BEAUTIFUL DREAMER
Copyright © 2009 by Barry Daniels
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of thepublisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
The creative dreaming techniques described in "Beautiful Dreamer" are real, and are used nightly by countless people around the world. Many of these people keep dream diaries, and often claim to find inspiration and guidance from contemplation and analysis of their dreams.
Lucid Dreaming is also real, although its mastery and use are normally only achieved by years of dedicated effort.
BEAUTIFUL DREAMER.
Prologue
Nineteen Sixty: Yorkshire, England.
His friends called him ‘Titch’, which was simply a Yorkshire term for a person of small size. In fact Titch was not small; not for his age; it was just that any ten-year old boy who chose to run with a pack of twelve to fourteen year olds was doomed to be thought of as ‘Titchy’. Yet he was not small where it mattered most to the gang -- in his heart and in his spirit -- and he could hold his own in most of their rough and tumble games. But this one was different.
It was cold, that winter; cold enough that the ice on the canal could support the weight of a pack of small boys, who skated and skidded and chased and tumbled on the frozen surface. They ‘skated’ on the soles of their leather shoes, or, for the luckier ones, their winter boots, for ice skates were a rare commodity in that place at that time. And then they decided to play ice hockey.
Since no-one knew much about this strange North American pursuit it fell to Brian Lockwood to determine the rules of play. Being the eldest and biggest of the boys it often fell to Brian to make such determinations. They knew that hockey was basically a ‘girl’s game’ played by their female associates during the summer season while the boys played soccer. Yet they understood that in North America Ice Hockey was a game for the toughest, the fastest, the most skilful of men. Therefore the rules for ice hockey and field hockey must be substantially different in some important respects. Their ‘hockey sticks’ were whatever pieces of wood fell to hand; about half of the group brought out their cricket bats. The ‘puck’ was a well worn tennis ball. Each ‘net’ was represented by two piles of scarves and hats, similar to those which at other times would serve as the ‘goalposts’ for impromptu soccer matches.
The boys cleared a light snowfall from the surface of the canal over a surface roughly sixty feet long by the width of the waterway – about fourteen feet. The sides were selected by team captains – Brian Lockwood and his twelve year old brother Neil – into two teams. Titch was the last boy picked, and ended up on Brian’s team. “What position should I play, Bri?” he asked the bigger boy.
“You play ‘Outfielder’” Brian told him. “That’s like fullback in soccer. Go and stand by the goal, and if the ball comes back to you, bash it up to the Attackers. OK?”
“That’s like being Goalie!” Titch complained. “I don’t want to play goalie!”
“They don’t have goalies in ice hockey,” Brian explained. “That’s why ‘Outfielder’ is such an important position, OK?”
Mollified, Titch stood by the goalposts, watching the tangle of arms, legs, bats and various wooden contraptions as the two sides melded into a single brawling mass. He longed to get into the fray, but knew even at ten years old that a good team player holds his position, no matter what. In his frustration he struck at the ice with his cricket bat – a device really suited to a much larger boy. The bat skidded off the surface, cracking the ice, and the momentum of its continued swing carried the small boy off his feet. He jackknifed in the air and headed downwards, butt first, towards the ice.
The front-line scrum continued to hack and swing, to punch and wrestle, until someone, more by luck than by skill, connected a solid whack against the dirty white ‘puck’. The ball shot out of the melée, back towards the ‘Outfield’.
“Get it, Titch!” Brian Lockwood yelled. But Titch was not there.
When he hit the ice it exploded beneath him, and Titch fell into the frigid water, his rate of fall barely slowed by contact with the thin sheet of ice. At this time of the year the water level in the canal was less than four feet, but it might just as well have been forty. The shock of contact with the bitterly cold water caused the boy to inhale rapidly, reflexively, filling his small lungs.
He opened his eyes to see an angel. He recognised her from the pictures and descriptions given to him at his Methodist Sunday School lessons. She was enclosed in a sheath of golden light, and a halo of the same light circled her head. Her hair, too, was golden and cascaded about her shoulders in tight curls. She floated in front of the young boy’s wide-eyed gaze, and smiled at him with her mouth and her eyes and her face and with her entire being. The love which she felt for him was tangible and warm. There was no place here for ice or snow, or frigid waters. There was no place here for coldness of any kind. She held out her hand, and Titch took it.
Together they floated towards a beautiful city of light. The many tall buildings seemed to be made of glass, glowing in all imaginable colours. It reminded the boy of the ‘Illuminations’ which he had seen the previous winter at Blackpool, on a day-trip by coach arranged by his Sunday school; but these colours were far more beautiful.
The fact of his situation registered, finally, and his small features creased into an expression of confusion and fear. “Am I dead?” he asked his angel. “Are you taking me to Heaven?” The angel made no reply, and the two continued their journey over the gleaming rooftops. They crossed the city and left it behind them. An unknown amount of time passed – minutes or hours, Titch was quite uncertain – before they came at last over more familiar territory, and the boy recognised the small coal-mining village on the outskirts of Sheffield where he had lived for the ten long years of his young life. Along the canal they drifted, to a spot where the snow had been cleared, where a group of young boys were clustered over something – someone?—lying, unmoving, on the snow covered bank of the waterway.
“That’s me, isn’t it?” Titch asked. “That’s my dead body, I know it. Why have you brought me back to my dead body? When are you going to take me to Heaven to be with Jesus?”
“It is best that you should not ask these questions.” The reply formed itself in the boy’s mind. His angel had not turned, not moved her lips; but she had spoken to him. “Who are you?” Titch asked. He sought frantically amongst the sketchy memories of his Sunday School teachings. “You can’t be God because you’re a girl! Who are you, then? Are you the Mother Mary? Are you the Angel Gabriel?”
