Dreams from the Subway

Do you remember what you dreamed last night?  Other nights?  Mostly they’re hard to remember.  Awaken and the dream breaks into fragments, then scatter in the wind.  Dreams are weird.

📷 geralt on pixabay

Although there are many theories as to why we dream and what their meanings are, I tend to think they’re pretty much individualistic in interpretation, and are borne of several images you’ve come across either that same day or from past times.

That is to say our brain processes so much “stuff” that it can’t put much attention on each and every thing that it takes in.  Do you ever come across something, say, an interesting sign along the highway that captures your attention, but you’re in the middle of a conversation with someone so -poof!- you forget it?  Then the same billboard sign comes up in a dream that night, in a situation having nothing to do with your conversation you had with your friend when you first saw it.  Just like that.  Various fragments merge into a dream, all vying for attention.

📷 succo on pixabay

Throughout the day many people, objects, words, even memories (aha! that’s why the past comes up) all travel through the roads of your eyes, ears, thoughts, hopping aboard a train (yeah, like a train of thought!).  But they don’t all take the same train.  Some take a different route, somewhere in the brain (subconscious part I guess) and get dropped off there, with or without baggage.  Let’s call it the subway.

You go on throughout your daily tasks, not even thinking about the passengers in the subway.  After all, you’re dealing with the here and now, today.  Go to work, drive past your old house, go to the store, read, watch a little TV.

If you’re lucky, by the end of the day you’ll be sleepy and go to bed.  Ah, sleep!  Nectar for the weary soul.  Next thing you know someone is telling you not to go in there (an old house) that you travelled miles to get to.  You start awakening, beginning to realize you are dreaming.  The more awake you become you try to focus on your dream…”I was walking dark streets, near (forgive me) a railroad...I see a house I used to live in but it is rearranged and I can’t get in it...My old friend Greg is mad at me and tells me to stay away…”

📷 enriquelopezgarre on pixabay

Fuzzy scenes now.  Blinking your eyes, you realize it’s only 4AM.  You had a dream. You’re wondering:
 “Why was I walking in the dark, railroad nearby, from a place in my teens?  Why toward a house I lived in as an adult? Why the heck is Greg mad at me?  And why does he look like that Nationals’ ballplayer?”  Hahaha…

Why?  Who the heck knows!  Images from the past always come back to haunt you in dreams:  the path, the railroad tracks, the old house, old friends.  Recognition of recent events:  the Nationals played in the World Series.

This is a variation of some of my recent dreams, since I really can’t remember the sequence, but even looking at these bits and pieces, I can make up my own interpretation:

I’ve come down a long, dark, lonely path (image I remember as a teen once walking home in the dark - spooky); made a home for myself as an adult, moved on from that house (which in reality I pass by once in a while and it is near railroad tracks).  Although I miss that place sometimes, I can’t return.  Lost Greg too (a friend I haven’t seen in years).  Wish I could see him again.  He tells me no. 

The Nationals ballplayer?  He likely triggered this whole thing!  I saw him on TV recently, thought he looked a lot like my old friend Greg, then I forgot about it, or so I thought.  Well apparently the ballplayer got on the train with my baggage and waited around in the subway till he could visit me in my dreams!

Dreams are so weird. 😕😕😕   

📷 Kellepics on pixabay

Theresa M

ps - Sweet Dreams to you anyway!!  😌💤

Poetry Compilation: Night Sky Moods

                                   Nightfall      
                                           
    Crickets signal the             Pinpoints pop up  
    nightfall                              in the skies.
    I hear them call                  Now the fireflies
    Birds murmur their             blink signals across
    final peeps                         the lane,
    ready to sleep.                   scenting the rain.                       

📷Fireflies at Ochanomizu 1880 
by Kobayashi Kiyochika Wikimedia commons

                       Clouds drift over the half moon
                       bringing showers soon.
                       An owl sends out a warning, 
                       long night till morning.                    
                       -Theresa M                          

   
 ☁☁☔🌌🌘☁☁

             

📷 Supernova Explosion by NASA, 1987

   Starlit Wonder

And all the dreams I’ve dreamed before

that stretch out into the skies,

each hanging as stars -

   an intricate web -

reach out and extend to connect

to a dream that is yours.

Persistent desire feeding the fire;

The glow of the night sky -

   from northern lights?

   from lightning bright?

   or the ecstasy of 

   a new creation

   of starlight?

