Look Out! / Good Deed, Punished

Wednesday night

Dream 1: Look Out!

I was attending a concert benefiting labor unions which was taking place at my former elementary school in Arlington, VA. A crowd was gathered along the top of the hill that overlooked the "lower blacktop" area. Most of the folks that I saw there seemed to be aging hippies; all were having a good time, greeting old friends, and listening to a few musicians who were standing in a circle, playing acoustic instruments. Suddenly a murmur arose from the crowd, and as I looked to my left, I saw that 3/4 of The Who had showed up. Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and John Entwhistle were performing on an elevated stage about 50 yards away from me, near the parking lot. I walked toward them, carrying a large, thin, circular rock under my right arm. (Presumably, I'd sit on it once I got where I was going.) As I made my way toward the band, I noticed that the sky was getting darker, and growing ominous. Suddenly, I saw three huge hunks of wood flying high in the sky, but getting lower as they got close to the crowd. The biggest piece was rectangular,in the shape of a door, but larger. All were in their original state -- brown, uncut and unfinished, as if the wind had ripped chunks out of huge trees. I turned and called out to the crowd: "Look Out! Get out of the way!" Unfortunately, it was too late for one of the hippies -- he couldn't outrun the debris, and the the largest chunk flattened him.

Dream 2: Good Deed, Punished

I was a blacksmith or tradesman, working on a large estate, and I was standing outside when the owner rode up and handed me a strap of leather with some sort of buckle, which was broken. He said that it must be repaired immediately -- he needed it in order to go hunting with the hounds that day. He left, and as I studied the strap, the weather became rather misty. Suddenly, I could hear several animals approaching. They were foxes. Soon I was surrounded by three of them, but I wasn't afraid. I put my arms straight out at my sides (as if I was playing "airplane") and calmly said, "It's just me, there's nothing for you [to eat] here." Next, I looked down at my feet, and saw what they were after: a tiny fawn had walked into our circle, and seemed to be standing next to me for protection. I tried to pick it up, and when I did it promptly bit me, really hard, on my left thumb. I held my arm aloft and gave it a good shake, but he still wouldn't let go.

*****

Dream 1: Look Out!

This dream encompasses a few things that I've seen on PBS this week. We watched part of a documentary last night on the life of musician Pete Seeger, who has a long history of activism in support of labor unions. The first musicians seen in the dream last night were based on Seeger's informal sing-alongs with acoustic instruments. Every so often (particularly during fund-raising drives) PBS trots out graying musicians from the 1950s or 1960s, and films them as they perform their hits for aging baby boomers in the audience. (I enjoy tuning in to these programs, even when it's like watching a car wreck; I can't seem to turn away. I'm curious to see how people have aged, and to know who's still "got it," and who should have hung it up years ago.) The latest fund-raising drive is no exception. This weekend, aging hippies will be grooving to a program of live performances of music from the Summer of Love. That's probably why the audience in the dream consisted of so many older hippies. After all, I came of age after the hippie thing had died down. None of my friends were hippies -- they were too young -- and my parents and their peers were already in their 40s when the hippie movement happened. By the way, Arlo Guthrie was interviewed in the Seeger program, and he certainly looks like an aging hippie, with his flowing gray hair.

As for the flying chunks of wood, I suppose that that's a holdover from the terrible recent storms here in Middle Tennessee that destroyed many communities. I'm reminded of the devastation every day at work. The daughter of one of my coworkers attends Union College in Jackson, TN. She and several dorm-mates were huddled in a bathroom when the tornado hit their school. They were lucky to emerge with their lives; they lost everything else.

Dream 2: Good Deed, Punished

We recently bought the BBC DVD series "Planet Earth," and have been enjoying it immensely. (We got a great deal at Costco -- $51.00 for the 5-disc set, something like 12 hours of brilliant photography and insightful narration by David Attenborough, plus three more one-hour documentaries.) Each program focuses on habitat that has not yet been spoiled by encroaching human societies: shallow seas, deep oceans, deserts, the arctic (admittedly melting), grasslands, jungles, forests of California and far northern Canada, mountains in Pakistan, etc. We've seen films of many wonderful animals this week, including Arctic foxes, and the world's smallest deer, which lives somewhere in South America. Chile, maybe? Their young are not much larger than house cats. I'm pretty sure that that's the guy who bit my thumb.