“It is best that you should not ask these questions,” the spirit replied again. “What happened was not meant to happen, and I have come to correct the situation. It is best that you should not know of me, not yet, nor remember any part of what happened here today. I will make it so.”
“Yes,” said Titch, not understanding, “But you should at least tell me who you are. It’s only polite. What will happen now? Will you leave me here? Will you leave me in my dead body? What will happen to me?” The thought of being trapped in his dead body was not a pleasant one, and the boy fought hard to compose himself and not let his fear show through, as befitted a tough son of Yorkshire. Yet his angel felt the fear threaten to overpower the child, and turned to take him in her arms and comfort him. Titch felt the warmth of her love soak into him and through him, and a feeling of perfect bliss soothed his concerns and drove out the fear.
“My sweet child, I will never leave you. I will be with you always, throughout your long life and in the life to come. I will never let you come to harm.”
A sudden inspiration occurred to the young boy, derived not from his Sunday School teachings but from a more prosaic source. “Are you my Fairy Godmother?” he asked. The angel smiled, but said nothing. And then everything went black.
He opened his eyes to find himself face down in the snow, coughing out great quantities of foul tasting canal water. Twisting his head slightly he saw Brian Lockwood’s concerned face hanging over him, while brother Neil pounded rhythmically on his back. He had no knowledge of how he had come to this. His last memory was of swinging his cricket bat at the canal’s icy surface and losing his balance. He did not recall hitting the ice. His memory from the fall to the opening of his eyes was a black void.
In the way of young boys, especially those concerned with impressing their older, tougher friends, Titch did not at all appreciate being the centre of attention and the focus of alarm. It was unthinkable that his friends should be concerned for his welfare merely because he had slipped on the ice and, apparently, knocked himself unconscious for a short time. He had not yet noticed that he was dripping wet and freezing cold. Titch leaped to his feet and faced his fellows. When he strove to speak he noticed that his teeth chattered, and the full nature of his situation was finally brought home to him.
“Listen, Titch,” Brian told him earnestly, his face a study in concern, “You must get warm as soon as you can. The best way to do that is to run. Can you run?” What a stupid question; of course he could run. What Yorkshire boy could not run! He began to run. His muscles felt strange, and sharp pains lanced through his legs. Ignoring these small inconveniences Titch ran on, and the pains lessened as the muscles warmed. Brian and most of the other boys ran alongside to ensure that their smaller colleague came to no further harm. They covered the half mile to Titch’s home in a little over five minutes, a very creditable time for the snow covered terrain, particularly given the circumstances. The group hung back at the gate to the small garden in front of the semi-detached brick-built home where Titch lived. Alone he unlatched the door and ran on into the small living room where a welcome coal fire blazed. His mother looked up from the newspaper she was reading and took in the scene in an instant. The dripping, panting young boy was at a loss for words and so spat out the obvious.
“I fell in the canal, Mom. I fell through the ice into the canal.”
His mother stared for long seconds, mixed emotions of anger, relief and love moving over her face. “Harry Murphy, if you’ve ruined those new leather shoes I’ll kill you!”
BEAUTIFUL DREAMER.
Nineteen Ninety Eight: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Chapter 1
Early in January Harry Murphy decided to keep a Dream Diary. That is, a daily (or nightly) record of his dreams. His wife, Liz, thought it was silly idea, but then Liz was long used to putting up with Harry's silly ideas and this one seemed to be much more benign than many of his previous sillinesses. Less costly too. The expensive Clarinet he had bought a year ago was now gathering dust in a bedroom closet. Harry had seen people playing the Clarinet on TV and thought it looked easy
Harry had been interested in dreams since he was a young man and had read Freud. Unfortunately he was one of those people who rarely dream, so his interest had stayed more clinical than personal. He had always believed, however, that there was something very powerful about dreams; something which, if tapped, could be a very useful tool in everyday waking life. He knew that much of mankind's inventiveness and creativity comes up from the subconscious mind, by means of a mechanism which is neither well understood nor particularly reliable. He imagined that if he could tap directly into his subconscious by way of dreams -- few and far between though they may be -- it could be the shortcut to Fame and Riches for which he had been searching through much of his life.
The decision to keep a dream diary started while waiting for Liz at Halifax Airport one snowy January afternoon, when a small display of books outside Cole's bookstore caught his attention. Harry was attracted to this particular little book by its blue-on-blue cover, its title -- "My Dreambook" -- and the price; about what he had expected to pay for a magazine to pass an hour or so while he waited for Liz's flight. He thumbed open the book and read a few lines from the flyleaf. "Although you may not be aware of it, you do dream," the book told him. "You dream several complex, vivid dreams a night. Every night. And with a little help from this book, you will remember every detail of every dream."
"And that" said the book "Is just the start of where I will take you!"
OK, thought Harry. Sold. He paid the sale price, explained yet again that he didn't really buy enough books to merit getting one of their discount cards, took his prize over to a red vinyl-covered chair and started to read. The next thing he knew Liz was standing over him asking "Harry Murphy, are you going to get up and drive me home or should I get a taxi?" On the way out of the Airport he stepped back into Coles and collected a small spiral-bound notebook and a supply of looseleaf paper.
Harry stayed up past midnight reading his fascinating little book, and learned much about the current state of knowledge regarding dreams. The physical side of the business made for pretty dull reading, with much about brainwaves, dream states and rapid eye movement. It struck Harry that this branch of science had not moved a lot over the last five decades and still seemed to rely heavily on students dozing off in research labs with electrodes glued to various parts of their bodies. About the only progress since the nineteen fifties seemed to be the use of computers. These greatly improved the speed with which scientists could determine which sleep state the subject was in -- for what that might be worth. He speed-read most of this and got very little out of it.
