I don't have romantic dreams.  I just don't.  And so much of what was in this makes me wonder why I had it.  I wonder if that's a dream, or that's something that's going to come true.
Today, as I'm talking to my lawyer, I get an email with pictures of the inside of this condo I'm looking at buying sent from my realtor.  When I saw the layout, I realized where I've seen it.  Change the couch, change the pictures, change the paint... its that place.  After I left the office, I sat at lunch, looking through my email today, finding myself staring at the pictures. I wanted to cry.  Because there is so much in that dream I want to make real.
What do we do with our dreams?
Can you recycle dreams?  Can you save them? How do we even remember them… most times they fade so fast from us as we wake, we never can hold on to them.    When we are taken places we’ve never been and end up there in our dreams, how do remember that later in life if we get there?  How do we ever convince someone else what our dreams are, and how you know things from dreams? How do we transform our dreams into our memories?  That’s the secret to life.  How do you make that real, when you see it, when you feel it, when you know it, and its right there and you can do it… even when you cant, you dreams take you there. 

Conrad said,

"There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not see it any more; I had no time. "

/// S

Down In A Hole

I just had the most religious experience of my life, in a ditch for the last hour and a half….

And I mean that.

 

Many of you know that I’m in a bit of a crisis of my life lately.   I’ve probably talked too much at length about it.  But its a lot of things coming to me at once.  Today, I just thought I’d roll past a farm house for sale on the way home.   Its Iowa, its winter, it isn’t out of the ordinary.  So I didn’t think much of snow and blowing conditions.

As I went down a back sand/gravel road, the wind swept up; it game me an instant white out of everything, and I was tobogganing down into a ditch cut about 3 feet below the road surface.  It was that quick.   Somehow, I didn’t roll.   I was upright.  And that was miracle.  Without the snow plowed into the ditch, I should have rolled over my front right corner and flipped it.  But I was fine.   But I had snow packed up to the windshield.  What do I do?   I get angry.   I punched the steering wheel.   I shut the engine off, and tried to open the door.   No good.   There is so much snow drifting and blowing, I cant open it.  I start climbing across the passenger seat to get out and look at it.  

As I’m standing there, knee deep in the drifts, I see several problems.  First.  The road falls off to nothing in about 3 inches.  I will have to climb maybe 20” height straight up with no running start to get on the road.  The fenders didn’t even line up with the level of the road.  That’s a problem.   Second.  There is so much snow, I could see the shape of the undercarriage of the jeep like a long snow fort where I had plowed through it.  As I climbed to the front, I had snow packed into the grill, so far under the differential I was high spotted, and just wet grassy mud under that.   Third.  There isn’t anything out here.  

Of course I start swearing.   I go with anger.   That didn’t move any snow.   So I go to the tailgate and dig out the e tool, and toss the rubber floor matts out the windows, and start digging.   I spent 10 minutes to clean the drivers side front axle out.  I noticed there is so much snow and grass packed together, that’s what kept my wheels straight going down in the ditch.   Another 10 minutes to clean the passenger side and I realize Ill have a lot more digging to do to clear it if I intend on driving forward…. Ill end up trying to plow 3 feet of packed drift who knows how far.  I keep digging to the back and decide to try it.

At first when I get it, I cant start the jeep.   I panic a bit.  I realize I left it in gear.  I start it back up, and start to work.   After 10 minutes, I was able to get the Grey Ghost to gain some traction and move about 15 feet forward, and angle to the road when I stopped.   I got out to realize I’m plowing snow, and I’m shredding mud and grass everywhere.   I take a few minutes to air down the tires… I let the pressure drop 20 pounds of pressure out of each wheel.   I know my odds are going up of breaking a bead and losing a tire at that point if I catch something hard.  But I’m getting desperate.   I’d driven Big Red out of worse.   I should be able to get out.  

So I go back to work digging.   I stopped to call my Mom, and let her know where I am at.  Then I called the first 5 tow truck places on Google.   No ones coming for me.  I look around, after I put my phone down, and realize how lost I am.   I’m stuck.   I have my ruck, I’ve got food and water.   I’ve got my sleeping bag that I never took out from Chicago in January, and I even have my pistol.  Its amazing to think how prepared I actually was to be there.   Yet, I still wouldn’t get calm to do the right things.    If the jeep blew up.  I would have been in better shape, than just driving it back on to the road.

