“There was a dream
and one day I could see it
Like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it
And there was a kid
with a head full of doubt
So I’ll scream til I die and the last of those bad thoughts are finally out”
Set Free Your Caged Dream
“You just can’t beat the person who never gives up”
I remember the first time I was called, stupid.
I was 8 years old, I was standing in front of my 3rd grade class at St. Somebody Elementary school, it was my turn to tell my dream of what I wanted to be when I grew up.
“I want to dig for dinosaurs and I think that some dinosaurs are still alive, my Aunt Irma told me that, she makes me read every night or I can’t watch Sea Hunt before bedtime.”
“MR. Barone, don’t be stupid, there aren’t any dinosaurs alive, class what do you think about Mr. Barone’s dream,” said a really fat nun with bad teeth and a mean slap shot with her ruler on your wrist if you were “drifting off.”
And as I stood in front of the class, they all laughed at me.
I went home that day and told my mother what happened, she sent me to bed without dinner telling me not to “be so stupid.”
It was a two stupid day.
I went to bed and never again as a child dreamt of digging for dinosaurs.
Told myself that night, to quit being stupid.
“Imagine, if you will, a world filled with billions of dinosaurs. A world where they can be found in thousands of shapes, sizes, colours and classes in every habitable pocket of the planet. Imagine them from the desert dunes of the Sahara to the frozen rim of the Antarctic Circle — and from the balmy islands of the South Pacific to the high flanks of the Himalayas. The thing is, you don’t have to imagine very hard. In fact, wherever you live, you can probably step outside and look up into the trees and skies to find them. For the dinosaurs are the birds and they are all around you. Dinosaurs didn’t die out when an asteroid hit the earth 66 million years ago. Everything you were told as a child was wrong.”
“Decide what to be and go be it.”
The Avett Brothers
What do you think the first human dream, was about.
All primates, us and those still up in the trees, have deep sleep and REM sleep, we, me and you, have about 25% of our sleep, Chimps, our most common ancestor of 6-8 million years ago, has about 20% REM sleep.
An M.I.T. study seems to suggest that Chimps, and Dolphins, have the capability of dreaming, I can tell you for a fact, our dog, Riley, dreams…and someday he may catch whatever it is he is chasing while asleep.
Studies looking at the evolution of the “human” brain say that Neanderthals “had the anatomical and electrophysiological capacity to dream.”
So did we, we may in fact have induced Neanderthal nightmares. Just ask one of them…oh wait…
“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
Dream Crushing
I have on my desk a dream rock and 2 dream pebbles. To me, holy relics, all.
I twirl in my hand as I write, many times, this one pebble, it’s brown, round, flecked and now smooth. I picked it up in the woods a ways off the path of the footbridge at Lexington & Concord where the “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired.
Ground Zero for those who had dreams of freedom, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all.
…For All
The 2nd pebble I have was given to me by my buddy, Bob Ley, he picked it up off the beach at Normandy while he was in Europe covering the World Cup (I think). I cherish it as a present from a friend, it sits in a small padded jewelry box.
But I also cherish it because of a story a WWII veteran once told me when I was a Feature Reporter looking for a Memorial Day minute-thirty kicker. He told me that as “a young lad,” he dreamt of being a rancher, “but you know the war started and I upped.”
“It was a nightmare you know, the war over there, my Higgins boat (landing craft) got hit, the lads up front got killed before they even felt the water, me and a couple of guys, we went up and over the side, one drowned I think, we had heavy backpacks, I did okay, my folks used to take me to the beach at Santa Barbera, used to the waves, who knew,”
“Well…”
And then suddenly he was back on the beach, wet, scared….”the worst part you know, the worst part were the screams…” and again he bites his lip and looks away… “…such things, such things…” I will never forget those two words and the way they were said “…such things…”
“You know how I got through, kilt more than I got kilt (laughs)…but would, when we could catch some shut-eye, dream, dream not nightmares but the dreams I had as a kid, good dreams, keeps you going you know ‘specially in bad times, you know…”
“You got dreams there, good dreams.”
“Some.”
“Ain’t you being a reporter a dream.”
“Some, lots of dead bodies you know, lots of people doing mean things to each other…”
“…such things, such things…”
“Yep.”
“You know, people they rule over you not by how much money they have, not by how big their house is, how much learning they’ve got, people they rule over you when they dream crushing you. Crush your dreams, you easy pickin’s…”
And then he got up on his horse and rode out to see his cattle on his ranch that stretched from “over there where the sun rises to over there where the sun sets.”
And the rock on my desk…
…a dinosaur fossil.
“Crush your dreams, you easy pickin’s”
“Nothing happens unless first a dream.”