The psychological side of dreaming was more interesting, and seemed to have come a long way since Sigmund Freud had determined that all dreams are about sex, even if you're not dreaming about sex. A section on the interpretation of dreams told him how biblical prophets had once made a good living by telling kings and emperors what they had really been dreaming about when they dreamed they were having sex. He learned that dreaming of a cat could mean any of half a dozen different things, none of which seemed to have anything to do with cats. He flagged several pages for later study and moved on.
The spiritual aspects of dreaming were beyond Harry, especially at two o'clock in the morning. There was mention of hypnosis and the opening of one's spiritual channels; of states of meditation and of spirit guides; of spiritual growth and progress along The Golden Path Towards Enlightenment. It made his head ache. He closed the book and went to bed.
* * *
Harry arrived at Burton's Press at 7:30 Monday morning and Louise met him in the foyer. Harry had worked at Burton's for close to twenty years, and had worked in virtually every area of the company. For the last eight years he had served as Production Manager for the firm. "It's a Code Two, I'm afraid, Mr. Murphy" Louise told him without even a "Good Morning".
The "Code" business had started as a little joke between Louise and Harry some months ago, but she seemed to have taken it more seriously than Harry had intended. Although he recognised her as a first class Administrative Assistant, he had to admit that Louise was also a first class worrier. At least once a week she would be waiting for him in the lobby with some new piece of gloom and doom, and he had quickly noticed that her dire warnings fell neatly into half a dozen categories. For example, "The Crabtree-Vickers is down again" was a Code One. This was not an uncommon occurrence, nor was it surprising that a forty year old printing press should break down on a fairly regular basis. Any serious production problem was a "Code One". "Code Three" was used for Personnel crises or Union problems. "Code Two" meant that his boss, Theo Burton, was having conniptions again and needed Harry to go up to his office, hold his hand and say "There, there, Theo, don't worry. Harry is here now and Harry will fix it."
Theodore Francis Burton was the grandson of James Eliott Burton, the man who started Burton's Press some eighty years previously with an old Linotype machine and an antique Letterpress. Theo was the last of the line; no more Burton's at Burton's after Theo. Although the family no longer owned the company Theo remained a significant shareholder in Burton's and served as Chief Executive Officer. This entitled him to an executive office on the eighth floor, an Executive Assistant, an executive salary, an annual executive bonus and, perhaps the most valuable perk of all, a seat on the governing board of AGI -- Amalgamated Graphic Industries Corporation. AGI owned Burton's, five other large printing institutions, eight smaller ones and twenty other companies all more or less connected with the printing and publishing business. Most of his employees considered Theo to be a nice guy, but totally useless. He was the spoiled son of James Francis, who was the spoiled son of James Eliott, but there was nothing of the old man's steel left in Theo. His main function was to attend the monthly AGI meeting in Toronto and bring back his notes to Halifax. These he read to Harry and the rest of the Burton's Management Team on the Monday mornings following the Toronto trips. The meetings were invariably short since nobody asked questions. Nobody asked questions because they all knew perfectly well that Theo had no answers, and it would only cause embarrassment all round the table to expect them from him.
Harry grabbed the coffee which Louise held ready and headed for the eighth floor. Theo met him coming out of the elevator. "Harry," he shouted loud enough to be heard from floor three on up, "Harry, they want me to take early retirement. Early retirement, Harry! How can I take early retirement? How am I going to manage, Harry? They say I won't even have a pension!"
Doesn't anybody bother with "Good Morning" anymore, Harry wondered?
He got Theo settled in his black leather recliner, asked June to bring in some tea, and tried to calm him down. June Sawler was Theo's Executive Assistant, this title being one step up from 'Administrative Assistant'.
"Theo, for starters, you're sixty three years old, and you would have had to start thinking about retirement soon anyway, so let's not lay too much emphasis on this "early" business, shall we? Secondly none of us in the management group have company pensions any more. Those generous annual bonuses we've been getting are supposed to let us make our own financial arrangements for our golden years. And thirdly, you still own twenty percent of Burton's stock, which should pay you a yearly dividend about the size of my present salary and bonuses combined. Take a deep breath Theo, and just think about this."
"Seventeen," he said.
"What?"
"Seventeen percent. I own seventeen percent of Burton's, and they want that from me, too. They want to give me a two percent share in AGI in exchange for my Burton's shares, so I won't even have that."
Harry did some quick mental arithmetic. "Theo, they are being nice to you. They are offering you a good old "golden handshake" to make the parting easier. In terms of how much it will pay you, your Burton's shares are equivalent to about one, maybe one and a quarter percent of AGI stock. If they are still offering two percent this morning call them back and grab it."
"But what am I going to do, Harry?"
"Just what you've always done, Theo." That didn't come out the way Harry intended but luckily it seemed to go straight over Theo's head. "You can do anything you want, whenever you want. You don't have to wait for weekends to go to your cottage. You can spend the whole summer fly fishing if you want to. You can take the trip to Europe you've been talking about for the last five years. Go on a world cruise. Lie in bed late in the morning if you want to. Every morning, Theo."
About half of this was getting through, but it seemed to be enough.
"You think it's OK then, Harry? Really, I mean? Honestly?"
"Theo, I think it could turn out to be the best thing that's happened to you in years."
"But what about Burton's, Harry? How are you all going to get along if I'm not here?"
Bite your tongue, Harry. Not even a flicker of a smile. He's one of the Good Guys, remember, and they don't exactly outnumber the other kind around here.
"Well, Theo, we'll have to face that problem sooner or later. And I'm sure that AGI will insist that your replacement is at least as capable a manager as you have always been." Careful Harry, the man isn't stupid.
