The Dream Had Spoken

I’ve had a recurring, evolving dream for perhaps ten or fifteen years. It began in the country on a grassy green hill. I walked around picking up scraps of lumber to make a small shelter. In a subsequent dream, a rather long tunnel is built from the shelter to an opening on an eroded dirt wall. At places, the tunnel became narrow and I struggled to get through.

The next dream gave me more and better lumber. The resulting structure was more like a large barn with the inside being a large hole in the dirt. Light shown through the gaps in the lumber and the roof leaked. A large canvas covered areas lacking lumber. A following dream added a main and second story floors. The basement was cleaned up with pictures hanging on smooth dirt walls. In the direction of the tunnel, it became dark and the walls narrowed.

The next dream showed long rows of shelves, floor to ceiling. It was like a large warehouse full of goods. There are semi-trailer trucks line up outside. Of course, there is much going on in each of these dreams, people, bad weather, sunshine, much crawling and walking around. One more dream added manufacturing and a gas station. I lived in one corner of the building.

I was a professor of physics, loved my work, and never planned to retire. But there came a feeling that “it’s time” to retire. On the day I had my retirement party, the dream returned that night. The building shifted, leaned and collapsed to the ground. Guitar became my passion in retirement. After some 4,000 hours of playing, you become quite good. The dream had spoken.