Foghorn Leghorn’s Dream

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Whoa! I’m telling you boy, that was

One helluva dream I had last night!

Now usually, I say, usually,

When I have a dream

It’s about some chick I been-a talkin’ to,

Or maybe I’m easin,’ on down to the creek to cast a line, you know.

But last night I had a dream

That knocked my socks off –

Well if I wore socks, you know.

I dreamed, of all things,

That I was back in my Mamma’s brood, for goodness sake!

And she was tellin’ me and my brothers and sisters

All the things we got to watch out for –

First off,

There was foxes and ki-yotes and the like,

Hawks that will swoop down on you

And all kind of dangers out there.

But then she starts to warn us

About expectin’ everything from Farmer Jones.

“Don’t get too used to the hen house

‘Cause if you're not careful, you’ll get snatched right out.”

“And don’t think you’ll have fresh feed everyday

‘Cause you’ll start to notice,

As ya’ll get older,

That as the days go along

There will be a brother missin’ here

Or a sister snatched up there.”

“Keep close,” she said,

“ ‘Cause you never know how long you’ve got in this place.”

Well, I’m tellin’ ya, boy

I woke up in a cold sweat!

Well, I mean, if a rooster was to sweat,
I'd-a had beads across my forehead!
Here I am

Always expectin’ to have the upper hand in life

So to speak

But now that I think of it,

All along I’ve had people disappearin’ from me.

Where are my brothers and sisters?

What ever happened to my Mamma?

Everybody that has ever meant anything to me

All gone, nowhere to be seen,

And I don’t even know when it all happened.

And WHY,

I say WHY

Am I just now feelin’ all of this?

I know, boy,

I’m always tellin’ you

To pay attention when I’m talkin’ to ya.

But it looks like now I’m the one

That’s gotta pay attention.

Now I don’t often think about these things.

I usually go blithely along

From one reel to the next

Just lettin’ the script unfold,

Then it’s curtain time in the old theater.

This all got me to thinkin’, though.

This whole thing has got me to thinkin’,

Wonderin’ if that next reel

Will always be there tomorrow.

Wonderin’ if I can be so sure

About what comes after that next curtain.

                                                                   ~ CK

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* For an introduction to the drama monologue, see yesterday's post

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Dreaming at Midlife

I had a dream last night. I dreamed that I was moving back to my hometown, and for some reason that meant I had one year left in high school. My first thought was that if that was the case, I then had opportunity to pick take up the trumpet again. I could have one more year in the high school band. I remembered that the old cornet that I owned had a damaged mouthpiece and that I should replace that.  My next thought was, why not replace the whole instrument? The cornet had more resistance and a more constricted sound that a trumpet anyway.  Time to go for the free-flowing and clear notes of the trumpet!


Not a Nightmare

It was odd that this was no nightmare. I have had very unpleasant dreams in the past in which I have found myself back in high school facing an exam for a class I did not like and had thought I was through with it. There was a dread in facing that same ordeal, and I would be greatly relieved to awaken to real life whenever I had such a dream.  This dream, on the other hand, had the flavor of renewal, the promise of music, and an idea of how to redo something in a better way.

I real life, I have no plans or desire to return to my hometown, and I doubt that I will be shopping for a trumpet, but the dream is causing me to stop to consider my life at this point. I believe that our unconscious tells us some important things while we sleep.  Some dreams are small; some are big and dramatic forcing us to take stock of our lives. This was an “in between” kind of dream. No big deal, just a gentle nudging – a friendly suggestion perhaps.

The questions I must ask myself are, Is this a dream about music, or is it about creativity? Is there some reason I need to “sound the trumpet?” Trumpet soundings in literature can mean anything from a message from the king to the coming apocalypse.  In real life, trumpets can serve as a bright note in entertainment. One of my high school band directors used to tell the trumpet section, “You must remember that you are the hosses!” Meaning that trumpets carried the band, using a metaphor of horses that pulled the carriages and wagons.  He wanted us to know that musically we had to be there, we had to get it right, we had to lead the way. If trumpets faltered, the whole musical piece faltered.

Looking Ahead

So here I am this morning thinking of what it means to be reconnecting with some aspect of my high school days in my old hometown. Then I read an article in The New York Times by Oliver Sacks, “The Joys of Old Age (No Kidding),” reflecting upon his upcoming eightieth birthday. I have enjoyed much of Oliver Sacks’ writing ever since I discovered The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat back in 1985. Most recently I read The Mind’s Eye and Musicophillia: Tales of Music and the Brain.  His article in the NYT looks forward to his years ahead:

One has had a long experience of life, not only one’s own life, but others’, too. One has seen triumphs and tragedies, booms and busts, revolutions and wars, great achievements and deep ambiguities, too. One has seen grand theories rise, only to be toppled by stubborn facts. One is more conscious of transience and, perhaps, of beauty. At 80, one can take a long view and have a vivid, lived sense of history not possible at an earlier age. I can imagine, feel in my bones, what a century is like, which I could not do when I was 40 or 60. I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.