Theo smiled. June came in with the tea.
So now we come to the big one, Harry thought. The $64,000 question. Don't let it sound like you really care that much, or as though you've been waiting for this moment for the last five years. Sip your coffee, Harry, and don't drool.
"By the way, Theo, did George say whether they have anyone in mind to replace you?" George Thorpe was the President and Chairman of the Board at Amalgamated Graphics. George wasn't exactly a dictator, but the last person to stand up to him with any amount of vigour had not been heard from for six months. Office gossip said he was managing a Copy Centre somewhere near Yellowknife.
"What? Oh, no." Theo was elsewhere. "You know Harry, I bet I would get rid of this awful indigestion I get every time I eat anything. Get the old insides back into good working order, what? Out from under all the stress, you know, sort out the old tummy, don't you think?"
Stress? What stress? "I'm sure you're right, Theo. Did he, did George, did he happen to mention.......?"
"Oh, yes, sorry. No. Not that I recall. He says he wants me to go up to Toronto to discuss the changeover."
"Changeover? So he does have someone in mind for the job?"
"Someone in mind? Oh, I see. I don't know, Harry. Yes, come to think of it, I believe he may have. Probably some recent MBA from some prestigious American Ivy League. Likely the nephew of one of the boys on AGI's board of directors. Somebody who can speak to computers in their own language but has the interpersonal skills of Attila the Hun. Damn shame for Burton's. What the old firm really needs is somebody like you, Harry. Someone with a knack for getting along with people. If you weren't too old, that is. If I thought there was a chance I'd suggest you to Thorpe when I talk with him next. You know, I think I will, dammit."
Now how's that for a backhanded compliment, Harry wondered. I'm forty seven for God's sake, with twenty good years left in me. I'm a perfect age for the job.
Theo was standing with his back to Harry, staring out of the window, probably thinking about fly fishing. The Code Two was obviously over. Harry excused himself to Theo's back and left.
Back in his office Louise had re-scheduled his morning meetings, postponed those who couldn't make the new times, and replaced his tepid cup of coffee with a fresh one from the machine by her desk. The morning sped past and by the time he noticed how quiet the third floor had become it was half past lunchtime.
Despite the gossip Harry continued to believe that the staff cafeteria ('Staff-Caff' as it was unaffectionately known) was not harmful to your health unless you actually used it. He therefore tried to keep his visits down to emergency use only, which averaged out to about three, maybe four times a month. Having an important customer arriving in his office within the next hour constituted such an emergency, so he grabbed cup, plate, plastic utensils and tray and made the best of what was left in the stainless steel bins. He saw Mick Shaw, Burton's Pressroom Chief, sitting alone and went over to his table.
"G'day Scotty" Harry said, setting his tray down on the small cafeteria table. Mick was as Irish as the Shamrock. He came to Canada in the early seventies, and took a job in a Montreal Pressroom. Mistaking his accent, the locals (with no malice intended) called him "Scotty". It stuck, and moved to Nova Scotia with him in the mid eighties, but he'd never grown to like it. He gave Harry a look.
"Sorry, Mick."
"G'day, Murph" he said, relaxing the scowl. (Finally, half way through the day, the elementary courtesies observed!) Harry had always thought Burton's was lucky to have Mick Shaw as Pressroom Boss. Back not too many years ago you could get by in such a job with a good working knowledge of the printing process and the personal toughness necessary to enforce your orders; but in today's high tech world, with half the equipment using built-in micro-computers the first step in trouble shooting a press problem was often searching for bugs in a computer program. Mick Shaw possessed a rare combination of computer savvy, printing knowledge and ham-sized fists. In the pressroom, when Mick said "jump" it was wise to be well up into the air before asking him "how high?"; And the techies had told Harry, away from Mick's hearing, that "Scotty" knew as much as the best of them, and was immune to jargon. It was said that one smartass sales rep had tried to snow Mick with hi-tech bafflegab once. Only once.
He was puffing and chewing by turns on a long, fat cigar, occasionally flicking ash onto the "Strictly No Smoking" sign which he'd taken from a nearby table and bent into a rough approximation of an ashtray. He looked abstracted, his eyes semi-focussed across the large dining room. Harry followed his gaze in time to see June leaving by the big swing doors that led to the elevators.
"She's a cracking bit of stuff, that secretary of Theo's," he observed. "Do you suppose he's getting any of it?"
"No" Harry told him. "And she'd cut your Irish heart out if she heard you call her a secretary."
"Yeah, what is it? Personal Assistant, right? Well she can assist me personally any time of the day or night!"
"Executive Assistant, Michael. And why do you suppose she'd look twice at a thug like you when you're sitting next to a stud like me, tell me that now, will you?"
"HHmmphhaa" Mick spluttered, spitting cigar smoke and coffee. "Yeah, right, in your dreams, Boyo!!"
Harry looked at Mick. The Pressroom Boss had the face and physique of a successful barroom brawler, and his lunchtime conversations rarely deviated from sports, Clint Eastwood movies (for which he shared a fondness with Harry) or the supposed sexual appetites of assorted Burton Beauties. Harry decided to try the question anyway.
"Do you dream, Mick?"
Shaw looked at Harry as though he'd been asked how he'd enjoyed his summer holiday on Mars. He said "Do you mean, like do I think I should have a crack at Theo's job when he leaves next month? Like, do I have -- what is it they call them? Career Aspirations?"
Before Harry could register surprise that Theo's secret was already doing the rounds he remembered how it had been yelled out to him at the elevator that morning. Mick had probably known even before that. "No" he said. "I mean regular dreams. At night. When you're asleep. You know. Dreams."
