Of dreams and battles in other tongues

I dream active dreams

Vivid dreams find a landscape in my sleep, and I cannot account for when they occur apart from when there is too much fat in my food close to when I take my pills, that the interaction between the chemicals allows for that side effect.

At other times, it is a busy day that leaves me so utterly exhausted, once I fall asleep, there is a kind of incapacitation that helps my relaxation, but I get any sleep I can whenever I can, for there is a tendency to insomnia that I try to arrest before it takes hold.

One apparent sleep disorder I have endured is parasomnia, where undesirable and physical events occur in my sleep that I am punching out or kicking out, at other times, I am talking in my sleep and rarely in typical conversation but in serious confrontation with people or situations that occasion possible or imminent harm.

Winning in all fights

From deep within my psyche, I find myself engaged in some sort of spiritual warfare, speaking out against assailants to the scheme of the Acts of Apostles. Fundamentally, I am a man of intense spiritual persuasion and belief that some realms in which I dwell are multidimensional and needing of presence in attention, observation, assertion, understanding, engagement, and conflict where you should triumph.

One other peculiarity is whilst English is my mother tongue and Yoruba is a learned language, my dream language is usually strongly Yoruba than English, I seem to be more assertive and sure of myself and what I determine to do in that language with a lot more clarity and forcefulness. I marvel at the power of dreams and what many victories I have been conferred with when met with an attack.

Thought Picnic: Participation begets the victories in life

Battlefield victories

Listening to the radio this morning, there was a discussion on humour and laughter that brought opinions and viewpoints from many perspectives of culture, gender, location and experiences.

In one of the exchanges, a comedienne of mixed heritage was chatting to her mother who had had a severe stroke with the likelihood of imminent death. Even under the strain of the ordeal, she could still communicate though quite laboured.

The comedienne asked her if she was afraid and her mother answered that she was not afraid and was never afraid in her life, then conveyed a lesson in life that resonated with me in the first hearing without the need to rewind the broadcast. “You don’t get to speak of victories if you have not been on the battlefield.”

Missing nothing

In that statement was a story and a life of experience that we have to be careful to learn attentively. What you have neither tried nor participated in cannot give you experience. Yet, I do realise that when people say to me, “You don’t know what you are missing.” Usually, to persuade me to do what I am not inclined to do, my retort is, “I can’t miss what I do not know or don’t want to know anything about.” What I am not persuaded of, I will not be persuaded about.

Then again, in life, there are things that require our participation because circumstances compel us, or the need arises to progress or to just to save or redeem ourselves. It would not work to be defeatist before we have been tried or tested. If we are a defeated, there are lessons for the next trial and if we are victorious, we have the opportunity beyond the lessons learnt to advance to the next challenge.

Temporary setbacks

In a conversation with my cousin that lasted nothing short of 3 hours altogether from learning of the demise of a close relation to the ennoblement of another, other topics composed of reminiscences going back over 4 decades, one other nugget of wisdom that has helped me in my toughest times was recalled. “An opportunity once lost can be regained after a temporary setback.” This was shared with us one evening by a tenant who I learnt had since passed away.

We were taught that in antiquity that an opportunity once lost can never be regained, as if everything and all was lost and we should sink into despair, be lost in the defeat from which we can never recover.

Making heroes

The truth is life is rarely like that, we have guts, we have nerve, we have chutzpah, we have verve, we have hope, we have spirit, we have than never-say-die drive that one defeat or even many failures are just hurdles. We review, reassess, realign, retry, redo, rejig, repeat, we determine that we would rather die trying than never to have tried at all.

In battlefields, many do die in the cause, in fact, many do die for their country and they are considered heroes. Then one general said to his troops, “It is noble to die for your country, but we are in this battle to make the enemy die for their country, in their becoming heroes we gain the victory even if we are not celebrated as heroes after winning.” Somewhere in this is another perspective to life’s challenges, the need to challenge traditions for different and better outcomes.

