Dreams, Waking and Sleeping

We had dinner with old friends, a teacher-turned-merchant sailor and teacher-turned-Jungian dream analyst, husband and wife. Maybe this Keats/Williams stew continues to simmer, but the question amid all my usual questions to Tony that felt to me to have weight was this: "You're a sailor on the Pacific run - aside from the layers of Earth itself and its atmosphere, that's the largest single thing on the planet. There's a long tradition of romance and awe about the sea. Do you or any of your men (he's first mate testing for captain) feel that?

"No, we have all sorts of people on the crew, from intellectuals to members of the deck crew who once complained there were too many choices on the mess menu. All of them think it of it as a job, 21 days on and 21 days off. 65% of our cargo is for Walmarts. When a 40 foot following sea gives us nothing more than a 20 second roll, when the email comes in every day and there's a satellite phone right there, it's just not Man Versus Nature anymore."
"Ah," I said, "But I would suppose there's always Man versus Management."

Tony built his own house, with a tower for the entry way, originally for his first wife (he's a widower) to use for a sewing room, perched about the great room, now an office where he's learning to Mac movies. His daughter does avant-garde textile installations and his son is a wacky musician in Hawaii organizing an "I'm ashamed I am American" theme band tour to Europe. This was his answer. Now thinking that the old theory might be right, that a sense of the sacred only comes from a sense of mortal peril. I guess that's why love still fits, that love is still romantic.

He also told a story about talking to his 91 year old father, who seemed to be shutting down. "Dad, do you still have dreams?" "Nah, I'm too old for that." Tony berated him, then was berated in turn when he revealed that his dream was to be an airline pilot, but that he had given up," "But you're so young -- 56 is nothing."

And when Marilyn talked about dreams (and I showed her an account of one of mine), I could hear the echo of a description of the Jungian mineset as swimming in a world-sea of symbols.

If she reads this far, I want to confide to Eliste (or Enkeli!) that last night one of my dreams last night was receiving a promotional video from your alma mater that proudly stated that Ron "Opie" Howard was the prototype of its students since the mid-seventies. Thank God Marilyn wasn't around this morning to archetype THAT one.