"Odd sort of question, Murph."
"Well." Harry decided to come clean. "It's just that I'm reading this book, and it says that everybody dreams, several dreams every night. But, me, I dream once every two or three months, so you see....."
Mick grinned. "I see. You think you're not getting your share, that it? Relax, Murph. I don't buy it. I don't remember the last time I dreamed about anything. It was probably that June Sawler, personally assisting me, with them long legs wrapped around........"
Harry choked on a piece of yellowish vegetable matter. "OK Mick, not while I'm eating this .... whatever it is. I take your point."
"You know what, Murph, you should talk to my nephew, Virgil. He has this thing about dreams, too. What was it he was telling me about? Something about 'Elusive Dreaming' which is like some kind of magic trick. If you learn how to do this 'elusive dreaming', you can make wonderful things happen." His watch beeped, and Mick was gone without another word. Well, at least Harry had had a "G'day" from him.
As he watched Shaw's retreating back Harry realised that Mick was probably recalling something he'd heard in passing anything up to four or five years ago, and stored away for possible use somewhere, some time. Quite a man, that Scotty Shaw. Elusive Dreaming, Harry thought, sounded like something worth looking up.
Liz was playing bridge that evening, so after supper Harry sprawled out on the living room couch with Bach playing quietly on the surround sound system, and opened his Dream Book. There was no index and no mention of Elusive Dreaming in the contents pages, so he picked up where he'd left off, and started on the instructions for the remembering of dreams.
It was worse than playing a Clarinet, Harry thought. If he'd expected this to be easy, he'd picked up the wrong little dream book, and his dream diary purchase had been a tad premature. Step One .... (Step one? Just how many steps are involved here, he wondered. He flicked briefly ahead and saw that there were four) Step One involved convincing yourself that you would remember your dreams.
To do this, he read, you need to create a little mantra; a little chant, that you repeat to yourself, silently, while trying to fall asleep. It was apparently important that this mantra have not only words, but cadence. Rhythm. The kind of thing that little girls used to skip to. (Do they still?, he wondered). It is no good simply repeating "I am damned well going to remember my dreams tomorrow morning." The example given was:
"I will remember my dreams tonight."
"I will remember my dreams tonight."
Di Dah Di Diddelly Dah Di Dah.
Over, and over and over. And over. And over.
Eventually, the book explained, even though your thoughts may drift to other things, the mantra will be implanted in your subconscious mind and will have its intended effect. If you listen quietly to your own thoughts you might just hear a faint mental echo from somewhere deep down.
Di Dah Di Diddelley Dah Di Dah.
"I will remember my dreams tonight."
"I will remember my dreams tonight."
"I will remember my dreams tonight."
Until you fall asleep.
Not being particularly good at this sort of thing Harry thought he might as well simply use the example given.
When Liz got home at 11:45 p.m. Harry was fast asleep on the couch, snoring away to the accompaniment of "Sheep may safely graze" replaying itself for perhaps the fifth time. She shook him awake. He didn't remember any dreams, nor did he when he next woke up the following morning.
* * *
The week flew by. Harry saw Theo once, briefly, on Thursday morning. He breezed by Harry's office, stuck his head through the doorway and told him he'd been worrying needlessly about this 'early retirement business' and everything was working out just ducky, thank you. Theo had, eventually, also done the math, and had called AGI to accept their offer. In addition there was a handsome severance package, which ran well into six figures, and he got to keep his company car. All in all Theo was to be pretty much as comfortable financially as he had been as an employed CEO, and could even look forward to the occasional consultancy fee on occasions when AGI had need of his particular executive talents. Harry though that it could be a while before such an occasion arose, but he kept this to himself and simply nodded and smiled. Of course, he could well be wrong. Theo was considered to be a Good Guy by one and all, and had more than a few friends in high places. Someone from the board could very well toss a contract his way for old time's sake. Theo's report would probably end up as expensive executive toilet paper, if it didn't go directly to the shredder, but then such are the ways in which business is done at the more exalted levels. He was whistling softly as he walked away.
There was not a single whiff on the office grapevine concerning Theo's replacement. Harry could understand how his own vine might have failed to pick up early gossip, but there was no way that Louise or Mick Shaw would miss it. Louise even happened to bump into June Sawler in the Staff-Caff and in passing the time of day learned that not even June was privy to upper echelon corporate thinking this time.
Harry resolved to make his move early the following week. He had a few good contacts in Toronto, and a number of markers he could call in. He knew George Thorpe well enough to give him a call. It would certainly not hurt his career prospects to let George know he was interested in the top slot, and that he considered himself competent for the post. In fact Harry knew very well how it would reflect on his career prospects if Toronto got the impression that he did not have ambitions in that direction. Still, it would have to be a very well thought out and immaculately timed call. Come to think of it, Harry had several perfectly valid reasons to schedule a few days in The City and although George would see straight through him if he "just dropped in" he would not take it amiss. Must think on this, Harry told himself.
The weather forecast called for one of those beautiful balmy Nova Scotia winter weekends that could pass for spring in many parts of the country, and Harry took himself off to his "thinking place". Twelve years ago Nova Scotian oceanside property had still been affordable by other than millionaires, and Liz's parents had bought a three acre parcel on St. Margaret's Bay, half an hour's drive out of town. Their intention had been to build a year round home and retire there one day, but they failed to take into consideration the intervention of a drunk driver who put an end to all of the couple's intentions, short and long term. Liz's Dad never did see retirement and her Mum never planted the seaside garden she'd dreamed of. The driver walked away with barely a scratch and was found a mile or so down the road, lying on his back on the soft shoulder admiring the stars. Just one more sorry drunk driver story, Harry thought cynically.
