Saturday, February 26, 2011

Visiting John Lennon

Having experienced sleep-depriving pain the previous night, I decided yesterday to fill that pain-killer prescription the doctor gave me last week, but which I had postponed taking to the pharmacy. I'm not keen on taking medications, particularly pain-killers, but it seemed like a good idea to give it a try as an alternative to a second wakeful night of pain. I took one pill during the day--more out of curiosity, I have to say, than absolute necessity--and ended up feeling a little bit woozy. And a little bit sleepy. And a little bit high.

So I took another before going to bed and was rewarded with particularly vivid dreams, of which I remember something of two, separate, one late night and one early morning. Both were about dead people.

In the late night dream I went to visit John Lennon. He was living in a mansion surrounded by a vast sunlit estate and greeted me cordially, if somewhat dreamily, in loose-fitting shirt and pants. He was wearing those familiar glasses with round lenses. I can't remember the purpose of my visit, nor what we talked about, but it was pleasant to spend time with John Lennon. After a while he had to leave, for some unstated reason, but before he did so he gave me a gold CD on which he had written my name, Peter.

I wandered out into the garden and was challenged by a young man who was chatting with someone by the entry. I thought he was perhaps a kind of plain clothes security man. He gave me a hard, unfriendly stare and asked: "What are you doing here?" Then he seemed to know without my answering and allowed me to proceed. The garden, it turned out, was a vast, flat, formally landscaped affair with few plants but many statues, pathways, and pebbled areas. The visitors were sparse, and seemingly silent, figures in a landscape... I remember nothing more.

Waking from this dream--and after a visit to the bathroom--I lay in bed wondering if the dream could be some kind of premonition--long-view, I hope!--of an afterlife, a vision of heaven, or nirvana. It was certainly peaceful, serene. Was that St. Peter who challenged me?

The second dream was more bizarre. A once-close friend, now dead for several years, came down to visit from up north with a friend of his. There's little I remember about his visit, except that (Ellie being absent from this dream) we slept in the same bed. In the morning--sensitive readers, close your eyes! This was a dismaying vivid part!--he casually masturbated before getting up and heading for the bathroom. I lay in bed for a while wondering when my turn was going to come, but it never did. Honest!

Then it became a question of whether to have breakfast or brunch. We took a tube train to wherever we were going and I had a rollie suitcase, as did several other people on the train. I nearly walked off with the wrong one. Then we were in a parking lot where there were white cars bumping into each other... and the dream fell apart.

I can't help but feel that it was somehow significant that the two main characters in my dreams were both dead. Clearly, I'd say, there was some projection going on. And I wonder what that pain-killer had to do with everything. The "afterlife" in the two dreams was certainly very different--a formal landscape and a parking lot with white cars colliding! Just thought I'd write them down before they got forgotten...

Have a great weekend, everyone.

3 comments:

kara rane said...

the amazing thing about having a large screen tv is during commercials we get to read all the fine detail disclaimers that accompany all pharm drugs,,,such warnings as, "you should not operate your body while on xyz and you may meet John Lennon"..

CHI SPHERE said...

Both dreams seem to be about peace in general. Certainly meeting John Lennon was about meeting a man who wished for "the world to be one".

If the garden represents life and the gold CD represents
artistic excellence then you've had a fairly blissful pair of after effect drug induced explorations of the third kind.

Hope you pain subsides and that your swimming to strengthen your front and back. Watch out for white
cars this week in LA, for they are everywhere!

boros1124 said...

You may have some meaning. I would go from a dream analysis. John Lennon is not the dream of every man. Let's just say I prefer the enthusiasm carried. There is also a book. John Lennon's own words. Interesting book.
http://www.konyv-konyvek.hu/book_images/21a/745627421a.jpg