Dreamscape: An excursion to the factory of dreams

I can think it

When I consider it, I probably have lots of inspiration, much from unlikely things like thoughts, events, observations and circumstances.

The engine room of ideas and machinations in the cranial crenellations that provides the obverse of identity in my visage is constantly scheming position and opposition, purpose and dispute, decision and indecision, a battleground of conflict and agreement, it is a wonder it is not projected on the world as a deafening cacophony.

I often dream it

When it comes to the dream world, I have to be careful of what inspires the incredulous, my vivid dreams have an impossible script which if written may have the author immediately certifiable in the first act. I have dreamt dreams Joseph would not dare to go to sleep for.

It is not the haunting that gets to me, it is the remembrance, the fact that it gets to a point that I so many dream worlds deep, it is like my dreams are having their own dreams within dreams, my waking up is a series of wakeful episodes within dreams before I finally come awake.

This is most evident in dreams where I find myself needing to switch on the lights, my flicking the light switch yields no result and something in my subconscious tells my dream, you are in a dream, you need to wake up. I wake up and realise I am still in a dark room, so, I flick the switch again, where I am reminded by the central director of dreams, you are still in a dream.

Then I escape it

The process repeats itself until I come awake and aware. As I always sleep with the lights on, I wake into the light and then begin to ponder the dream I have just had. I cannot consider my dreams nightmares, though other people who dream my kind of dreams who probably be having nightmares.

In the stranger dreams, I have had are seeming recurrent chapters of the same people, events, circumstances and awesome architecture that has the capacity to drawf you into an insignificant Lilliputian. Thankfully, I am never lost in the corridors of those vast edifices, rather, I find myself a burrower attempting to traverse spaces and tunnels too small or narrow for my frame that I contract dreamy claustrophobia.

Now, that for me is terrifying that I wish I had an instant tap out or an Italian Job event where with the relief of freedom to a large expanse of space and untrammelled access, the stroke of luck allows me to express gratitude in those famous words, 'You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!'.

Yet, I love it

I love my dreams, for the impossible is effortless, the unthinkable is mundane, the insurmountable is rudimentary, the undefeatable is vanquished, the enemy never gets the better of me, for there are tools I could never have conceived or imagined that I wondrously adept at deploying. There is blood and gore, the macabre and the mediaeval, it is primal and primaeval, yet a magical fantasy of ability and capability you can only find in dreams, for which a reality can be conceived to extricate oneself from sticky situations.

The disputes I have been given the wisdom to resolve in dreams becomes manifest in circumstances where I would never have had the first inkling to resolve. Dreams are good, for, in all that, there is beauty, there is vision, there is achievement, there is hope, there is faith and there is love. It harbours a timeless landscape where all memories converge from all times with people of blessed memory and those to come.

The mind is a factory of unique and bespoke dreams.

Walk away!

I have learnt to walk away from many things that the lesser of me would want to do and I am much better for it.

Walk away!

Walk away!
Walk away from a fight,
Walk away from conflict,
Walk away from hurt,
Walk away from dispute,
Walk away to love.

Walk away!
Walk away from pain,
Walk away from loss,
Walk away from jail,
Walk away from despair,
Walk away to love.

Walk away!
Walk away from offence,
Walk away from pride,
Walk away from glitter,
Walk away from greed,
Walk away to love.

Walk away!
Walk away from memories,
Walk away from the past,
Walk away from your failings,
Walk away from nightmares,
Walk away to love.

Walk away!
Walk away from shame,
Walk away from guilt,
Walk away from blame,
Walk away from inferiority,
Walk away to love.

Thought Picnic: My very own Psalms

Channelling David

I sometimes feel like the Psalmist when he wrote the psalms of despair and desperation. I wonder to myself, can I take any more of this?

How long? Many psalms ask, how long shall all this go on for before I expire under the weight of being overwhelmed or rise like a phoenix from the ashes of all that I ever knew that has been consumed in the flames of adversity?

