The Holy Grail / Red Diamond

Friday night

Dream 1: The Holy Grail

My wife and I were vacationing on a wooded hillside that led down to a lake. My brother Andrew and sister-in-law Susan were there, too. Each couple had their own cabin on the property. One morning I woke up and looked around for my wife; she wasn't there. I walked around the corner into the next room and found her, fully clothed, lying on top of a hospital bed, reading a magazine. She said, "I got up earlier, and didn't want to wake you." She was fine; the hospital bed just happened to be there. A little later I decided to take a walk. At first I met up with Andrew and Susan at a picnic table at a common area on the lawn, and we chatted for awhile. We'd meet up again later. I got up and continued strolling. Soon I came across an old man who owned a very nice house in a young strand of trees near the top of the hill. I complemented him on his home and he said that it was a valuable piece of property. I turned my attention toward the lake, where I saw two nice young people coming toward me from the shore. They were vacationers, too. They passed me, and when I turned around, there was suddenly a high water tower to the right of the old man's house. The two kids had climbed the ladder to the top and had a great view of the entire area. Just then a flock of fairly large black birds flew overhead. I looked up and began counting them. I had gotten past 30 when I noticed that at least three of the black birds had bright white patches that gleamed as they flew by.

Dream 2: Red Diamond

My friend Duncan had invited me to a party at his apartment. I had his phone number and a key for his door, but I didn't know his apartment number. Once I was inside the building I was surprised to see that it wasn't a "normal" set of apartments. There were many tall doors, resembling lockers. A group of people were lined up in the hallway, and were being interrogated by a guard. Apparently they, too, were guests, but didn't have the apartment number or the key, so the guard would have to interview them to determine who was "worthy" of entry -- as if they were going to an exclusive club.

I got out my cell phone and called Duncan. My friend M-J answered; she was already inside. I said, "I don't have the apartment number." She said, "It's the one with the red diamond." (I was supposed to look for the door with the apartment number superimposed on a red background shaped like a diamond.) Soon I became exasperated. I said, "Can't you just give me the number?" She repeated, "Look for the red diamond!"

I hung up the phone and walked up and down the hallway, looking for the door. I finally found it, off to my right, and bent down to put the key into the lock, which was only a few feet from the floor. Once the door was opened, I still didn't have access to the apartment; instead, I was confronted with a series of obstacles, set up to impede the progress of unauthorized guests. I was standing before many layers of retractable metal gates, but, because I possessed the proper key, I was able to pry them apart. That only got me so far. I still didn't know how to get through the other side, so I was standing in a cramped space, about the size of a closet, wondering what to do. The guard noticed that I had obtained "authorized" entry, so he stopped what he was doing, and turned his attention to me. He led another guy my way (apparently he passed the test) and placed him in the tiny room with me. We were crammed together, and it was very uncomfortable; I was beginning to feel claustrophibic. The guard said, "We're gonna have to figure out how many homies we're gonna put in here..." and I woke up.

*****

Dream 1

All in all, this seemed like a nice vacation destination.

My dad is going into the hospital next week for a surgical procedure, so that that's been on my mind. That's probably why the hospital bed showed up.

The "Holy Grail" of the title refers to the black birds with bright white patches; those would be Ivory Billed Woodpeckers, the rarest birds in the United States, and thus the holy grail for American bird watchers. Despite reports that the Ivory Bill was sighted a few years back in Arkansas, I'm not convinced, and keep hoping that someone will come up with conclusive proof that they still exist, such as a decent photo or video. Seeing an Ivory Bill would be a dream come true for me.

Dream 2

Duncan used to work with me in the customer service department at Adcom Art Supplies in Virginia. We shared a townhouse in Falls Church with various other people for several years, starting in 1988. I haven't seen him since attending his wedding sometime in the latter half of the '90s. M-J is a close friend, and is married to another good friend, Preston, who also occasionally appears in this blog. M-J and and Duncan never knew each other. Preston introduced me to her long after Duncan had moved to Atlanta.

The entrance to Duncan's apartment reminded me of the opening of the "Get Smart" TV show, in which Max had to go through all sorts of sliding doors to gain access to headquarters.

I never thought that I was being kidnapped, or that I'd be held in the tiny room for a long period of time; I thought that the guard was figuring out how many folks he could fit into that room before passing us along to the next step. It was almost like an elevator operator assessing how many people he could safely carry during each trip. By the way, I think the guard in the hallway was probably the same guard that I see each morning when I come in to work.

I have a theory about the origin of the "red diamond." The other night I was looking up old stuff on YouTube again, and found episodes from a serial called "The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." These short films were produced in the late 1960s and appeared during the "Banana Splits" show. These "new adventures" combined live action and animation, and the concept was pretty strange: Huck, Tom and Becky had entered a cave, and that led them into some strange animated world(s) that often resembled far-off lands, such as India or the Middle East. I watched clips of one such episode, in which their nemesis, Injun Joe, was running around in what appeared to be India, wearing a turban on his head. He was determined to steal the (single) eye from a giant, many-armed, Buddah-like statue. He climbed up to the top and used his dagger to remove the eye -- a large red jewel. A red diamond, perhaps? OK, it was probably a ruby, but you never know.

Red diamonds are also one of the four suits in poker. Maybe I was thinking about that, and about the poker tournament in which I play every year with Andrew and my old friends, including Preston. The next round is September 15.