Such Stuff ASAA

I never talk about dreams, maybe because I have so few. Once a month, if that

Back when I was in college, describing and analyzing dreams seemed a fad, often linked to astrology and horoscopes.  I rolled my eyes at all of it. Still do.

Exceptions are made when I hear or read about general tendencies of dreams.  One category always mentioned, often top of the list, might be called Unfinished Business.

What few dreams I have fit this category. They take shape of performing some task, running some errand, working a job, only to put things on hold, take a detour, attend to something else–followed by a futile, frustrating attempt to return and finish the original task.  Simple enough and hardly worth recounting.

Save one at least ten years ago that remains as vivid if implausible as a video game: I’m driving one employer’s delivery van, and I have my other employer’s 35mm projector rolling and whirring film in the back.  I’m racing to return to the cinema where an audience I left awaits the rest of the film, as well as to the chocolate company to return the van.

Beautiful scenery, though, as I daringly take the curves of what appears to be California’s coastal highway, a good 3.000 miles from both destinations.  Or are these the cliffs of Nova Scotia’s Cabot Trail, a mere 500 from where I need to be?

No one needs to explain to me how or why the German word for dream, traum, gives us the English word, trauma.

Luckily, I always awake before any real trauma, and I’m almost always glad to be done with it.  On rare occasions, the dream’s plot twists more in my favor, perhaps a romance long ago, real or imagined, and I try to remain asleep even when I’m waking up and know it’s but a dream.

Only one exception to unfinished dreams that I can recall. About twenty years ago, I dreamt of the Thanksgiving table where I’d be sitting in a few months among a dozen friends and family.  But one chair was empty.  Days later I learned of the grandmother who passed peacefully, perhaps five years before her husband who joined us for as many more Thanksgiving feasts.

Call it a dream of premonition.  I had another last week,

Once again, I was driving a delivery van, but this time without absurdly impossible cargo such as a movie projector about the size and weight of a family refrigerator.  Instead, I was transporting several 60 lb. buckets of corn syrup. Thick, white plastic buckets, about two-feet high. You’ve seen them if you’ve ever been in a restaurant’s kitchen or in the alley by its back door.

Though entirely plausible, since confectioners use it, and since I sometimes pick things up to bring back to the company, this is quite unusual.  In fact, I’ve never handled those buckets without having plenty of boxes among and between which to secure them.  Last time that happened, the vice-president of the United States was frequenting undisclosed locations.

Disaster began that dream. At least one bucket flipped over, its top flipped off, and waves of thick, gold liquid splashing side to side like the seiche waves that bounce from shore to shore all the way across Lake Michigan.  Yes, my dream was in color. Rich color. So rich I thought it real, and wondered how I could conceal it, deny that it ever happened.  Started driving home where I’d raid my closet of every article of clothing that hasn’t fit since the previous vice-president was doing the Macarena.

That’s when I awoke and left the problem behind.  Or thought I did.

Three days later I arrived for an easy day, just two stops, but one had a post-it note attached: “Pick up corn syrup in Rockport.” Laughed at the coincidence until I realized that the van would be empty once I unloaded in Rockport. Figured I could secure them against the back of the seats with the two-wheeler, but there were four buckets and the wheeler was barely wide enough for two.

So I put them all on one side, letting two lean against a side door in the drop for the step down.  The two wheeler, placed sideways, would secure the other two.  Also, the covers of these buckets are always quite tight before opened, and three of the four had never been. No choice but to take a chance with the fourth.

What I did not account for were the two rotaries that you take to bypass the city of Gloucester out to the tip of Cape Ann where Rockport sits.  Swerve one way, swerve the other, hear the two-wheeler slide, hear a bucket or two slide, hear a bump, a bang, a knock.  But don’t turn your head on this road.  And anyway, what can you do if it’s spilled?  So I wonder, driving in terror to the next stop.

Lucky me!  All four buckets remained upright even though two did travel from the seats halfway to the back doors.  Perhaps my placement of the two-wheeler saved me on the two rotaries and the tight ramps on and off the Old Yankee Highway known as Rt. 128.

I’ll still erase dreams of disaster ASAA (as soon as awake), but I’ll heed the premonitions.

Must admit that any dream that combines both may well spell the end of me.  If not, I’ll tell you all about it.

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