Dreaming

I had this dream, a very rare and welcome event, worthy of an intensifier. I believe that I always dream, usually while sleeping, but not always. So I remembered a dream.

I record dreams whenever I can because I think dreams are important, capable of revealing my selves in unique ways. Long before I realized or admitted it, in the early ‘80s I had a dream where I was trying to get out of Chicago because I was sleeping in the same fucking little room under the stairs in my mother’s little apartment commuting 46 miles a day on a bicycle to make five bucks an hour. My dream let me know that I’d rather be dead in a ditch than living with my mother at 40. The rest was doable and I made it with four months to spare.

The dream was reflective of what goes on in my head—where else could it come from? Since Janice’s sickness I’m always tired and always on duty, and I sometimes want to lash out verbally—which means “with words” and is often used instead of “orally” when referring to talk, not by you though—and now and again I want to slap a silly or obnoxious human expression of all that is, or hit a squirrel with a projectile.

My dream had me using a slingshot. When I think about taking aim at the squirrels in our walnut tree, I think of holding the slingshot in my right hand, like a pistol, and pulling back the sling with my left.

Before the dream I had talked to a friend who said he pulled the sling back with his dominant right hand and held the handle with his left, and in my dream that’s what I did. Not only that, I didn’t hold it high and sight down the V at the target. I shot from about mid-thorax and nailed her at 20 yards. I heard the shot hit her hindquarters. I think I saw it, but I didn’t have my glasses on. She exploded up the opposite side of the trunk, raced as far as she could and then leaped onto a neighbor’s roof, which leads to a huge oak in the front that seems to be squirrel central.

The little thud on that squirrel’s hiney was immensely satisfying, like the time I had a new fine wife, a good job, and a new car and then at a big picnic with all my friends we played softball and I hit a home run. It was wonderful, and nobody got slapped. Then I woke up, and I felt much better.