The Navigator’s Dream

“What does the fish think when he is jerked up … through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe …?”   – Stephen King, The Dark Tower

Panic rose in my throat. It was my first trip to the Bayabi Hall of Justice. I felt an urge to flee but knew that would condemn me to a life of solitude, to dream alone until my final day of bursting.

The great domed hall smelled of the sea, salty, moist, and warm. Its animated wall and ceiling décor depicted the Bayabi concept of the universe: a vast sea filled with strings of bubbles, snaking upward to touch and burst on the molten silver sky. I imagined I was one of those bubbles pressing onto the surface.

Everyone wore simple, knee-length, white gowns. The Judge behind the high altar looked down, paying me no notice.

“Righteous Judge,” announced the clerk, “may your bubble rise, and in the fullness of time, burst in glory on the surface of heaven.” The Judge nodded the clerk to proceed. “First on the docket, the inquest into the bursting of the Navigator, Gorlet. Arthefal is here as witness.”

The judge narrowed her gaze on me. “You are Arthefal? You understand your summons?”

“I am. I do. I am to give account of my relationship with Gorlet.”

The Judge corrected, “This is an inquiry into the nature and the departure of Gorlet, generally known as the Navigator. Thus we shall refer to him in these proceedings. You knew him well?”

“The Navigator initiated my first dream with—”

“Briefly, recount the highlights of your relationship.” The Judge sounded impatient.

“For the brevity you request, my I dream my experience?”

The Judge nodded, and I drew her into my dream. We stood in darkness … a shaft of light cut through … gray bands appeared in the haze, thinning and darkening, becoming the wizened image of Gorlet the Navigator. “Come, my little one,” he said. “Come and dream.” I blinked, panicking at the unfamiliar light and reaching about in the open space. “Dreams have no walls,” Gorlet explained calmly. “Have no fear. Your bubble has not burst. The surface of the eternal sea remains far away.”

I dream-guided the Judge through my early experiences, making sense of colors, chords, and colognes, waves of impressions crashing, slowly gathering form and meaning.

Gorlet said, “Many beings cannot dream, and we must dream for them.” He demonstrated by turning a formless spark into a swirl of blue petals atop lacy, green leaves.

The Judge flew with me and the Navigator, through dreams of rivers and mountains, over reedy ponds, into caverns and canyons. We talked with dream citizens: village venders, dancers, and street philosophers. At long last, we took sail with the Navigator on a small craft, outbound on the dream sea to the end of all dreams, where waking and bursting become one, where only Navigators dare.

The Judge pulled suddenly back, her hands and head shaking as if from intense cold. “I respect your skills and the skills of the Navigator,” she said, “but to go so near death, so near the bursting … it frightens me.”

The Judge’s words recalled to me Gorlet’s warning. They respect our skill and courage, but also fear us for our insights. I looked at the Judge. “The Navigator was an artist. He taught me the art of dreams, that they are limited only by our fear and imagination.”

“Very good,” said the Judge still shaking. Her hands clutched the folds in her white gown. “The Navigator gave you a fine education, but did he ever teach you any … proscribed practices?”

“No.” I effected a confused expression. The Navigator had warned me not to betray knowledge that might condemn me.

“So you haven’t heard of the Harvesters?” The Judge got to the point.

I chose my words carefully. “I know they are a heretical cult that despises our dream culture, but I have no knowledge of their specific practices. Harvesters worship demons. They believe demons exist outside our dreams and beyond the great sea. They wait to pluck us up from the sea when we burst—harvesting us when we are ripe. Harvesters conspire with these demons to gain favor. Their hope is to dream forever and never burst.”

“Have you had liaisons with the Harvesters?” The Judge pressed.

“Not to my knowledge. They keep their membership secret.” I decided I needed to clarify. “Navigators are not Harvesters. Navigators seek to understand dreams. We see them as evolving truth. Harvesters seek out demons to gain power over our dreams.”

The Judge nodded. “Arthefal, your answers are satisfactory. I assume with your training complete, you now inherit the mantle of the Navigator, and will begin training others?”

“That was my promise to Gorlet.”

“Go in peace then, Arthefal. May your bubble rise, and in the fullness of time, burst in glory on the surface of heaven.”

I was relieved the Judge had withdrawn from the last dream and not pursued its meaning. The abbreviated version I shared with her had left out the morning discussion.

 

“This is my last dream,” Gorlet had said. “My bursting dream, where all mystery ends.”

I protested: he was too young and my training was incomplete.