I jumped out in the ditch and blowing snow and dug some more.  I kept going until my legs were too cold to take it.  I started it up, and rocked away.   She wasn’t going anywhere this time.  I kept sliding laterally, and I couldn’t get going forward or backwards at all… I knew I was right against the edge of the roadway that sat about even with the hood.  I got out to look around… without any trees or brush, I couldn’t make a ladder for it either. I burnt a hole in a floor mat, when I walked around again to look at options.   This time I was stuck.   Its too deep.  Its too much to get it up without any recovery point, and I’m only 2 feet from the road. 

That’s when the metaphor hit me.  Right there in the blowing snow.  I am so fucking close to being on the road.  I’m so close to staying on it, that I can get blown off without me keeping to the path.  Everything in my life is that way right now.  Its me.  Its work.  Its living.  Its dealing with death.  Its telling someone I love her, for the first time in years.  But that’s where I’m at.  Just at the edge of the road, and its so hard to climb up and out.

I sat down and shut the door.   In an hour and change, no one had some by.  No cars.  Back behind me is a barn about 500 yards out.   I started thinking about packing out and hiking it.  I was frustrated.  Just like my life, I’m looking for answers or hints.  I stopped and reached up to my dash and took my beads and thought it through for a minute. 

My beads are not rosary.  They are not Muslim cleric.  They aren’t even my Lakota prayer set.   They were sent to me by my Rinpoche.  Lately, I carry them with me a lot.  They sit right on top of my dash as I drive.  But as soon as I took them, and I thought about it.  I calmed down.  I was open to it.  I let go of my anger.   Then I saw headlights in the mirror. 

I want to say that car was coming anyhow.  I want to say, I had hours to work and find a way out.   Or I could have just given up and walked.  I was prepared for it all.   But I am not prepared to sit and wonder.  All the things I’ve done wrong, happen then.  When I dropped my anger, when I accepted my place at that moment, I realized how close I was to being on the path.   I realize that if I was open to it, love will be there.   I have denied that too long.   If I was open to it, I could find my way out, but if I fought it and kept digging I will sink farther.   If I was prepared I would be safe regardless, If I failed to follow my plans I would still be stuck.  It was only when I stopped to accept it, would I get the true answer. 

In a matter of moments, someone about my age in a pick up truck drove up, and with out asking jumped down to the ditch asking me how I intended to get out.  I told him to give me tug.  He laughed and started digging for some tow straps.  How does all this work out?   When I trust I to.  When I let go of it and trust, it will be made so.    We went to work digging and fastening the strap to the passenger side front axle.   And I just put it in gear.   When the slack was pulled, it took a slight pull and I was rolling forward and up… I started to get excited, and it hung up.   I felt my jeep pulling to the left; turning perpendicular to the road, and I just knew to take the chance to downshift, throw it right and hammer on.  I could have rolled it again.  I should have.  The whole damn thing should have been upside down at this point.   But she rolled right up over the edge and onto the road.  It took the man by complete surprise as he jumped out waving.  I got out calmly to look at things.  Nothings broke.  Nothings damaged.   The trim is scraped up a bit.   I have grass and snow packed mud on everything.  But she’s all right on the road. 

As we pulled apart the two strap and unshackled it from his hitch, I asked him frantically for his name or his number.  I handed him 80ish dollars from my wallet… its all I had.  He wouldn’t take it.  He wouldn’t take my business card.   He wouldn’t even tell me his name.   Then he looked at me, shook my hand, and said, “just pay it forward in your life to someone else some day.”   That’s how I realized how close I am to being on the path.  With that he waived at me, and said “try to keep it on the road,” and he drove off. 

I sat there in the road stunned for a few minutes.  Its so important to have these moments.   I stopped and took my beads and thought about all of that again in the middle of the road, and drove the way home with them on my hand.   I still don’t know any more answers to my questions, but I have a lot more faith in getting onto the road and staying on it, after today.