nightmare

     for various reasons i haven't been able to sleep very well over the past month or so.............so last night i finally resorted to taking a sleeping pill.................that did the job.............apparently i slept hard, because i dreamed; and i've heard that you've gotta be in rem sleep (the deepest kind) in order to dream...........the down side, however, was that the dream was a nightmare.

     i dreamed that i, along with a few others, had been invited to do some sort of fieldtrip and some sort of lecture at a coastal la. national wildlife refuge.........it was for kids & adults.......................the nature trail was in a bottomland hardwood forest along some coastal bayou........the tide must have been coming in, for the bayou was flowing south-to-north, carrying with it an endless line of foamy BP sludge.............everytime i started to speak, i started crying instead.............i tried to get ahold of myself, but could not........even the friends i had come with tried to console me ("it's mostly dispersent, bill.......it'll be ok......"), but to no avail.

     later, when it was time to do some lecturing and listening in the facility's auditorium, i again could not speak, but only cry........the site manager became flabbergasted with me..........................kids were invited up to speak their piece about the spill........something caused me to move over to the bottom of the stairs at the stage and ask each kid, "But what are you doing about it? Don't you feel like we're all part of the problem?" as they walked away from the speaker's podium and  off the stage........ again, friends came over and said, "bill, get ahold of yourself; you're scaring the kids........."

     needless to say, i woke up in a less-than-jovial mood, with those words: "what am i going to do about it? am i not part of the problem?" running over and over through my mind.

     of course should such a scenario have occurred in real life, my sophisticated, oh-so-clever-and-resourceful humanity would have come to the rescue, and i would have indeed pulled myself together, masking my pain with all manner of eco-babble.

     i haven't read any carl jung, but a friend who has says that dreams represent our unfillfilled wishes, desires, hopes.........and in the case of nightmares, unresolved/repressed fears, and memories of bad bad times.