Confessions of a Tweener.
Living The Dream
Alexa,
I called
as my head fell rested onto the arm of the leather couch, 15 minutes. Okay Graham, timer set for 15mins. One Alexa answering slightly behind the other. What’s better than one Alexa? Sheesh they have sensitive ears!
With timer set, I closed my eyes
and drifted into Nod, having come inside for a break after finishing a welding repair on a flimsy square steel tube bar stool for a local cafe. The love of my life was in town pursuing groceries at New World.
Purrfecto snoozing conditions.
The remaining afternoon’s missions slow filed across my interior screen, but for now, it was zone out time……
Going going going………… go i n g
gone.
I do some of my best thinking asleep, or snoozing. It’s funny how you can be asleep but seem awake. Strange.
For some reason, and it may have been the car killing crimes globally or in New Zealand of late, I dreamed I was being chased. It was a hot, dry Cape Kare Kare kind of sunny day. I was running down a wide, mown roadside verge, the clay was exposed and the grass cover was really only sporadic patches of paspallum clinging to life but living the dream.
The wide verge, the fence, the ditch and the road stretched out to the horizon in the hot sun, I was getting nowhere fast.
The 4 wheel drive chasing me was orangey, sign written with something I could not make out enough to read. It was one of those wanky 4 wds with a winch on the front and a snorkel, and it was getting closer, bouncing closer every second as it banged on down the verge at speed.
While sleeping (or so I thought)…
I zoomed out.
There I was running wildly, trying to get away, trying to escape, arms flailing about me as tho it would help me go faster, but I couldn’t go any faster, my limbs felt like lead, everything about me was in serious slow mo mode.
To my right was a deep drain
with a 1.5 meter drop from the edge of the verge to the bottom and then sloping up at 45 to the loose metal road.
To my left was a tall and newish keep the world out board and batten fence.
Here, I ran for my life, terrified as a pig being chased by dogs……………what to do to escape the rapidly approaching appointment with my doom.
At this point in my snooze, I asked myself a question, and it could be one of those life saving questions.
It is also one I have wondered about my whole life while watching similar scenes play out in the movies.
Maybe you have even wondered similar thoughts.
Why is it that when people are chased in life or death situations, they usually run directly ahead of the pursuer, be it forest track, road, path, street or stream?
Wouldn’t the idea be to get off the track ASAP, to deviate, to re direct your trajectory out of what was coming after you, whether you were visible to them or not, and if they are shooting at you even. The good ole car chase seems to find the side roads and get off the path, to zig zag bullets, but not foot chases.
As I scrambled along in my dream, I pondered this, all in dreamlike slow mo and with death getting nearer every second.
I wondered about trying to get over the fence in time, or leaping the ditch onto the road, with both options presenting more hope than running straight ahead of the 4 wheel drive heat seeking juggernaught intent on my destruction, but seeming also to have the potential to slow and maybe hinder my chances of escape.
Run Forrest run!!!
I imagined being squashed against the fence.
Then I woke up, thinking……….
why?
Why do people run where the mow down or capture is easiest, why don’t we deviate where survival increases exponentially.
My purpose in writing, and recounting the dream isn’t to go into the myriad variables I can ponder as to why one would stay on the path that will most likely lead to death or capture.
I do have a few wonderings though.
One simple response of the fight, flight, freeze brain could be that the easiest path for our capture could also be the easiest path for our escape. There is no thought, we just RUN! Fight, freeze or flight responses are limbic in nature and not higher order thinking.
Life depends of getting away from danger, RUN! RUN! RUN!
I wonder if you have observed or thought anything like this in movies or real life.
Alexa went off, and I woke……….
or was I already awake?
I survived
and had that glad feeling of it all having been a dream.
Fortunate me.
Many places at this moment are not having dreams, but living nightmares.
They do not end.
Fortunate me.
In my previous post
(if I have posted that draft yet….hmmmmm)
I mentioned that tween space that comes every year drifting from Xmas Day to New Years Day. The presents have been made, wrapped and delivered.
The cards written and sealed. There is a huge whew!!!!!!, tis done feeling as Xmas day arrives with lotsa eating yum food and being with loved ones…..and Xmas Day fades into Boxing Day. ( no sales tempt me) and a certain limbo like stillness descends on me. Tis a special hallowed time for doing whatever you want.
It is a creative time.
This year I made books.
No more words here now,
just pics, not as proof, but happy reminders of that ‘tween time’ which now, as I finsh this post on Feb 1st, now it seems in the distant past, and it was all a dream.
I wanted to share this time with you. Click on images for the full pic. Easy peasey.
Trump inaugurated stupidity and malice keeps me awake daily now, as does Aotearoa coalition government shenanigans
Welcome to your own New Year, I wish nothing but the best for us all and what that might mean for us all.
At McKinley Rd Creatives it will be about creative dreams and skillsets converging, living every day as fully as I can…………..with human kindness, grace and love being pre-eminent.
Lots has happened since this tween time already. I will leave that for other ink, and it’s not about tats.
As always thanks for being here, only 45-51% of people open my posts.
Thank you if that’s you.
Namaste and onwards .
Graham.
P.S
Interested to hear from anyone with thoughts, or suggestions around escaping 4 wheel drives bearing down on you. Was out Whangarei Heads lately……….. there’s a whole lot of 4 wheel drives out that neck of the woods. Different dreams.
Funny how dreams unravel things we don’t stop to question when we’re awake. Maybe it’s not just about running from danger but how often we follow the paths laid out for us—because they seem like the only option, even when they aren’t. Love the way you capture that liminal space, both in dreams and in life. And that ‘tween time’—something about it does feel sacred, like a breath between worlds. Grateful for this glimpse into yours
Graham, I saw the movie Widow Clicquot a couple of nights ago. The director, Thomas Napper, was there in person and spoke to the audience about the movie before it started, so expectations of the movie were high. But for me, the movie fell flat - a potentially powerful and inspiring story unrealised. (A friend, however, loved it). A reviewer commented that it was 'curiously uninvolving'. Your writing, by contrast, is curiously involving. Have you considered screenplay writing?