Dreams
I’ve finished watching The Sandman.
I loved it.
If I’ve time, I’ll probably watch it again.
It left me wondering about many things but no more so than dreams — the sine qua non of the main character and a great deal of the plot.
And it did get me thinking:
What would it be like if, when we die, we carried on dreaming?
I remember when my father-in-law was very close to the end of his life. The grandchildren, grief-stricken by his state of decay and lack of communication, fed him fish ‘n’ chips — his favourite food, apart from a good ol’-fashioned roast dinner. His face was a picture, even though he struggled to eat it all.
I wonder now, and not just because of the underlying story of The Sandman, if wherever he is and whatever metaphysical hemisphere is his way, if he might be dreaming of eating his favourite foods sitting alongside his first wife, Aneta (the love of his life)?
I know. It sounds ridiculous, but then again, why shouldn’t we wonder and imagine about the afterlife?
Dreams are a science or at least there’s an interpretation to them that might help us navigate the hear and now. I’ll be honest, apart from reading a little of Freud, I’ve never stopped long enough to consider the portent of my dreams. Most of the time, even the most enlivening of them, leave me soon after I wake and perhaps I ought to take a notebook with me and start to record more of them.
But I don’t think so. I like the sense that they live in another realm, and I don’t have to to unpick and ruminate on everything that happens to me.
Even if you’re not smitten with the idea of a dream world beyond death, I wonder if we’ve stopped dreaming in the here and now?
About what?
A world not riven with strife, anger, discontent and inequality.
Of course, we’d then have to manifest our rose-tinted world.
How would we do that?
Well, we could (re)imagine a more beautiful world, if for no other reason than to escape the harm of capitalism and all the anthropocentric totems with which to order our earth-wrecking lives.
One last thought. I wonder if the way we see the world is merely or actually a dream or at least it’s not as concrete and real as we’d like to think.
One more poem for the road.
Buddha Chinaski says
— Charles Bukowski
sometimes
you have to take
a step or
two
back,
re-
treat
take
a month
off
don’t
do anything
don’t
want to
do anything
peace is
paramount
pace is
paramount
whatever
you want
you aren’t going to
get
it by
trying too
hard.
Blessings and much love.
— Julian