   -Theresa M

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘

📷 Turkkinen on pixabay

                                                        
                               Moonglow

Silently the moonglow lays a glimpse of light
over the hills and valleys…
a sheet of snow reflects the white light--
   faintly, softly.

Few houses scattered like mirages of dream-like 
safety, warmth.
A light or two here and there casts like yellow candlelight
praising the moonglow.

This highway I drive leaves me no justice
to stay and watch the miracles of night.

Onward I go with the flashes of these dreams--
images my mind longs to partake of--
Cool, blue horizons with stars casts like lights.
But no match for the moonglow
on the snowy hills and valleys
that reflects the holy one.

Be at peace.

               - Theresa M

📷  cocoparisienne on pixabay

Oh, Grow Up!

We truly do understand a lot more as we get older.  I can’t imagine how life would be much different if I had all this knowledge as a teenager.  Choices would have been made way different from what they were.  Or would they?

Maturity with knowledge is different from just plain knowledge.  One can learn, study, read, know a lot of stuff but still not be mature.  Being mature comes from the continuous choices of learning from experiences, whether it be one’s own or from others.🏫

Just take a look at all the fine examples we see everyday.  For instance, look at college-educated people in government.  🗽Their life experiences vary.  Have they learned to be mature?  Or do they still call others names?  Do they bully?  Do they disrespect people on a regular basis?  How about accepting responsibility for one’s actions?  Do they acknowledge mistakes; apologize?  Do they put others’ needs on a level of importance or manipulate their situation to benefit from the less fortunate?


Many, many questions can be asked here, but it doesn’t take too many answers from those questions to show how one has either grown in maturity by their interactions with others, or remained childish and, well, downright immature.  Knowledge is a wonderful thing, but so is insight to bring about personal growth.💡

With experience added to knowledge is where maturity can develop.  But not on its own.  One has to acknowledge the consequences and take continuous action to attend to the internal problem.  Internal, because blaming (external) does not help.  Blaming, name-calling, disrespecting - all of that - just leaves one pretending there is not a thing wrong with one’s self:  “nothing to see here folks...look how stupid and ignorant and mean and unjust and blah-blah-blah everyone else is!” 👀

That kind of attitude and posturing leaves one in the dark.  It takes a lot of courage to take an honest look at one’s self and acknowledge flaws.*  Acknowledge.  Then accept.  And make a choice to work on it.  Growing up, becoming mature, isn’t easy.  But it’s the “ripe” thing to do! 😀
Choose wisely.       Theresa M.


*taking a self-inventory is a very helpful tool. It is step 4 of the 12-step programs (AA, NA):
“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”  

It's Always Time

There is no time...here’s where one fills in the blank:  “like the present” “left for you” “left.”

Time is whatever you make it to be.  A lot.  A little.  Long ago yet far ahead.  What is our personal trajectory of time?  Whose timeline do I fit in or overlap?  Who has gone before me?  Who will go after?

📷 Fireflies at Ochanomizu 1880by Kobayashi Kiyochika Wikimedia commons

Where did time go?  Nowhere.  It was, is and always will be.  Everyone measures it differently.  Experience it in varying intensity.  Time is neither rich nor poor.  It is neither good or bad.  It is intertwined with all people, all creatures on the earth.  It exists among the planets and stars as they interact with us.  Consider the moon, the tides.

Time plays with us like a breeze, moving about the leaves, rustling them down from the trees.  I hear you leaves.  I see you trees.  But time itself is silent and unseen.

📷  by geralt (Gerd Altman) pixabay

Unless you consider aging as time seen.  The wrinkles under my eyes, the taut skin on my hands.  The gray hair blending with natural colors I’ve worn through previous time.  Is that the same as seeing time?

Hearing babbling babies start talking words, then sentences, then whole conversations, as they grow up and grow on.  Is that the same as hearing time?

Can you feel time?  Taste it?  Smell it?  Perhaps in a sense, yes.  Feeling the weariness after years of labor, ache.  Tasting a fruit you haven’t had since childhood - flashback of picking peaches in an orchard.  The smell of a logfire, instant picture of grandmother’s house in the countryside.


We do sense time.  Yet can we make sense of time?  What did my time on earth mean?  Will I ever know?  Will I ever understand?

I guess we’ll see.  In time.    Theresa M