The term "million dollar location" is grossly overworked by Nova Scotian Real Estate Agents, but the term fell short of describing this little chunk of paradise. Over the years Harry had come to see the property as the place to go when he needed to think. Two summers ago they'd had a pre-fabricated cottage set up on a poured concrete slab, had drilled a well and had a septic system installed. A woodstove in the kitchen and a log fire in the living room kept away the worst of the winter chill, and an old record player stood in for the expensive sound system of their Halifax home.
Liz had other plans for the Saturday morning, and would join him later in the day, so on Friday evening Harry drove down and fired up the kitchen stove and living room fireplace, set some Verdi spinning on the old turntable, poured a generous Jack Daniels and settled down to do some serious thinking. He took his sippin' whiskey over to the big picture-window set into the north facing wall and looked out over the huge bay. The lights at Peggy's Cove twinkled in the distance and the ocean was a vast expanse of blue-black ink.
An hour later his mind was unfettered by solutions. The problems, on the other hand, seemed to have multiplied. If he called George Thorpe personally, would other members of the Board -- some of whom he knew quite well -- feel snubbed. But if he called Philip Sutherland -- a board member he counted as a friend (they had got drunk together once) -- would George think he was plotting behind his back? Did George and Phil get along? Could he talk to one without alienating the other? Or did anybody truly matter in this but George himself? Then again, should he call anyone before an official announcement arrived? Was he even supposed to know? But if he waited until the official memo arrived would they see him as a fool not to know what the assistant janitor on the evening shift had already known for weeks?
Why the devil don't they teach this stuff in school, Harry wondered.
What he really needed was some help from his subconscious mind, where all questions of this nature are settled in the first place.
Of course.
He hadn't come down to the cottage to study his Dream Book, but some hunch had made him throw it into his overnight bag. He dug out the little book, threw another log on the fire, poured a second generous glass of thought-lubricant and settled down on the old, overstuffed sofa.
Step Two, he began.
You do not need to train yourself to awaken automatically at the conclusion of a dream. Sometimes this will happen; other times it won't. If needed, you will wake up. Why would you need to wake up after every dream? Because it is important that you make a few notes immediately on waking. The dream takes place in the mind, while memories are stored in the physical brain. (Let's not go there, at least not yet, he thought. Harry had always thought of "brain" and "mind" as synonymous). In order to imprint the dream onto the brain, you may need a memory jogger. A word or two will do. A short sentence will cover the most complex of dreams. You dreamed that you were Robin Hood? Spent years as an outlaw in Sherwood forest? Were restored to your lands by good King Richard, married Marion and lived to become a grandfather? An eighty year dream, shall we say? Wake up and jot down "Bows and Arrows."
You have a matter of minutes -- perhaps only seconds -- to do this before the dream evaporates like steam from a kettle and becomes as impossible to recapture; but the next morning, as soon as you see the jottings on the little notepad on the bedside table, the entire epic will be restored and permanently impressed into the memory recording apparatus of the brain. Trust me on this, said the book.
Step Three. Good morning. Wake up, recover jottings, remember dream, record in complete, intricate detail in your dream diary. Don't leave out a thing. Write down what you said, what you did, who you met, how you felt. If you don't do this, then the limitations of physical memory take over and when you re-read your jottings a week later you may not have the slightest idea what they were meant to signify.
Nice. Simple. Not nearly as bad as he had first thought. Much less complex than, say, learning to play a musical instrument.
One more glass of liquid gold. He toasted Sigmund Freud, filled his hot water bottle from the kettle on the kitchen stove, and climbed under the duvet into the Murphy shaped indentation in the soft mattress. The living room and kitchen fires would die down overnight, but the cottage would retain enough heat to keep him comfortable until he stoked the fires in the morning.
I will remember my dreams tonight.
I will remember my dreams tonight.
I will remember my dreams tonight.
After about a dozen "remembers" he didn't remember anything.
He slept long and soft. No alarm clocks awakened him; no morning radio DJ cheeried himself into Harry's day. No city traffic noise intruded into his sleep. He woke up, about nine o'clock on a sparkling Saturday morning in the most beautiful part of the most beautiful province of the finest country on God's Good Green Earth. He felt full of joy.
He checked his mental registers. No dreams. Nothing. Could it be that the "Dah diddely dah" business would only work for people who had dreams to remember in the first place? He would have to look in the book to see if there was a section on "inducing dreams".
Other pressing matters came to his attention so he grabbed his dressing own and headed at speed for the bathroom.
When the rekindled fires had lifted the internal temperature back to a more civilised level he went into the bedroom to dress, and found a little white rectangle of notepaper lying on the floor. He picked it up and looked at it and to his utter amazement saw writing there. At least, he saw tracks on it. Pencil scratches. There were two words, but it took some effort to decipher them. Was it in English? After a number of false starts Harry concluded that at some time during the night he had reached for his notepaper, taken up a pencil and jotted down this important note: Memo to self:
"Gravey Shakes”
He noticed that he'd misspelled "Gravy" as "Gravey", but regardless of spelling he had no idea what it meant. Was Grav(e)y an adjective describing a type of Shake (e.g. Milkshake, but made with gravy?) Or a noun, so that "shakes" was a verb defining what gravy does? He supposed that if the gravy was suitably congealed (Burton's staff-caff achieved this well and regularly) then when ladled over the mashed potatoes the gravy would "shake" like jelly, as opposed to flow like, well, like gravy. Had he dreamed of the Staff Caff? Some nightmare involving congealed gravy over soggy, yellowish vegetables? Nothing he tried made any real sense. He was stumped.
