Dream 9: Recurring Spies

7/21/10

It was a hot day at the pool. People were crowded everywhere, the diving boards were popping and rattling with excitement, and the water cool. The black family that I had arrived there with, with whom I had just traveled back in time to prevent some catastrophe, pulled up in their white Cadillac and let me out, leaving me to conduct whatever surveillance I had to, or rendezvous with a contact etc., but  they waited at the gates as I joined the pool-goers on deck, monitoring me with binoculars. They were a man, his wife, and teenage daughter.

This area looked familiar to me, and though I had to stay focused on the task at hand I felt this buoyant certainty in my core that I had been there before, more importantly, that someone I dearly wanted to see would be there as well. So I walked around, scanning the pool and its patrons: dads, kids, suits, floaties…until I saw a chubby, black haired little boy, struggling to doggy paddle. His eyes were squinted to keep the water out, nose wriggling back and forth. Making more splash than speed, and hardly afloat, this boy was a young me.

My reaction was instant: touched with sympathy, grief, the feeling that I had to atone for something, a desire to make an impact on myself, to possibly rescue myself from future disaster. Even if it might jeopardize the mission, for just one moment I had to make contact with young Joseph in the public pool... I think I needed him more than he needed me.

So, apparently my bathing suit had been on this whole time. I slid into the deep end, and slowly drifted towards the child by the shallower water. There was no hesitation, anxiety, or doubts. As he resolutely slapped the water, I appeared before him, wordlessly taking his hands in mine. He didn’t question me, resist, or scream…just looked solemnly into my eyes and began to kick with confidence, keeping his head above surface with much less effort. I was probably smiling. We remained like this in the water for a minute, with I leading he in a slow and steady waltz through the shallow end, turning in slow motion, and the tenderness I felt for him could only be fully realized through the years which I spent searching and waiting for this moment.

Then, too soon, I had to leave. I don’t remember saying goodbye, nor the actual departure. Next thing I know, I was back in the Cadillac, I suppose somehow I accomplished whatever the mission was…maybe this was my mission.

In a later dream sequence, I am throwing snowballs at some girl as she is walking away from me. She wears a big furry ski coat, with the hood over her head, and though I don’t know who she is, but I think we are romantically involved. We are playing in an airplane military base in Siberia, where all you can see around you is blizzard. After a few tosses, I run up to her from behind, tackle her to the ground, and we wrestle and spoon in the snowdrifts, just yards from some austere-looking barracks, wherein an older aristocratic woman is spying us from afar through a large window, soundly, in the firelit warmth of her shelter.