Yes, that dreadful thought has crossed my mind, never dwelt on it, but driven by at just the right speed to see what it is all about – we can put a stop to all of this at once [one more pill; maybe a couple more, the slip from a high place; maybe a higher place, a long drink; maybe down a few more - if I had a bath tub I could even have more ideas] and history can begin to pen itself on the pages of the tales of someone else.

We can drift into memory captured in the capsules of time as references that once put footsteps in the sands of time – easy, easing with ease – and it is all done.

A day comes beyond all this

But we are not ones to let that take root, not if we can help it. The storms gather, the winds billow and the clouds darken but the weather is never an interminable event.

The storms will run out of fury, the winds will run out of puff and the clouds will give up the moisture that makes them dark, they will even clear out of the way for the sun to shine through in the day and the moon to light up the dark amongst the trees.

Take heart, there is a psalm that promises goodness, mercy and victory and it would not be long before melancholy is the melody of joy and happiness.

Thought Picnic: Where there is life

The life we see

Sometimes, it looks like staring into the abyss, every road seems to have a road block, every idea seems to be fully disputed before it is voiced as a thought and you strive doing everything you know how as if to no avail.

The world with its demands and desires is completely oblivious of you, you are a name and an address; never a person always expected to answer calls, respond to inquiry and react to threats but it is unwilling to appreciate where you are.

You rise

Yet, within you lies strength you can never fully account for but you know that this vivid nightmare cannot go on forever; day always follows night and there is always a waking moment though perception will suggest the night is longer than it has ever been.

Mistake, mishap, misfortune have crowded at your till to pay for the goods, the comfort they have come to relieve you off but a fight within you says you will not be bereft of the solutions you desire.

Maybe you believe, maybe you do not, but someone somewhere is praying for you wishing you well and bearing the burdens you think you alone have borne – you cannot afford to despair, you cannot entertain disappointment for too long and discouragement should pass by long before it has had time to drop its unseemly baggage.

Breaking out and breaking through

You feel overwhelmed and at the same time you believe you will not only survive but thrive as a whole set of good circumstances that at one time seemed completely divergent and unrelated suddenly begin to form a new kind of amazing reality that you can only be thankful for.

As so on Tuesday, for a job I never sought, for pay I could not demand and for a trajectory I could not envisage but was offered the free encouragement of a willing mentor I start to help an organisation I once worked for implement change as a change comes to my circumstances.

The journey still looks long and difficult, threats that have been promises exacted and others that loom but I have always known one thing; where there is life, there is hope; where there is faith, there is possibility and where there is love, it conquers all.

Hup! Hup! Holland! You did well

Where we watched it

And so my World Cup ended with a quiet walk from the Dutch corner of Playa del Inglés – Gran Chaparral where the pub offered big screens and commentary in English.

A majority of patrons were in their orange colours with a few errant boys rooting for Spain, I watched the full 120 minutes of the game I would take nothing away from the performance and spirit of our boys – they played their hearts out and only a few minutes would have turned it into the lottery of penalties.

We’ll meet again

That part I would have been unable to watch anyhow, but that is the game of football and 2014 beckons whilst 2018 is when we host the World Cup with Belgium.

Nothing could have prepared me for the feeling of disappointment I felt for my adopted country where I have lived for 10 years only to experience their being beaten whilst holidaying in Spain by Spain.

Just as I shared the excitement of all their victories I found I was not able to celebrate their loss by loving Spain, I received commiserations and congratulated those who I knew would feel my pain but there is no point waiting to watch the presentations or much else.

Viva España

Vuvuzelas were not needed on the main streets, everyone who had a car had their horns blaring at full volume even one of the buses gave a full blast of ululation for the Spanish victory.

I kept my orange vest on and just thought about what might have been, for the third time, our little Dutch nation has just come short and not for the want of trying.

Viva España but the spirit of Dutch football shall never die, we have come this far again, only time with tell when we would lift the World Cup as victors – Hup! Hup! Holland! You did well.