I asked to remember my dreams and the dream world answered me last night. I think that in sleep my soul goes wandering, goes for a visit in the other world, the world of souls departed. Or souls on the threshold of departure. I must be respectful and listen to what I was shown, write it down. Respect the relationship between the eternal day and the eternal night.
It's a deep dark summer night in a part of town I never knew existed and I’m wandering, looking to find my way back to some familiar part of my town. The air is mild, like a mild sweet summer night. The houses and buildings look like they are from the 19th century, mansions of long ago but they are beautifully made and kept up. There is nobody on the quiet tree-lined streets lit by old fashioned street lights. I wander into an open entrance way of a mansion and I see a large open porch with a huge dinning table overlooking the large back garden. The one soul I have seen so far is a butler setting the table for a banquet. He does not see me. There will be an evening dinner party of VIP’s from the 1880s. I have intruded and I hurry to leave. Where in my city am I?
Now I have found a street even more antique. I wander down it. There is nobody on the sidewalk, just a row of old-time wooden shop fronts lit by old fashioned street lights and warm yellow lights within. There is what looks like an old-time smoke-and-news shop. I go in. There are black men dressed in old-fashioned suits sitting quietly conversing with one another. The smell of the shop is warm and deep, pipe tobacco and old wood. The floor is old wood, uneven and worn as if by a century or more of footsteps. I see a very handsome clean-cut young blond man dressed in an old-time trench coat sitting by himself. I remark to him that the shop smells like it should be in a silent movie of the 1920s. I sit down next to him and he welcomes me. We converse. I should introduce myself. He could be a new friend. But I’m reluctant to entangle myself with this young stranger. I look at my watch and see it’s 9:00 PM. I say I’m late and have to go. He looks disappointed in me. I leave the shop and look back to see what the name of it is so I might find it again but I can’t see any name. Up above the shop front there’s a picture of a news reporter of the 1910s at his typewriter. So it is a news shop where reporters meet to exchange the latest news of this world of the present past.
I have promised some friends that I would buy tickets for them to a huge event I won’t attend myself and I look down the street for the ticket vender’s shop. I can’t find it. I come out at the end of the street to an open, brightly lit plaza divided by a broad busy roadway. There are old-fashioned cars coursing down the wide and busy street but nobody is on the sidewalks. I hear the roar and rush of a huge waterfall so I must be near to it. This is the place where the event will happen, where the great crowds will gather by the rushing water. But you must have a ticket to be part of it. It’s so late. I can’t find where to buy the tickets. I’m afraid I will fail and disappoint my friends. Where can I find a familiar street where I can catch a bus back to my neighbourhood?
I wake and here I am in the daylight world. What did it mean, this visit, this quest I did not quite complete?
“Yes we’ll gather by the river
Where the saints have trod
Gather with the saints by the river
That flows by the throne of God.”