Saturday,
Jan 12, 2013
6:20am
My
sons woke me up this morning.
A
short while ago, I was dreaming that I was asleep and in the dream of that sleep,
there was a knock at my bedroom door. Annoyed, I roused myself into
recriminating wakefulness and got up to open it. It was my son Eric.
In real life, he's nearly twenty years old but in my dream, he was a three or four year-old boy. “I remember,” he said in his
little three or four-year old voice, which had the hint of a lisp,
“that I used to sometimes come sleep with you when I woke up
scared, and it's been awhile so I thought I should come do it again.”
It was puzzling to me that this little boy spoke as if he wasn't
scared at all and that he seemed to be recounting this from as many
years ago as it now really is. It gave the whole thing the surreal
quality of the infinite. I said, “Sure, monkey. It's always okay
for you to do that.” I picked him up and, holding his tiny body
next to mine, started to bring him into bed – and that was when I
woke up in real life.
I
lay there for a few minutes, remembering the days when, not long
after his mom and I split up and he was about that same age, he used
to sometimes wake up crying in the middle of the night. Even after
he was well awake, he could sometimes not be comforted for at least
ten or fifteen minutes. It was as if he refused to let go of the
dream that terrified him.
Then,
still lying in bed, I remembered a picture he drew at around that
time. It was a picture of him and me as a child's stick figures,
holding hands and walking under a big, round shining sun. Above us
he'd drawn a large red and white heart. I still have it. You don't
throw something like that away. If I wasn't so computer-illiterate,
I'd post it here. I suppose, next time he's here, I'll have him show
me again. (Yes, he showed me before how to post pictures to my
computer, but, being the aforementioned computer-illiterate, I don't
remember the simple steps. I think I have them written down
somewhere, but I haven't used my camera in years and the batteries
need re-charging anyway.
As
it often is when woken from a powerful dream, my immediate thought
was to sit down and write about it. My computer was still on from a
few hours before (I didn't go to sleep until four) because I did
something that left my monitor with the wallpaper still there, but
all the icons missing. In that state, there was no shutdown button
and I didn't know how to rectify it without shutting the computer
down improperly. I knew that isn't good (or can't be anything other
than neutral or bad) for it and I was too tired to fuck with it, so I
just turned the monitor off and went to bed.
I
remembered this when I came back to my desk just now. Pissed off
that I might not be able to record this astonishing dream, I turned
the monitor back on. I knew that if the compy didn't bounce back
after the inevitably necessary improper shutdown, I'd have to call my
other (and older) son Steve. Steve's even more of a computer whiz
than his younger brother (who's also very computer-savvy) plus,
unlike Eric, Steve lives just a few blocks away.
I
stared at my monitor's wallpaper – again, the only thing that
remained on the screen. It's a picture of the Black Knight from
Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
a family favorite of ours. Steve had installed it when (as a
surprise when I was away) he revamped my entire PC and loaded it with
a new browser and programs, including the Open Office Writer word
processing program that I'm using right now. Over the years, Steve
has done probably thousands of dollars worth of IT work for me and my
dad.
Looking
at the one-armed Black Knight (if you don't know what I'm talking
about, rent the film; I regard it as the single funniest movie ever
made.) I thought of Steve and considered the wonderful gift he had
graced me with in the new setup.
Sitting
there, I instinctively knew that in all of this, he was as much a
part of my waking after less than three hours as was Eric. This
entire episode was about my being father to them both.
It
was then that it occurred to me, and seeming very much as if it was
Steve who was reminding me,“when in doubt, hit Ctrl/Alt/Delete.”
I did, and was suddenly a couple of keystrokes away from full
restoration of my unit. It may not sound like much because I suppose
even a ninety year-old chimp knows that old trick, but you're seeing
this right now because of it. I'd like to think that Steve had
something to do with it and, on some level, it's evident to me at
least, that he did.
Last
night (really, in the wee hours of this morning) someone posted to
Facebook the picture of a fifteen year old girl who went missing a
couple of weeks ago. Though I didn't know her from Eve, I knew that
her parents must be in agony right now, not to mention, possibly her.
Her name is Samantha and she's sometimes known as “Sammi Jo.”
As I said in the post, “Don't know her, but it seems we gotta
spread this far and wide. God bless you, Sammi Jo. I'm praying for
you.”
I
cried this morning when my little boy woke me from the dream I had
where he woke me from my dreaming sleep. It was touching and a
little sad to remember that he and his brother aren't little boys
anymore but I'll see them soon and things will be like they always
are.
Sammi
Jo's parents don't have that right now and are going through what I
don't even want to imagine, much less live. There's nothing more I
can do than pray for her and hope that the simple act of sharing her
picture on Facebook can contribute to a cloud of activity that'll
bring her home. Again, God bless you, Sammi Jo.
Finally,
my friend and my former parish priest, Father Addison Hart, posted a
remarkable video last night. The video itself is actually less
remarkable than cool -- computer-animated psychedelia of the sort
we've all probably seen many times before, though above average for
its ilk, I'd say. The remarkable part is the music. It's Bjork
(formerly the singer with Iceland's band, the Sugarcubes, singing a
beautiful version of “The Jesus Prayer.” I don't have reason to
think she's a believer, but if not, she's certainly a talented voice
actress.
I
listened to it repeatedly as I composed this post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lEhq3rkbVr8#!