Liz arrived shortly after noon. Harry and Liz had graduated to Empty Nesters the previous year with the departure of their youngest offspring to Ottawa, and Liz was now preparing to go back to work. She had studied law for two years at University and worked previously as a legal assistant. A "Paralegal", Harry thought, was the correct term. Liz had told Harry that a Paralegal is to a lawyer what a Paramedic is to a doctor. He had asked if this meant that she delivered emergency legal advice to roadside accident victims. He didn't get a laugh. Liz was taking steps to come up to date in her specialty, and she would then actively look for work. It seemed to Harry that most of what she needed to learn fell into the Computer field rather than the legal. But Liz knew the law. Harry asked her if she knew of any legal significance to the term "Gravy Shakes". She gave me him one of her looks.
"Say that again slowly" she told him.
"Gravy -- as in Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding -- Shakes -- as in Milk variety or post party physical recriminations."
"No." Harry had known for many years not to expect ambiguity or waffle from Liz. He had serious concerns about how she expected to make a successful living in the legal profession.
"Does the term mean anything to you at all."
"No. What is this, Harry? A cryptic crossword puzzle clue?" Liz naturally knew of his predilection for the London Times puzzle page.
"Yes" he lied. Harry knew very well that Liz could see through him like glass, but he also knew that she would usually overlook his more harmless lies for the sake of marital harmony and a more serene lifestyle. "What connotations does it bring to mind for you?"
"Some bizarre concoction dreamed up by misguided youth? Maybe something to do with the drug scene? Like mixing drugs, for example. Especially the 'shakes' part. You 'shake' the mixture and then you 'shake' from ingesting it. Maybe 'gravy' means money, profits. I think that 'gravy' is slang for money in some parts of the world. Any of this help, Harry?"
"Yes" he lied again. "Thanks, Liz." She went to take a shower. Harry looked again at the scrawl on the scrap of paper. Had he dreamed of drugs? Did "Gravey Shakes" refer to drug profits? Was there anything here that could help him with his AGI dilemma? It seemed not. Some help, Subconscious Harry. Thanks a bunch.
Half an hour later Liz came out of the bathroom in her robe and with a towel around her head. "Harry," she said "about your crossword clue, could your "gravy" be as in Grave-y. Remember Scrooge to Marley's Ghost? 'There's more of gravy than grave about you'." Yes, he thought. Indeed it could. Harry did not normally misspell simple words. Graves, he thought. Death and dying. Bones in the ground. Tombstones. Graveyards.
Graveyards. It came back to him like a stroke of thunder. One second he would have taken an oath that he had not dreamed at all the previous night, and a split second later it was all there, in instant, incredible detail. It was neither Grave-y nor gravy, it was Harry's midnight shorthand for 'Graveyard'. And it wasn't 'shakes'. In the middle of the night Harry had taken a pencil and paper and scratched on it: Memo to self:
Graveyard Snakes.
Harry Murphy's Dream Diary: Friday, January 16.
I walked along a small path, not much more than a rabbit track, through a grassy field. I don't know how I came to be there, nor how I knew where I was, but I knew that I was on the outskirts of a very old village somewhere in the north of England. Immediately to my right ran a large iron railing. At the top of the railing, above my head, the black poles ended in sharp points. The fence enclosed a small stone church; I could see the church tower in the near distance. The fence also enclosed a graveyard, which I could see to my immediate right. The church and graveyard were immensely old.
The day was ugly. The skies were heavy and oppressive, seeming to hang only a few feet overhead, and ready at any minute to release vast quantities of a frigid, wind-driven rain. I was aware of a biting cold, but it caused me neither pain nor concern, as though I were insulated from it in some way. There was no colour anywhere other than drab browns and greys. My mood, too, was heavy and oppressive as though some mighty problem weighed down on me -- though I was not aware of what that problem might be. I felt deeply depressed and despondent. Whatever it was that troubled me, I had no hope for a solution.
I continued walking along the path, looking through the bars at the crumbled old stones. Some had canted against their neighbours; others had fallen and lay flat on the earth like paving stones in an improbable footpath.
My focus moved back from the gravestones to the ground by the side of the path, between the black iron poles of the fence. On the graveyard side of the fence I saw a small brown snake, about two feet long and the thickness of my thumb at its thickest section. As my eyes passed along the base of the fence I saw another snake, bigger than the first but of the same variety. Then I saw more, and realised that the whole graveyard was infested with the creatures, some of them several feet long and as thick as my forearm.
I was concerned that the snakes might take notice of me and see me as prey. I had no idea whether they were harmless or possessed of deadly fangs. Then I realised that the snakes were unable to cross the line of the fence, and were in fact confined to the graveyard. With this realization came an enormous sense of relief.
END.
Sunday dawned clear and colder. Harry had not dreamed the previous night, or at least if he had dreamed, there were no little squares of notepaper lying around to give evidence of it. He stared out over the waters of the bay and tried to come to terms with what had happened. How could he have dreamed such a complex, detailed scenario and not known of it until the cryptic "memory jogger" brought the whole script crashing back? How many of these powerful little dramas had he participated in, over the half century of his life? And why had he never, up to this moment, even been aware of them? Had it not been for his scrawled "Gravey Shakes" this experience, too, would have passed unremarked and unremembered.
