Romancing the Dream

In the beginning Somebody had a dream. It existed in an ethereal world without form and void, waiting for hands to convert it into reality. Advents still occur.

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It’s January 1, 2017, the morning after. Nursing a strong cup of coffee, my dog, Mac, and I are trying to synthesize last year’s events into a cohesive whole. Why?

Aside from trying to make sense of living in a weird new world of choreographed reality dreams, I continue to draw a total blank on the mystery of how God got a creation permit with all the bureaucratic regulations.

Today I’ve chosen another man’s dream, a rocking chair, hoping it’ll aid in my quest. This magnificent dream-come-true sits on yet another man’s fantasy dream, the front porch of an enormous but vacant beach home overlooking the ocean. It helps to have friendly, rich neighbors, the essence of which can be defined in one word: absence.

From this vantage point, I see morning-after survivors wander aimlessly along the sands. They stroll across the horizon in slow motion, like actors on the set of a silent movie. Maybe they’re contemplating their own miracle of recovering from last night’s bacchanalian bash, or attempting to clear the cobwebs out of their dreams for the New Year. No one hurries. The Trumpian masquerade will have to wait.

The sun shines in hot shards through the overhead palm tree. Mac sleeps while my sockless feet work on a tan. It’s difficult to stay on the mental task. The only conclusion I’ve come to yet is that I’m still alive.

This rocking chair, however, intrigues me. Somebody dreamed it up. This one’s actually more of a ‘glider’ chair, you know, like those green metal ones of the ‘50’s that sat rusting in backyards of the South. I consult my Blackberry browser for details.

It reports the description comes from the Dutch word, ‘rokken,’ which was used to describe someone who rocked a cradle. It seems an apt application, since no dream ever arrives full-grown, but as a baby. And what good is any new-born baby except to love?

The first known use of the word was by Chaucer, who wrote: “The cradle at hir beddes feet is set to rokken.” Perhaps his description is the genesis of today’s vernacular: “If the cradle is rocking, don’t come knocking.” The rocker has since come a long way since a fellow dreamed up tying a pair of ice skates to the bottom of a wooden chair.

There’s a romantic quality to dreams. The common rocker is a Southern icon, evocative of a past that refuses to die. It’s a nostalgic, albeit an anachronistic vestige of an era of romantic and informal leisure. Front porch rockers are now mostly for show, except perhaps in rural America where time still moves at its original pace of slow.

Dreams and romance are a potent pair. What’s a dream but a diaphanous vision, feelings created in the imagination or sleep that aren’t ‘real’? Similarly, romance is an emotional attachment to something or someone. Like love itself, hot and torrid, the marriage of these two will birth something sooner or later.

Like you, I’ve have had many dreams, mostly unremembered. But looking back, I see that so many have actually come true of their own accord and in their own way and timing. Such is the romance of life if only we will accept it.

Dreamers are also romantics. After all, romance is the collective music of everyone who dreams.

Dreams are vague impulses. But vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things. As the poet has written, life begins in the mist, not the crystal. Dreams are conjured up in the mind, but made real by the hands.

After an hour of contemplating the state of things, Mac and I are no closer to a consensus than when we began. One thing is for sure, however, our dreams are superior to New Year’s resolutions.

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As a new year begins for us all, consider the advice of the aphorist, S. J. Lec: “Every bush can burn if you fire it with your imagination.”

In the beginning was a dream. So, dream on, friends, dream on.

Bud Hearn
January 6, 2017