Looking to Today

So I am calling my nocturnal reverie a midlife dream.  I am going to say that I am midway between high school and the joys of the octogenarian life that Oliver Sacks describes (although I am closer to Oliver Sacks than I am to high school). In light of my dream in which I looked back to a joyful aspect of my youth followed by a reading of the joys of old age, I am now in a position to examine my current life. What will I now bring forward from my youth? What will I do with the awareness that I will enter the ranks of the elders, assuming that I live a few more years?

The most important thing is to go with this means for me now. Today.  There is, of course, no going back to the past. Moreover, there is no guarantee for the future. If we listen to our own soul talk that comes to us in our dreams, our meditations, and our daily interactions we can have a better understanding of what to do for today as we guide our soul along an unsure path.

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Photos are all Public Domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons: 

Top: U.S. Army Herald Trumpets

Middle: Wynton Marsalis

Bottom: Illustration of the white rabbit in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

I'll Be Seeing You

No, I'm not going anywhere. It's just that I awoke the other day with this song in my head. It's one of those from the Great American Song Book, of the WWII era. I can't recall ever actually sitting down to listen to it in its entirety, but would recognize certain phrases from the song. I suppose it's one of those tunes that has become ingrained into the public consciousness. I had to look it up online to learn that the music  for "I'll Be Seeing You" was written by Sammy Fain, and the lyrics by Irving Kahal. First published in 1938, it was from the Broadway musical, Right This Way.

Here's how the song came into my head: I was dreaming that I was singing the song. I was standing at the microphone and wearing a gray jacket and black tie; there was a lady at the piano, and the number began with great delight. I guess I was Frank Sinatra, or Dino (only in my dreams).

Sometimes a dream is to be interpreted, sometimes it just needs to be celebrated. So here are two renditions that I found on You Tube, representing the old and the new. Michael Buble bring a fresh new face to an old classic with this first video. In the second video, I don't know who the people are in the slide show, but the musical rendition is worth it. How can you top the great Jimmy Durante with that gravelly voiced stacato delivery and that upbeat style of his? He was the quintessential showman.













"Good night, Mrs. Calabash...wherever you are."



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Dream Time: Where Domestication and Convention Are Upended by Wildness

Dream Train

I watched as my primitiveness
Rode out on a west-bound train.
I could only take a deep breath,
Clinch my jaw,
And fight back the tears
As one does when the lover he cannot live without
Says good-bye.

For on that train
Along with those ape-like instincts
Rode all that is lovely, fair and glad.

A priest was talking and did not notice.
A professor chuckled with half interest.
A poet was wide-eyed and shouted
In soft whispers that focus the heart,
"Look, feel, and remember.
This is the way of the soul!"




We have many kinds of dreams. Often they are what I call “little” dreams - interesting brief scenes that probably tell us something about ourselves. Then there is the “big” dream that you know contains something important from your unconscious. Sometimes these big dreams occur at a time of transition in life, and sometimes it seems that they occur when one’s subconscious self knows that the conscious self needs to be aware of something. The poem above was inspired by one of those big dreams that left me with strong sensations and strong emotions. I tried to boil down the experience into as few words as possible. If you are interested in seeing where the poem came from, I’ve included the entry from my dream journal below. This was a dream in which I was re-examining some previous vocational considerations and realizing their paralytic effect. I also met my muse, who apparently lives with the wild things.

Dream of the Train

I went to a gathering at A.J. and L.J.’s house. (In real life A.J. is a college theology professor and L.J. is a church choir member and a refined southern lady). It was a large, spacious house with many rooms. There were many pictures, artifacts, and decorations all over (In some ways like a museum). I sat down on a wide staircase in one of the great rooms (it actually looked like open steps going up to a porch, like on a big country house). Just as I sat down, I saw an alligator run out from under the steps. I was startled - I tried to move up and away from the alligator - then I noticed that the alligator was muzzled so he couldn't open his jaws. At that point I realized that the creature was a family pet. L.J. said it was time to feed the alligator. She brought out a cooked chicken. The alligator took it. He could open his jaws just enough to get the chicken in his mouth, but no further because of the muzzle.

