Floater Me
Posted on February 29, 2008
Fishermen waving like crazy; a small atoll lost in the Pacific; photo by me, from a Hughes 500 helicopter
FLOATER ME
I used to get this recurrent dream.
I think I probably had it hundreds of times. It got to the stage where I know I would pretty well “groan in my dream “. A dreamed “Oh-no-not-this-dream-again ” type groan. Frustrating.
It was always the same. I was real busy in the middle of this humongous, hot, sun soaked, arid, bleak, yellow sand duned desert, digging away with a ridiculously small spade. Not much bigger than a kid’s toy spade. Like you’d expect Johnny to have down at the beach.
His little bucket and spade…
Not just any water. It was some kind of special water.
The desert for some reason reminded me vaguely of the dead lands of Saudi Arabia.
I mean, it was a big son-of-a-gun desert. No kidding, a ‘heap big lot of sand’. And there I was, digging away, really sweating it. Anxious. Really trying hard. To find…water. The sand was so fine, it would trickle right back into the hole I was trying to shape out. It was maddening. And I needed to find water…!
And of course I never did. It never quite got to be a nightmare, but it was a very tiresome, frustrating dream. There was me, perspiration pouring down my face, trying so really hard… kind of panicking. I needed that water to drink…
And then, woven through this dream, entwined in the way only dreams can do, ran another theme. In that strand, there I was, looking DOWN at me, from a height of maybe three or four hundred feet. I would watch myself digging. And in my dream I KNEW that it was me watching myself dig. However, the ME that was digging couldn’t see what the ME that was watching could see…
A massive lake of fresh, pure water, out of sight just over the dunes.
If only the digger ME would look up, turn ninety degrees right, and walk just a little ways, then digger ME would find that massive fresh water lake. Cool, clean, sparkling in the sun. Airborne ME, or rather, FLOATER ME, could see it perfectly clearly.
But of course digger ME never looked up, or around, or walked just a little ways.
So digger ME never found what he was looking for.
Very, very frustrating…
* * * * * * * * * *
Now you may think I’m making this up.
Honestly, I’m not. I never did figure it out though.
But I’ll hazard a guess…
Digger ME is the stubborn, mule headed part of me that keeps me going. Who tries to learn from past mega mistakes. Digger Me is the part that works hard, is detail conscious, and worries a lot. Digger ME is well meaning. A little clumsy perhaps, not real smart, and prone to tunnel vision. A hefty pre-occupation with minute details, to the point that I lose sight of the big picture.
You might think Floater ME is the pilot. I don’t think so. The aviator is mostly digger ME. The me that tries so hard to be a good, safe pilot. Who meticulously pre-flights his aircraft, checks the weather carefully, studies the Regulations, and ploughs diligently through the company Operations Manual. That’s Digger ME. Not a saint, don’t get me wrong, but a well meaning, plodding, conscientious type.
Now, Floater ME is harder to figure out.
Floater ME is partly a Dreamer. The amateur scribbler. A seeker of The Truth. Searching for…God? The idealist, horribly impractical, with a vague Mother Theresa instinct. A little bit of a bloody do-gooder, a male version of Florence Nightingale.
Mostly, in the opinion of earthly Digger Me, a real pain in the butt.
With, it has to be admitted, reluctantly perhaps, even by Digger Me, the…
very occasional flash of insight and inspiration…
Photo ‘The light shines through’ by Firehawk77
Now, ask me the question, as to how a persistent dream comes along and weaves all this together in some vaguely intelligible format that we then spend years and years trying to decipher…
that one I can’t explain at all…
Francis Meyrick
(c)
Credit: Photo ‘Toddler on the Beach’ by Peaches & Cream
Last edited by Francis Meyrick on June 7, 2011, 11:04 pm
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