“My bubble has risen a thousand dreams,” he said gently. “If you believe you are unprepared, you may refrain from the final lesson.”

That wasn’t an option and I told him so. Without further discussion, he swept me onto that small craft and the journey the Judge had fled. We were well out to sea, headed where sea and dreams meet the molten silver sky.

A tempestuous wind rose quickly. Mountainous waves crashed over the deck and sent our craft plunging. I hung on.

“It’s the bursting storm,” Gorlet shouted against the howling wind. The dream sky flickered, went black, then flashed and brightened again.

“When the doorway cracks open—” he started to say, but before he could finish, we were bathed in an impossible blazing light. The current carried us forward. I leaned behind Gorlet’s shadow to shade my eyes. The sea before us was draining through a glowing gateway.

“Depart now,” Gorlet yelled and pushed me into the sea. “Find safety in your own dream or you’ll burst in mine.” He paddled toward the light.

Suddenly in my own formless dream, I reached out to Gorlet’s churning sea. He saw me return and waved me back just before vanishing through the glaring gateway. I splashed, tasted salt, and struggled to stay in the Navigator’s dream, now a half dream as he began to wake.

The scene changed. A narrow crack blinked at balls of light hovering overhead. The sea was gone. Gorlet’s bubble was gone. Undecipherable, soft sounds filled my new ears, pungent odors stung my nose, and I felt myself lifted by large warm hands.

“They welcome me,” Gorlet said, sharing his fading dream. “I don’t understand … but I feel I’m part of them.” The edges of the hovering lights softened and melted. I found myself alone in my own dream.

 

Dear students, I preserved this dream to share it with you now. The walls of my bubble grow thin, and soon you may witness my own bursting. Our predecessors speculated that there was life after bursting. Embracing that concept compels us to reconsider the purpose of our dreams.

May your bubble rise, and in the fullness of time, burst in glory on the surface of heaven.

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DREAMS (2)

I woke in my bed. It was midday and the house was empty. Where was my family, my dog? I peered into corners and behind furniture as if I was playing a game of hide-and-seek and I was ‘it’. There were no sounds – no wind, no birds, no traffic, no airplanes – only my own hollow footsteps. We lived on an air force base on Okinawa at the time, 1956, and I was in third grade.

Creamy yellow light streamed in through the windows. It was uniformly bright but there was no sun. Somehow, going from my bed to the front door, I’d gotten dressed: tee-shirt, square-side-pocket olive trousers and tennis shoes.

I walked to the street, looked left and right, but saw no cars, not even in the driveways. Our neighborhood was normally filled with children, but no one was playing and there were no toys or bicycles in the yards.

I turned right up the empty street. The houses, standard Air Force officer housing, were hollow facades. They had frames and roofs but no windows or doors. They were all the same pale blue and none had any siding or roofing tile.

Bright lights shined out the bare windows of my friend Stewart’s house. I walked up and stood on my toes to look in. There was a long table in the middle of the room. The table was covered with a white sheet and surrounded with spotlights on tall poles. On the table was a human figure, but all I could see were his legs in olive trousers and tennis shoes. Red splotches covered the sheet.

Around the table stood four white-lab-coated figures not much taller than I was. One of them turned and saw me. It had the green triangle head of a praying mantis with red ball-shaped eyes high at the back corners and long black antennas. It screamed and all the figures turned. They were all praying mantises and they all screamed and rushed at me.

Giant ant from THEM, 1954

I ran to the street and away from my house. The mantises called out and waved their green jagged-clamp arms into the air. Suddenly I heard loud buzzing. As I ran I looked back to see a dozen giant dragonflies swooping down.

The buzz grew louder. I pumped my legs but wet tar on the pavement sucked and held my feet. With each step the downward pull grew stronger.

Suddenly I went down, hit hard from behind. A dragonfly worked its jaws like sharp cutting shears into my neck.

Huhh, huhh, huhh, I sat up panting in my bed. I was drenched in sweat. My brother was asleep. The full moon shone through the bedroom door from the screened porch across the hall. I got out of bed and walked to the porch. The house was quiet but there were crickets and other night creatures chirping outside. The moon cast long shadows across the furniture on the porch. I calmed, changed my soaked pajamas, and went back to bed feeling the chill of the moisture still in my bed clothing. Exhausted and still afraid, I fell asleep.