The gathering was some kind of meet-and-eat social. There was talk about re-examining the priesthood. I heard someone talk about seeing the priesthood from a different vantage point/ different perspective/ new phase in life. The one talking said he had never been so tempted to enter the priesthood as he was now at this juncture in life. I found myself saying, "Hey, yeah! That's right"

As this conversation was going on, I walked around to a winding staircase, away from the crowd, and lay down on the stairs as if asleep - unable to get up, paralyzed. My mind was sleepy, but eyes open and awake to everything. I watched a young woman with long, light-brown hair come into the house. She walked through the gathering of people in the other room and around to the staircase where I lay motionless. She said nothing, but looked at me and took hold of my foot (left foot, I think). Immediately my body was fully energized and my mind completely clear. I was instantly up and standing. The woman then walked back around the corner into the great room where others were gathered. I immediately realized the truth of my encounter - that this woman was my anima who could fully enliven.

I went back into the great room - did not see her. I asked A.J. if he saw the woman who came through. He halfway chuckled and said, "Oh yes, She was here but saw the alligator and then took off." (as if she were frightened away). I thought, "Oh no!" I ran to look out the window. I found myself looking out a huge window overlooking a city, looking down on what appeared to be Grand Central Station with trains leaving out, other trains loading up and preparing to disembark. Suddenly I realized that this was a dream perfectly depicting the feelings of at once being touched by, inspired by the anima/muse, being seized by beauty, but then being unable to hold the moment; realizing that you have momentarily grasped the unattainable, and longing for that life and beauty once more as it slips beyond your grasp.

I turned to A.J. and said, "This is it! It's incredible. These are dream images communicating those creative feelings about my anima! I turned back to look out the window to watch the trains leaving. I wanted to savor the feeling that was a combination of longing/ regret/ hopefulness/ gladness/ gratitude/loss/sadness/ a fullness on the verge of tears. I continued to watch the trains leaving, knowing that she was on one of them. One train was being loaded with gorillas, several rows of them, on their way to a natural environment after being kept in a zoo. I said to myself, "They are all leaving," still savoring that feeling of loss/ sadness/ gratitude/ longing. Then I turned back to A.J, walked through the house - amazed that it was a dream but just as clear and vivid as life.

Later I found myself back home. A few friends were there. Vicki came in. I said, "Vicki, do you want to hear about my incredible dream?"
Vicki said, "No, I'm about talked out." She had been on the phone with a client. I said, "Okay. I've got to go write this one down." Thus ended the dream.

[Note: Some time after this dream was written down (and after the poem had been written) I was re-reading it and realized something else about the anima’s departure: A.J. said, “She saw the alligator and then took off.” It was not the alligator that she feared. What she feared was being domesticated like that alligator. Wildness was her natural state. Apparently creativity is connected with a wild spontaneity. Just as the apes were leaving the zoo to go to a natural setting, she was leaving a highly domesticated scene and going to that wild and natural state – at least that is how I interpret it.]

Dreams, Jet lag and Synchronicity

“When you go on a trip, in your dreams you will still be home. Then after you’ve come home you’ll dream of where you were. It’s a kind of jet lag of the unconscious.”
- Barbara Kingsolver (from Animal Dreams)


Sometimes I am amazed by synchronicity. Just last week I came across a poem I had written back in 1985. Usually my poems do not rhyme. Rhyme fits in well with the 19th century and Hallmark Cards, but is not a scheme that I routinely choose. “Threnody Praise,” however, was one of those poems that came to me insisting upon rhyme and meter. The background for this poem is that I had spent two wonderful years teaching English in Hong Kong. While I was there, there were a few occasions in which I had vivid dreams of life back in the USA. Then when I returned home, I had many dreams of being back in Hong Kong. Sometimes I will still have a dream in which I hop on a bus and travel over the hill and across a bridge to arrive in Hong Kong – always a great dream!

So here comes the synchronicity part: reading another blog, I found the quote from Barbara Kingsolver’s 1991 book, Animal Dreams. She seems to be commenting on the very phenomenon that I was experiencing. So here is the poem. I hope you like it.



Threnody Praise

On a warm night in China
I saw the streets of Nevada -
Saw a breakfast cafe in early morning light.
And the hint of brewed coffee was such a delight.

Now I am back in the houses of the West.
Sometimes at night when I lie down to rest,
The sights and the smells of the crowded East
Fill my dreams when I suspect it the least.

In the heat of the race a child appears,
Silently pointing to what I once held dear.
And in the stillness of winter, sometimes it seems
That the spring of times past threatens future dreams.

Memory can be a joy or a dirge,
But remembrance allows my presence to merge
Songs of the past with hopes of the heart,
Weaving the being of a wandering bard.



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