Category Archives: Personal

What Dreams May Come?

I have unabashedly borrowed my title from the movie of that name; the film had some delightful scenes of the afterlife, imagined. My favourite was the scene of walking through a mountain meadow, as paint splooshed up from the flowers – but here, you can take that journey yourself, briefly.

Our hero finds himself in heaven, and his guide informs him that his world is anything he can imagine. Which is true, really, in some basic way in our own world, is it not?

 I find myself wondering about dreams that die, or are forgotten or laid aside, dreams that can’t be resurrected, dreams that just refuse to come true. For there seems to be essentially two kinds of people in my life: those that have realized their dreams, but now think they are a sham, and those that have come to realize that perhaps they did not dream largely enough. I expect there are more variations on the theme, though maybe my imagination is not up to the task. Here are those who have married and had children (or not), built homes and careers and friends and lifestyles and accoutrement, and now appear to be bored and tired of it all and unwilling to build new dreams. These people say that this is a function of getting older and wiser: you know, you just can’t have it all. Never the less, there is something weary and dispiriting and soul-destroying in that message.

 The most interesting people seem to recognize when it is time to let a dream go and to dream a new one, but not at all in the practical sense of giving in, dreaming smaller, or limiting the imagination – just the opposite. That perhaps their original dreams simply weren’t big enough, or grand enough, or imaginative enough, that their dreams didn’t, and don’t measure up to the kind of person they were and are. There is an old saying: Be careful what you wish for. What you wish and dream may come to define you in ways you cannot foretell, I believe, whether or not they come to be.

 Me, I have lived with a dream that has been present for as long as I can remember, and I have been ruminating on giving it up. In one sense I am very fortunate; none of my dreams have been very conventional, that is, what my friends and peers and population cohort have been dreaming, so I have always had to explain my dreams to others. Why I dream of this, and not that…I have never dreamed of having children, for example, and I do not have them; that particular choice used to engender intense questioning and accusations of selfishness. I suspect that this scrutiny led me to very sure of my dreams: I had examined them, after all.

 Everyone has had dreams that did not come to fulfillment, of course, although for me it is harder to acknowledge that most of my dreams did come true…and so, here I am, not done dreaming, but neither satisfied. I must further illuminate this: I hope and believe it is the true human condition to never be satisfied, although this has nothing to do with material things and everything to do with things of the heart and spirit. And also, I do not berate myself or have many regrets, only one sincere regret of a hurtful thing I did that I would erase, if I could. No, it is not about failure, it is about choosing the dreams that will define me for the next few decades, and so, I think, one closely held dream has to go, for I am becoming sure that I would not like the way it might define me.

 I am not up to the task, I fear, but let me limn a new outline of what dreams may come for me. I should like to walk through painted landscapes of beauty. I should like to have had some part in creating that beauty, with hands and heart and eyes and pen. I should like to cook delightful meals for friends and family, and make new friends, many new friends. I should like to inspire others to dream of their true calling, and how that might invigorate both work and play and even the ordinary, prosaic tasks of the day. (It could also invigorate politics, banking, and neighbourhoods, but that is a subject for another day.)

I should like to imagine the world the way I wish it to be.

 It is no small task, my imaginary friend, I know. For the constant drone of the unhappy and deadened spirits in the background take both largeness and loudness to overcome, and they must be overcome, lest we slip into a world of their making, horror of horrors. For their world is outlined by such words and phrases as practical, common sense, not possible, not sensible, idle dreamers. Not idle, we dreamers. We are busy making the world.

The Dignity of her Death

Dignity is an echo in the heartbeat of the people

~OccupyWallStreet

Occupy Vancouver (British Columbia) has been much in the news of late; first, a mayoral candidate succeeded in making the encampment a municipal election issue for the city. Then an unfortunate person who drug overdosed (now recovering) in the camp, with the mostly predictable and pointless media response. Last Saturday, a young woman died at the site, apparently of an overdose, although the cause of death is not yet official. Mayor Gregor Robertson called for the camp to be dismantled, and the city is at this moment applying for a Supreme Court injunction to move out the tents. The death of the young woman has become a platform for people to rant about their opposition to Occupy Vancouver, a talking point for opportunistic politicians, a sound bite for the news.

The Tyee published a piece by David P. Ball today; you can read it here. The family and friends of the young woman don’t appreciate the fact of her death being used in this brutally insensitive fashion, and the Tyee piece is a respectful response, I believe. But I must draw your attention to some distasteful comments following the article also. I shall not deign to mention the ‘names’ they post under, as they shall be self-evident. It is these actions and comments I want to speak to, however.

For this is not a matter for politicking, or soap boxes, and most assuredly it is not a matter of ‘right’ or ‘left’, or any other political/philosophical orientation. It is a matter of a death, and how we respond to a death. We do not know her, we the public, but surely our first feeling must be sorrow. A range of complicated emotions might ensue – pity, fear, anger – but these are not the emotions one hears in these actions and comments. One hears the manic voices of those determined to impress their views upon others; the robotic voice of uniformity and conformity; the voice of corporate attack dogs. Perhaps I should say this is what I hear, in the metaphoric sense – a kind of horror image of a mechanistic world view arises – the film Metropolis is brought to mind.

And so I turn to you, my imaginary friend – and I shall ever after call Ashlie one of my imaginary friends – someone I would have loved to have known. Someone who seems to have been quirky, and interesting, and rather beautiful and whose loss I regret. Someone whose loss I mourn, for it is the natural human response. I cannot erase those hurtful, hypocritical, awful words and deeds, but I can assert that the natural human response still resides in some of us and we shall not forget the dignity of all humans, even in their death.

Her name was Ashlie Gough.