A True Dream

I had a true dream this morning.

I dreamt that I was on a tropical island. A paradise. I was disguised as an old man, a great acting teacher of renown and I was to go and extract wisdom from another. I went to a tunnel in the pure white sands and the further inside the tunnel I went, the narrower the tunnel became until I was on my hands and knees and the white sand was being scraped off the walls and ceilng by my shoulders and head. I finally reached a small window, set in concrete and knocked upon it. I saw my host through the opening and he came and removed the barricade and allowed me to crawl through the larger opening and clean myself off.

It was John Goodman, but he was attired like Earnest Hemingway and was himself imitating someone else. He was pretending to be Richard Burton. He asked me my name, and I could not remember who it was that I was impersonating, so I decided that he person I was impersonating was going to impersonate a "nobody" in a clever way to get wisdom. Burton/Goodman seemed content with that. I wondered at first why he was allowing this charade, but was content that he was content. We sat in his palatial room, with an amazing view of the island and ocean. I could not remember the question of wisdom, so I made something up and he was content to tell meaningless stories in order to illustrate an answer to the question but we were two men who were pretending to be what we were not, acting out this little existential exploration for some unknown benefactor and content for our own reasons to play our little game.

No wiser than I was when I arrived, I was not sure what to do next, but then a small chinese boy arrived. He was clearly poor, and mostly naked. He said that he knew the answer to my question, and we both smiled and decided to indulge him. He began telling a story that was full of racist terms and we were both embarrassed to listen, but too polite to stop him due to his age and because we had told him he could talk. His mother appeared and stopped his story, saying that she needed to take him to town to use the bathroom. Relieved that we were quit of him, I good naturedly said that we would hear the end of his story, perhaps, at a later date. The boy suddenly grew very quiet and smiled and said, "There is no need, for this will suffice. Who is the one for whom I will stop my story and obey?"

In the dream, all had grown quite still. "The one with authority over you", I said.

The boy said, "no. Authority can be resisted."

"The one who loves you", I ventured.

The boy said, "no. It is an easy thing to run from those who love you."

"The one that you yourself love", I said at last, knowing that I hit it.

The boy smiled.

and I woke up.