Heron / Fire

Saturday night (12/22/07)

Dream 1: Heron

Duncan S. and I were in our early 20s, and we were renting rooms in the home of my ex-boss, Rod S, and his wife. Their own kids had already moved out of their house at that point, but Rod and his wife still lived there. The place was undergoing an extensive renovation, giving it more of a "modern" look. The upper floor of the house had new drywall, and I noticed that one wall had a door cut into it at a pretty strange angle. The finishing touch would be the installation of a large white sculpture of a great blue heron, resplendent in flight with neck folded in the customary "S" shape, which would sit boldly at the apex of the new roof.

Dream 2: Fire

A young punk, maybe 18 to 20 years old, decided that he'd like to burn a car in a parking lot, just for kicks, so he did. Soon, a crowd gathered; they had followed the billowing smoke and the flames, and all of the onlookers and curiosity-seekers were standing around, waiting for the authorities. One of the members of the crowd surveyed the scene, and he was mightily pissed off. It was Bruce Springsteen, and this was happening in his neighborhood. The "camera" focused on his face, which was very stern and serious, as the flames and smoke danced behind his head. They seemed an apt metaphor for his rising anger. Eventually, the fire department arrived and put the fire out, and the police carted the offender off to jail. A few days later, Springsteen had a hunch about what would happen next. He strolled back to the parking lot (wearing his jeans, boots and a T-shirt) and waited. Sure enough, after a little while, the pyro kid showed up. He had been released temporarily, and returned to the scene of the crime to see what he had wrought. Bruce approached him, as if he wanted to strike up a conversation. The kid turned to look at him, whereupon Springsteen head-butted him in the face, and knocked him to the ground. The kid was still lying there, with blood coming out of his nose, when Bruce stood over him, looking down. He said, "What kind of sentence did they give you?" The kid said what it was, and Springsteen frowned. He said, "That's excessive... it's outside of the Federal guidelines. I want you to know that I'll do everything I can to get you lighter sentence." The young man looked up and said, "You can do that?" Bruce said, "Well, I work nights."

At the end of the dream, Bruce was kicking a soccer ball around with me and our pal, E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt. Somebody kicked it too hard, and it went over a fence into the neighbor's yard. Bruce looked at me and said, "You're up." I was always the go-fer, and I didn't like it. As I opened the picket gate to the neighbor lady's garden, I sang a Steely Dan song to myself: "I don't want to do your dirty work, oh yeah / I don't want to do your dirty work no more."

*****

Dream 1: Heron

Duncan and I worked together at Adcom Art Supplies in the late 1980s and early '90s. We shared a townhouse in Falls Church for several years with a revolving cast of characters. Rod was my previous boss in TN. Fortunately I didn't actually see him in this dream. If I never see him again, that's fine with me. I last laid eyes on him in April 2005. I haven't seen Duncan since I attended his wedding in Connecticut, at least 10 years ago. Jimmie and I took a trip up there to attend their nuptuals, and at one point we rounded a corner at night and nearly hit a deer or two. Memories of that incident, and of the wonderful fall colors and 18th & 19th century architecture are all vivid in my mind to this day.

My wife and I drove up to Virginia last week for the holidays, and we're still in VA now. The day that I had this dream, we got a close-up view of an immense great blue heron as it flew across I-95, maybe 10 feet above our car.

Dream 2: Fire

I like this version of Springsteen, practicing "tough love." You can almost hear him saying, "I'll beat the crap out of you if you screw up my neighborhood, but I'll fight to ensure that you get a fair shake in the courts." His response "Well, I work nights" meant that his "day Job," playing in a rock band, was actually a "night job," which meant that he could fight for truth, justice and the American way during the day time. This dream was no doubt influenced by interviews Bruce has given during the "Magic" tour, in which he has decried the current state of political affairs in the U.S., and how far we've fallen from our ideals.

The close-up of Springsteen with flames behind his head probably came from the image on the picture sleeve single of "I'm on Fire," from 1985. The head-butting incident came from the movie "The Commitments," which my wife and I had watched earlier in the week. The second drummer for band ("The Committments," not the E Streeters) was a violent sort of fellow who was in the habit of jumping into crowds and head-butting people. Top-notch film, that one.