What had really hit him the hardest was the intensity of the experience. When he had spoken with Mick Shaw about his occasional dreams he had been speaking of shallow, low-impact imaginings of no import and no lasting impression. If pushed, he might have said: "I once dreamed of riding a horse," or "I saw my grandfather in a dream." But he would never have believed himself capable of dreaming an entire world into being, replete with weather, lifelike props, emotional overtones. My God, emotional overtones, Harry thought. He had known his emotional state of mind in this dream. He had known himself to be down, dejected, depressed. No, more than that, he had been dejected and depressed. How he had come to this state he had no idea. If he had dreamed longer, would he have walked on along the path, to a road, perhaps? To a house on that road? To a family in that house? Would he have opened a door into a home filled with sickness and despair? Was he in financial trouble? Family problems? Where had he come from to be walking alone past a thousand year old churchyard? Somewhere in England, certainly, but nowhere that he recognised from his childhood there. Why could he not cast his mind back five minutes, in that dream, and know from where he had started his walk on that cold, overcast winter's day?
The memory of the dream was now fresh in his mind, and as real and solid as the memory of yesterday's supper and the drive along the coast road past Head of St. Margaret's to the cottage. He could feel the touch of the cold iron railings; He could see the slate grey rainclouds churning in the angry sky. He had not known at the time that it was a dream. In the dream he had accepted it as reality, and even now, only knowing that it had been a dream prevented him from filing it away under "real memories" and integrating the experience into his life.
It was all too much.
Liz, always sensitive to his moods, asked what was wrong and Harry told her of the disturbing dream, all of it. That she should be knowledgeable in this area did not at all surprise him.
"These things you dreamed are symbols Harry. The subconscious speaks to us in symbols. I think that you are beset by problems, probably centering on whether or not you really want to replace Theo as CEO at Burton's (Is she a witch, this woman, Harry wondered, to know these things? While he was waiting for the right time to tell her she probably already had the AGI list of potential successors in her purse). Your mind throws these issues into your dream as little brown snakes and spike-topped metal railings. Something like that. The iron railings are probably your mind's way of saying that there is a barrier between where you are and where you want to be; but the snakes and tombstones speak volumes about what you really think is on the other side of that barrier. The problems associated with the CEO job -- the snakes in your dream -- can't get at you, not where you are at the moment, not yet. But if you try to climb that fence you will have to deal with the nasty sharp points on the way over, and then face the snakes when you jump down. It sounds to me, Harry, as though your subconscious mind is asking you whether this is what you really want, all this grief and worry."
Wow. But she wasn't done yet.
"You need to get a book on Dream Interpretation, something modern. Freud would have nailed you in a minute with all this sexual imagery; snakes and long black pointed iron poles. Even by modern standards I think you might find that snakes signify sexuality in some way. But you should also look up Churches, Old Tombstones and probably Weather, or specifically "heavy grey rainclouds". I would take bets that the clouds are another way of saying that big problems are looming over you, or about to loom. And that is almost certainly the CEO business, about to thunder into your life, and pour cold water all over your dreams."
Harry staggered under the deluge. "But I don't see this business with Theo as any kind of threat, Liz. Honestly. I mean, I admit I'm having some doubts about the best way to play it, but I see this as a bright new opportunity for positive progress. Why am I not dreaming of sunny meadows, and little brown bunnies instead of nasty brown snakes?"
"This is 'real-world Harry' talking to me now," Liz said. "'Subconscious Harry' has already had his say. Very eloquently, too. It seems to me that Subconscious Harry is trembling in his boots."
Wow again.
Liz left to complete her morning toilette, and Harry walked over to the window. Harry Murphy, he thought. Happy-go-lucky Harry, always ready with a grin and a wisecrack. Harry Murphy, who had never in his life taken anything seriously enough to get depressed about it, stood at the window of his little cottage on St Margaret's Bay and stared out over the whitecaps. And, from somewhere deep within, another Harry, a morose and troubled Harry, stared along with him.
Later in the day he took Liz's advice, which presented no problems given that his Dream Book included a whole chapter on the meaning and interpretation of dream symbols. He flipped through the book, and it fell open where he'd last put it down. Step Four. He'd forgotten that there was a step four.
Step four turned out to be "Analyze your dream". Read through your transcript, the book told him. Ask yourself what emotions are triggered by reliving the dream? How do the messages fit into your waking life? What especially draws your attention in this dream? Did you recognize people, things or places? Were they recognisably life-like, or did you just "know" who, what or where they were? Was the dream true to life? Were some elements true to life? Which ones? Make notes to review later.
Liz was right again. Liz is always right, he thought - it could get to be quite nauseating at times - but in this case she was only partly right. The little book told him that current thinking suggested that there were no fixed interpretations for specific dream symbols. Sorry, Sigmund, Harry thought, but the science has apparently moved on since your time.
The prime --the only -- meaning behind any dream symbol is what it signifies to the dreamer. A spider in a dream, for example, might be a grade "A" nightmare to little Miss Muffet, who is scared witless by the things, but a Walt Disney Special to a young boy who loves insects and keeps a four-inch high tarantula named 'Sweetie' as a pet. The only way to interpret such a dream is how did you feel when the giant spider put his arms around you?
This having been said, the book went on for several pages to list the traditional interpretations of some common dream symbols. Riding in a bus or train, for example, can represent how you see your life-progress, but the specifics again depend on the dreamer's reaction to the journey. When you dreamed of the bus, were you enjoying the trip? Did you know where the bus was going? Did you know where you were meant to get off? Had you paid your fare? Liz was also right (Oh, shut up!) about the snakes. They are commonly interpreted as sexual symbols. So are rigid iron rods, with or without points on the ends.
He read again through the dream transcript and had no trouble conjuring up the emotions that had accompanied the experience. In retrospect he realised that the snakes hadn't struck him as particularly frightening or repulsive. He had been alarmed at the possibility that they might try to bite him, but he would have had the same reaction if the graveyard had been full of slavering German Shepherd dogs. The bottom line was inescapable. The dream had frightened and upset him. If the graveyard behind the iron fence did indeed represent the world of Burton's new CEO, he was no longer at all certain that he wanted to get into it.
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