As I have grown older and lived through many winters, springs, summers and falls in the mountains of North Carolina, I have come to the conclusion that it is easier to drink a glass of wine of an evening than it is to creatively blog/ponder life in my somewhat stream of consciousness syntax.
Don’t get me wrong, after writing 248 blog posts during the past few years, I am still captivated by the process of putting my thoughts into coherent sentences. Do I love to write: Yes! Am I possessed to create paragraph after paragraph of personal commentary and thereby fulfill my life’s calling: No.
What I know is that the more you do something the better you get—it’s the practice makes perfect paradigm. A fellow blogger friend of mine has, over the past several years of writing, achieved a good measure of accomplishment in this very area of thought. His ability to craft an easy to follow commentary has greatly improved since he began blogging a few years back.
This self same friend has also been a follower of my random thoughts and has encouraged me to keep putting the pen to paper as it were.
This morning I received an e-mail from Amazon alerting me to a book that their data-collecting machine thought might interest me. The books name is “The Dream Songs” and was written by poet John Berryman over a period of ten years from 1959 through 1969. After reading a few of the poems online and reading the various glowing reviews, I ordered it and hope to see it in the mail box in the next few days.
When I think about dreams—the kind we experience during sleep—I am often perplexed by their seeming “realness”. I am a big fan of actually sleeping through the night and not even having a sense of remembering what my mind did during those bedtime hours. However, as I have grown older, sleeping through the night is only a fifty/fifty chance. What I have found is that upon waking in the middle of the night, I am still connected to whatever it is I have been “dreaming”. My first impression is that my sub-conscious thoughts and pictures seem so very real in those first moments of consciousness. I am also aware of how complex and intricate these subterranean wanderings can be.
Yet, later in the day, these images have faded and I am left with a sense of longing and/or a feeling that these bits and pieces of my psyche are still floating around somewhere. Even though I think I have a pretty good grasp of reality, I find myself wondering sometimes what is real and what is not. As we live our lives, what we remember about past events becomes a little blurry and hard to actually pin down.
I recently read an article about peoples memories surrounding the events of 9/11. A group of a couple hundred people were interviewed right after the Twin Towers fell and their recollections recorded. These same people have been interviewed several times since and it was found that over time, almost everyone’s memories of that date changed somewhat. We think of memories as being fixed and hard coded in our brains for all time. Yet what the researchers found is that memories are open for interpretation at each point of our contact with them. Current data even suggests that “eye-witness” testimony is unreliable in this very same way—over time memories shift and change.
So it seems with our lives and our dreams. As we reflect on our life’s journey, we may add or subtract details that we find interesting or distracting.
All of what has proceeded is but a moments thought about dreams and what they mean. It is like they are an iceberg—the parts we remember are all above the water and the parts that we don’t make up the huge portion that is under water. All in all, the effects are huge when we happen to bump into some of them during the day.
It could be as Alice says: “Curiouser and curiouser!”
“I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!”
Have a great ride!
Looking For The Long Ride 
What I know, and have seen over these many years, is that the “you” of today has successfully moved now beyond that time/place of hurt and disappointment that we shared collectively back in the day. I’ve been awaiting this.
You are well-positioned for the golden years ahead; methinks those dream fragments that twinkle from nighttime into day’s awareness are like treasure hidden in a field, being uncovered. As the Moody Blues sang “peace, almost seen.”
And we daily uncover bits of that treasure for a reason, which you do/will come to understand and utilize in your self-expression.
I’m so happy that the Writer of the great Code of the Universe hath chosen to toss us two together for this long ride, although yours is on an 18-speed cheetah-like fine-tuned mechanism, and mine is on a Vespa.
I couldn’t help recalling a scriptural fragment, prompted by your posting above–dare I say it!–your young men shall see visions and your ___ men shall dream dreams! What does that make you? Ha!
And we did have visions back in that day, yes, of how we were going to do it all correctly, by the Book you know; now we have precious vintage which (like Sinatra once sang)…”from the brim to the dregs” flows sweet and clear. “Ahh…” Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is he that trusteth in Him.”