Wiring
I dream of dead people.
So do lots of other people, I’m sure.
I dream of dead people more in the spring, which I’m not so sure is as universal, though it would make sense given all the rebirth and renewal hoo-hah that we the humans have imparted to this time of year over the millennia. The equinox stuff and the bunny and egg symbolism and the dead-God-that-we-ate- but-then-he-came-back-even-though-he-wasn’t-a-zombie stuff. It is interesting Christianity is the only belief system featuring a figure that rises from the dead that isn’t destructive and evil isn’t it? Well, the only belief system I know anyway; I have to think there’s some other one out there with something similar to counteract everything we’ve built around mummies, vampires, zombies and the undead in general.
That’s beside the point. The dead people I dream of are still dead, and yet they show up in my subconscious more often this time of year. Dead pets sometimes too. Know where I see them? I see them at the house I grew up in except it isn’t quite that house, it’s a house that has some of the rooms of that house and some of the yard but it’s bigger and it has a deck and it’s next to a river (even in my subconscious the symbolism is ham-handedly obvious). That house, you should know, is long gone off this plane(t) as well, bulldozed over for a couple of two family units with postage stamp yards that punch me in the stomach every time I drive by and think of the tree, the three foot thick tree that was in the front yard for who knows how many decades doubtless long before that patch of land was even a “front yard”, that tree had the rope swing and the big root that stuck up and skinned our knees and jolted our ankles that’s now a pile of mulch rotting somewhere. I think of the bones of our dead cats that were yanked out of the ground when they dug the new foundations. I think of what the old unfinished basement might’ve looked like and sounded like when the house caved in on it and died like my parents did, like my mother did right in front of the house even though the job wasn’t finished until months later, like we all will.
In the dream though, in the spring it’s all there again. So are the people and often the animals and I don’t need to list them because I’m the only one who knows them all, knew them all. Of course some people will say that this is some sort of Communication From The Great Beyond, that those that have kicked it are telling me it’s all OK on the next plane of existence. For most of us, there’s an overwhelming desire to believe that however I suspect that my mind is manufacturing this based on some other deeply-ingrained impetus caused by that same instinct that makes people invent all that bunny and egg and Earth Day and resurrection stuff. There is something ingrained in every animal in the Northern Hemisphere that wants a fresh start, a reset, a rebirth at this time of year. I’m just making up my own story while I sleep, my own personal mythology of rebirth.
I bet a lot of you do the same thing.
So do lots of other people, I’m sure.
I dream of dead people more in the spring, which I’m not so sure is as universal, though it would make sense given all the rebirth and renewal hoo-hah that we the humans have imparted to this time of year over the millennia. The equinox stuff and the bunny and egg symbolism and the dead-God-that-we-ate- but-then-he-came-back-even-though-he-wasn’t-a-zombie stuff. It is interesting Christianity is the only belief system featuring a figure that rises from the dead that isn’t destructive and evil isn’t it? Well, the only belief system I know anyway; I have to think there’s some other one out there with something similar to counteract everything we’ve built around mummies, vampires, zombies and the undead in general.
That’s beside the point. The dead people I dream of are still dead, and yet they show up in my subconscious more often this time of year. Dead pets sometimes too. Know where I see them? I see them at the house I grew up in except it isn’t quite that house, it’s a house that has some of the rooms of that house and some of the yard but it’s bigger and it has a deck and it’s next to a river (even in my subconscious the symbolism is ham-handedly obvious). That house, you should know, is long gone off this plane(t) as well, bulldozed over for a couple of two family units with postage stamp yards that punch me in the stomach every time I drive by and think of the tree, the three foot thick tree that was in the front yard for who knows how many decades doubtless long before that patch of land was even a “front yard”, that tree had the rope swing and the big root that stuck up and skinned our knees and jolted our ankles that’s now a pile of mulch rotting somewhere. I think of the bones of our dead cats that were yanked out of the ground when they dug the new foundations. I think of what the old unfinished basement might’ve looked like and sounded like when the house caved in on it and died like my parents did, like my mother did right in front of the house even though the job wasn’t finished until months later, like we all will.
In the dream though, in the spring it’s all there again. So are the people and often the animals and I don’t need to list them because I’m the only one who knows them all, knew them all. Of course some people will say that this is some sort of Communication From The Great Beyond, that those that have kicked it are telling me it’s all OK on the next plane of existence. For most of us, there’s an overwhelming desire to believe that however I suspect that my mind is manufacturing this based on some other deeply-ingrained impetus caused by that same instinct that makes people invent all that bunny and egg and Earth Day and resurrection stuff. There is something ingrained in every animal in the Northern Hemisphere that wants a fresh start, a reset, a rebirth at this time of year. I’m just making up my own story while I sleep, my own personal mythology of rebirth.
I bet a lot of you do the same thing.
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