& {sometimes} WHY

Let’s start with a dream (mine)…

A friend invites me on an outing to Chicago. We travel by train to this big, noisy city and go through a gateway or door. On the other side, it’s perfectly quiet, outdoors, night-time, with a pristine view of the stars in all their constellations. I’m amazed it can be this quiet so close to the bustling city.

There’s also some kind of experiential museum here, and we move on from the starry night area to a series of tightly enclosed spaces—tunnels of a sort. Getting through them requires various physical challenges. In one, a flood of water is simulated and everyone gasps for air as if drowning. But there’s not any REAL water there, just the impression of it. I realize this and try to moderate my breathing, but still strive to get my head above what seems to be there, and I make it through. Other challenges are more strictly physical—leaps and climbs and squeezes, and again, I get through. At the end, I catch a glimpse of a sign that says “Fusillary Museum.”

At the beginning, I carried a rounded thermos of water, but at the end I carry a purse. I rifle through it and find a mirror and some makeup. I’m now back at the train station, but the friend I came with is nowhere to be found, and I don’t know what ticket to buy to get back home. In fact, I’m not entirely sure where home is or where I’m supposed to go next.

What does it mean?

That’s the $64 million question, isn’t it? Some dreams seem too weird or too mundane and may be simply our minds processing stress and anxiety from waking life. But others seem luminous–we consciously FEEL while having them–and this dream was one of those. What I decoded about it first was that the “experiental” museum referred to trials and tribulations I’d been through in the past. That I began the journey with a thermos (Greek for “hot”) and ended it with a purse, or place to keep my riches, led me to the conclusion that my life had transformed what was “hot”–issues I thought hurt me–into the source of my riches.

Inside the purse was a mirror (for reflection) and makeup, which suggests what I gained is meant to be shared, since makeup is something we put on to go out into the world. The comparison between the noisy city and the starry night seem to run parallel to the “Fusillary Museum” of experiences that molded me, transforming what was hot into riches.

Then I took an actual trip…

Several days after dreaming this, I drove back to the city where I worked as a daily newspaper reporter–my first job out of college. I spent a couple days in archives and libraries looking at old clips of articles I’d written–gazing backward into that dream mirror, so to speak.

I came home wondering, as in my dream, what’s next for me? It got me thinking about this blog. I’ve blogged before–on my creative writing and on the teaching of creative writing, as well as several years in which I shared my enthusiasm for home decor, LOL. But this time around, I wanted something different.

Then I read this book…

I started reading Generosity: An Enhancement, a 2009 novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers, before my trip, then finished it after returning home. Eventually my conscious mind registered the book was set in the same place as my dream: Chicago. It was also a re-creation story for a narrator, who, like me, was a writer struggling with his demons.

The plot of the novel involves a young Algerian woman who draws everyone to her because of her generous and exuberant spirit in spite of growing up in a war-torn African country. How could someone from such a past be always so happy? About half the people she meets want to protect her and the other half want to exploit her so they can cash in on what she has.

Not so different from real life, right?

I’ll let you discover on your own how it ends, as it’s well worth the journey through Powers’ dense prose. The books closes with this insight from the narrator:

…fate has no power over anything crucial. Which it never really does, if I could just remember. What we have been is as nothing; what we will be is ever beyond us.

That brings me back to the Flammarion engraving…

The figure in the engraving is a pilgrim (like my dreaming and waking-life selves and the narrator in Powers’ novel!) and is in a place where there’s both daylight and starry night, poking through the boundaries of existence to reach what’s beyond.

Always. They coexist.

The narrator of Generosity: An Enhancement admonishes, “Happiness is not a reward for virtue. Happiness is the virtue.” And it’s always within reach, he says. We are at all times able to reach beyond the boundaries of our existence and touch what’s beyond.

My dream, my trip, this book, this engraving, all tell me that in spite of my 68 years, struggles with my past and frustrations with my present, there’s much more ahead for me. And I don’t have to beat anyone up to find it; it will find me.

Perhaps it already has.

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Use comments to share…

• A particularly compelling dream you had and what you think it meant
• A synchronicity of connection of life events you’ve experienced