I am in a large room with other people including two attractive young women. I don't recall what
the young women looked like or exactly what they were wearing (running clothes perhaps?) but I am
pleased by their interest in me. They and I go into a smaller room to wait for a train, but I
briefly return to the large room to make sure I didn't leave my phone behind. On a bedside table I
see a brass padlock and another item, but not my phone. I don't know exactly when the train is
scheduled to depart and I am not too worried about it but the women go out to check then return to
tell me that it is leaving. I am glad they checked and I go out with them.
We board not a train but rather a large gray vehicle like a Hummer with several rows of seats. A
slender dark-haired woman helps me get up into the vehicle and take the one remaining open seat
which was saved for me. She tells me that she is glad I made it because they are about to leave. I
turned to the two young women who are now seated behind me and say to them "I am grateful to you
girls for getting me here on time." I feel a bit embarrassed, or maybe disappointed, that I called
them "girls", because it demonstrates that I am not of their generation so there is no possibility
of romance between us. A rather slender man somewhat younger than I am with curly hair and wearing
blue-gray pants and shirt gets out of the vehicle. He approaches the closed window on my side and
motions for me to kiss him goodbye through the glass so I lean over the middle-aged woman sitting
next to me and press my lips against the glass as he does likewise. He walks away and I feel happy
that I kissed him because the young women will think I am cool for doing that.
Darchelle is with me in the vehicle though I cannot see her. She asks me about the dream and the
two women and I tell her what has happened so far though I can't remember the first part of the
dream. We talk about the women too, the way we often talk about people and relationships.
We are on a tour up into the hill country with small farms like we saw in northern Portugal. I spot
a pair of large yellowish birds with stout beaks and long tails and I immediately realize I've never
seen them before. I tell Sarah, in the vehicle with us, that I wish I had my European bird book so I
could look them up but then I remember that we are not in Europe, and anyhow I have the Birds of
Europe on my phone. Maybe we are in Hong Kong because I have hiking maps on my lap for trails in
the mountains of Hong Kong, but I am not sure if that is where we are either.
We get dropped off at another waiting room, from which we follow the two young women (I think) into
a second room which has four different ways to exit - a doorway to the left, a stairway descending
to a lower level, a blue emergency exit door and an elevator. We don't know which exit the tour
group took. Suddenly Ali enters the room. She is
wearing a blue plaid flannel shirt and seems larger and brighter than any of the rest of us in the
room. Just then Roger barges in through the emergency exit door and announces "It's a floodpuddle
out there" before leaving by the door from which we all had come in. Roger had been with the tour
group so we now know which way to go. Ali immediately goes
out the emergency exit door, and after hesitating briefly, we follow her. A paved path extends
ahead of us across a broad lawn like on a college campus. It is nearly dark and raining hard and
large puddles extend across the path. Ali is already more
than halfway across the lawn but we will get soaked if we venture after her.
How did I get here? What happened? Where are we going? This dream explores these questions on
multiple levels. It is structured as a play with three acts. The central act consists of two
scenes in the safari vehicle while the first and third acts transpire in empty rooms with
different casts of characters. The movement from one room to another within these two acts
identifies them as periods of transition while the actions and symbols in the central act present my
personal transformation through those transitions.
References to running, birding and travel place the time context of the dream in the past decade or
so when I fully engaged in those activities. The two women recall the several younger women with
whom I ran from time to time during my marathons. The brass padlock reminds me of the locks on the
gates we opened on the Tunnel Marathon course. The lock was sitting on a bedside table with a lamp
like those in a motel room. The waiting room suggests a train station; the Hummer, a safari vehicle
(and also the boat on which I have been taking guided seabird-viewing trips out of Westport since
2013). The yellow birds appeared to be a cross between two species Darchelle and I saw in Zimbabwe
- Crested Barbet and Gray Go-away-bird - during our trip to Southern Africa. Darchelle grew up in
Africa. She joins me in the dream after I get into the safari vehicle and is with me in the dream
from that point on. Sarah, Roger and Ali appear in the
dream after that and indirectly indicate where to go next.
The characters in the safari vehicle offer clues to the meaning encoded in the dream. The
dark-haired woman who welcomes me feels European and familiar but at first I couldn't place her,
then I recognized in her our hostess at
the Abbey/Château de Camon + where Darchelle and I spent a magical two days during
our trip to France. Everything just came together perfectly as if pre-arranged specifically as a
gift to us, and in some ways our relationship has been like that too. The man in blue whom I kissed
through the window represents myself but resembles Pastor McLarty, and thus symbolizes my belief in God.
The woman across whom I lean to kiss him looks like a church member whom we call "the church lady", but I associate her with
Susan. I don't see Darchelle in the safari vehicle
but she is present with me, almost like a part of myself, and we talk because that is what we do.
Sarah symbolizes the choices I made with Darchelle, having divorced her husband and married Roger a
few years before Darchelle and I met. We also visited them in Sweden before our trip to France.
To continue with the analogy of the dream as a play in three acts, in Act 1 I am alone and running
marathons, and finding a substitute for emotional intimacy in the companionship of other
(particularly female) runners. I am not looking to change my situation, not seeking to actually
engage in any new intimate relationship, but running leads to Act 2. I begin running with Darchelle
and realize that I am looking for intimacy and that I cannot find it in my running relationships. I
instead inadvertently find the connection I am looking for with Darchelle through our extended
conversations while running together. I also recognize (thanks in part to therapy) that the
demanding and condemning God to whom I subjected myself for 30 years was my own creation, a virtual
parent onto which I projected my own self-criticism. With that recognition I am empowered to
acknowledge Him as part of myself and choose to let that part go. Some might see that as kissing God
goodbye but I think of it as taking responsibility for my feelings about myself. Concurrently
(more or less) I embrace my passion for birdwatching, which is another manifestation of accepting
myself for who I am rather than believing that I must change in order to be okay. But things
change, and as my ALS continues to progress my health continues to decline. In Act 3 Darchelle and
I face a future in which the only certainty is that I will soon die. Roger almost died once, and
when he recovered, determined to pursue love with Sarah, as I have done with Darchelle.
Ali encouraged me in that choice but also talked more
freely with me about dying than anyone else, urging me to accept my growing dependence on others and
to give those who love me an opportunity to share with me as I progressed towards my death. We
actually have done that, in part through our wedding celebrations a few years ago, but I have kept
on living since then. At this point the way ahead remains dark but we are still together and the
play still continues.