Dreamscape: Of friendships, in conflicts and strong voices

The outlay

I cannot remember how long ago the dramatis personae were in the latest dramatic episode of parasomnia where the script is an ad hoc exhibition of wild and vividly imagination occluding and folding time into a present continuous of endless juxtapositions and unlimited human abilities that science fiction will not dare to touch.

My father had gone away when his best friend who passed on last November had come round to ask for the use of his car. I promptly deactivated the security my mother having consented, and the deed was done. In dreams, there are backstories that come to view as memory during the playback of events you cannot place, and this one, I do not remember giving access to the car, yet I was bought into the premise.

The setup

When he returned, he had no knowledge that the car was used until it came up in conversation with his friend. As he is wont to do, he was completely sceptical that the car had been moved at all because there was no record in the odometer or tracking system that the security had been tampered with. That was where fingers were pointed at me by his friend that not only had I bypassed security, but I had also overridden all protective systems, it became a thing of jest that so seriously annoyed my father.

Rather than have a discussion with me about the issue, he took his frustration out on me resorting an instrument of corporal punishment that he handily wielded from our childhood to exert authority and respect. As it was in a public place, I was apparently conversant with customs not to resist or attack, I let him have his way, humiliating me as others watched without intervening even as what I did was at their insistence.

The fightback

Later, he came at me again in private and we got into a struggle, I was having none of it and then I went to bed. Quite overcome with the injustice of it all, I got up and was in a crowded courtyard where my mother was serving food to quite a few people. I attracted her attention asking to talk but gave way to a few desperately hungry and possibly homeless people hoping once their urgent requirement was served, I would be allowed a hearing, but I was altogether ignored.

I adjusted my voice and bellowed, “Can I have an audience?”, at which point, I could no more be ignored and the whole crowd fell silent to listen to what I had to say. I am not much of a public speaker, but I gave it my best shot occasionally losing my voice but recovering soon enough to make coherent sentences.

My statement

Uncle Jimi, though I have never called him that before, I said, was a father-figure such that if my father were absent, he would not have to be asked to take on that role. There was no way I would have refused him access to use my father’s car and with my mother’s consent, he did have the car when he required it. I was rather disappointed that they allowed my father to abuse me without even attempting to restrain him.

Whilst I was busy speaking, my implacable father came wielding a big stick again, but this time we had a full-on confrontation as I tackled him the apparently big stick shrunk into a length of flimsy string, his hand hanging down with the incredulity of how his instrument of power and enforcement became nothing of any threat. Yet, it was in the words I spoke than in any physical tussling that this happened.

Leaving the courtyard to return to my bedroom with my brother, along the way, he wanted to go to see my father as I worried that he might not have access to the house if we did not go together. Then across the stream just before a bridge that could be easily crossed, I saw a wolf with a colourful iridescent coat approaching as if towards prey. I growled at it, it cowered in fear and slunk away. My phone rang and that is how I was awoken from my apparent nightmare; it was Brain on the other end.

I prevail

All day, I have been reviewing the events in my mind as I narrated the dream to friends, the seemingly incessant conflicts between my father and I, caught in a time warp of when we were literally of equal strength and I always gaining the upper hand. The situation where the presumed reasonableness he possesses is quickly dispensed for the physical, but more pertinently, the bond of friendship with his best friend that we all celebrated.

Then, one thing I have realised and learnt through life is I have to speak for myself, for fairness, for justice and to arrest that abuse of power and authority by those who think they are unassailable and inviolable. The voice against oppression must be heard and it is there to disarm completely. Another dreamscape.