Tags
CPE, dreams, imagination, lucid dreaming, muses, nightmares, remembrance, strange days
I was cleaning out the house of friends who died several years ago, when Clarence and Ginni Thomas showed up to help in the cleaning. Now it wasn’t my friends’ actual house, but the house of a cousin who died in 2018, and I know the Thomases only through news stories. Clarence and Ginni Thomas were doing a good job of helping, but then one of her relatives arrived–Turkish President Recep Tayyim Erdogan. A major conflict began. Mike, my dead friend, showed up and told me to be nice to Erdogan. I woke from this strange dream, wrote about that adventure in the dreamverse, and returned to sleep.
During the second round of sleep, Mike, still dead, told me to check the pockets of his suits because he left cash in all of them. He had twenty or more suits. Never mind that in the real world he owned one suit for thirty years and wore it only to weddings and funerals. I found a few thousand dollars. In the dreamverse all things are possible.
Mike showed up again the next night. I was ready for him and asked, “Why do you, dead as you are, and certain living friends keep showing up in my dreams? Why you and not, for instance, my father or mother or grandparents?”
“You’re the dreamer. Why do you think that?”
“This isn’t old-school Clinical Pastoral Education where you answer a question with a question. Why you or Corny or one of those others and not my family?”
“Your dream. Your mind,” he said. “Could it be that those who show up most often in your dreams are your muses. Some people talk about having a muse of creativity, and the ancients named Melete, Aoede, and Mneme plus Calliope, Erato, and my favorites, Polyhymnia and Terpsichore–plus a few others. Each muse serves a different role just as each living being has multiple gifts and ways to use those gifts. Maybe your family doesn’t need to visit you, Doc. Maybe you resolved the old conflicts.”
“If that’s the case, why are you visiting now? It’s been nearly five years since you died.”
“You needed some inspiration, and your regular muses are on vacation.”
“And how will you inspire me?”
“By reminding you of those nights when we talked about the future. The future is here and never here, but you still have stuff in you to do. I’m not going to tell you what to do. You already know.”
“So this is a version of Dickens’ Christmas Carol and the ghostly visit to Scrooge, eh?”
“Nope. Nothing that interesting. Just a nudge, Bro. Just a nudge. I’m gone.”
And then I was alone.