My eyes closed and opened. It was midday in our empty house. The sky was creamy yellow and uniformly bright. I went outside again and remembered where I was going. Stewart’s house streamed light from its bare windows. I started running immediately. Looking left, I saw mantises scurrying and screaming. Buzz, Zzzz sounded behind me. I turned and saw dragonflies diving. Tar grabbed my feet and I fell hard hit from the back.

Huhh, huhh, huhh, I jumped out of bed. It was darker. The moon was down but the horizon had a line of red. So I changed my shirt again and stayed up.

Everyone got up that morning as if it was a normal day. My sisters and brother shouted at the breakfast table. I watched and ate my Cheerios quietly. Only my mother noticed.

“Keith, don’t you feel well?” She pressed her cheek to my forehead and stroked my hair. I told her about my dream and said I was afraid to go to sleep that night.

“We’ve seen a lot of big critters since we got here,” she said, “dragonflies, praying mantises, spiders, lizards, snails, crabs. Last month you watched Tarantula on the boat coming over, and last year we saw Them at the theater. So I’m not surprised you’ve had a bad dream. Think of it as a movie and it’ll go away.”

But it didn’t.

That night I left the house again. I noticed that the creamy yellow sky cast no shadows. I ran immediately but stayed on the sidewalk to avoid the tar. The dragonflies took a little longer to reach me. This time when I woke, I walked it off then went back to bed. The mantises and dragonflies were waiting outside for me. They’d learned too. I left the house running.

I knew how this would end—the thought hit me mid-stride. So I decided to change it. I stopped, grabbed a big rock and turned. This time I’d get in a good hit before I died. I was angry. My only thought was timing my blow as the dragonfly lunged.

But it didn’t.

As I stood defiant, the dragonfly shrank to normal size and landed on the sidewalk in front of me. My heart pounded as I stepped forward to crush it, but it darted away.

I learned something that night: my dreams were mine.

That one never came again.

DREAMS (1)

I’m interested in dreams and in others’ experiences. I never question them because my own dream experiences are so unusual.

People report visits from departed loved ones and angels as they sleep. Others are reminded of things they wish to forget—things they saw, things they shouldn’t have done, things they’ve avoided doing. Perhaps you’ve dreamed of true love or of achieving great things. Perhaps your dreams are of unnatural, unreal things, things that never lived and never should live. Everything is possible in dreams.

Dreams appear in serious literature. Hamlet’s main concern (Act III, Scene 1) in contemplating suicide is that he might dream, “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?” Prospero comforts us in The Tempest (Act 4, Scene 1); what we’ve witnessed is simply illusion, bound sooner or later to melt into “thin air” … “such stuff as dreams are made of.”

In the Bible (Acts 2:17), Luke tells us that, “in the last days … Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.”

Freddie Krueger gets your attention.

Dreams play a major role in speculative fiction. Has the sound of Freddy Krueger’s claw fingers screeching across bare pipes chilled you in Nightmare on Elm Street? Have you wanted to get into others’ dreams and steal their secrets like Dominick Cobb does in Inception? Maybe you’ve wanted to alter past and present reality, like George Orr does in Ursula Le Guin’s novel and movie, The Lathe of Heaven.

In my dreams, I seem fully aware. Sometimes I suspend disbelief and enjoy the show as entertainment. Other times I interact to affect the outcome. Memories of these experiences carry from dream to dream, enabling me to learn from them and form long-term relationships with my ‘dream people’. I’ve kept some of these friendships since early childhood. Rob, Connie, Josh and I have grown up together.

My dream friends help me solve problems and have demonstrated knowledge I don’t believe that I ever possessed. When they reveal future events that then occur, it gives me pause. My dream friends have also given me the impression that all dream creatures dwell in a common dreamscape.

In 2001, I saw A Beautiful Mind, the fine movie about John Nash, the Nobel Prize winning mathematician who was plagued by schizophrenic delusions. In those delusions, fictional people beset Nash to the point where he couldn’t differentiate them from real people.

That night my dream friends visited me. They screamed. I listened.

Rob stabbed the air with his finger while he paced beside my bed. “Never, never, can a dream person interfere in waking life … not in that way.” He shook his finger in my face. “You have to know that, Keith. You have to know we’d never do that to you. That’s criminal.” I nodded. Two other dream friends nodded, too. “Nash’s dream people broke the code.” He shook his head in disgust.

I assured everyone that I understood and trusted them. We hugged and they let me go back to sleep.

In my next post, I’ll tell you another dream story: how a series of nightmares brought me this unusual gift. In the meantime, “Row, row, row your boat,” and remember, “Life is but a dream.”

Have you had unusual dream experiences?