DREAM WORLD
By Dave Hanks
Isak Dinesen, author of "Out of Africa", in her short story "Echoes
from the Hills", talks about Juma, a former house boy grown old.
"An old man by the name of Juma from time to time would come
up to the old house and ask permission to walk the grounds, to
think, there, of the time that had once been, and for an afternoon
would walk on the paths beneath the tall trees and then again
would disappear. It was believed that he had come along a rough
grass-track winding into the Masai Reserve - a long way for an old
man to walk in order to meditate on the past."
A past that had now become a part of a "Dream World". A world
where conscience is subverted to imagination and memories.
Recollections that becomes shaded and hard to determine which
was really real and which was nothing more than perception of
that time, memories that make an event or place "bigger than life".
A thing I have learned is that one can never go back to a place
from the past and regain the splendor that one recalls that place
to have had. That particular past is like a dream, gone and hard
to remember in total accuracy.
So the question arises: What is reality? Could it be just imaginings
of the mind? Is history, whether secular or biblical, real, or has
fantasy played a cruel trick upon the recorder's psyche? Especially
events of centuries ago, have, perhaps, been embellished
beyond actuality. I know how present day occurrences are
mis-reported and how legends spring forth - one who has a
personal knowledge of that event, cannot recall things happening
in the way they were reported.
We cannot own or control anything for long. We seem to be mere
transients upon this world's stage. That which we do, when we are
gone, will be just a figment of other's imaginations. At one time I
existed. Was my life and the lives of past family members real or
just a dream long past?
I live in an old, intriguing brick house on a small farm. The yard consists of about 4 acres. My parents, now deceased, planted
the original yard and since those days my wife and I have greatly
enlarged upon the trees, lawns, and shrubbery. It is now difficult
to remember how it used to be - real, or is it remembered with a
grandeur that wasn't true? All the work and care expended can be
erased so quickly, after some new proprietor takes hold of the reins.
Because it was my parents, I have never felt like I completely
owned it. The burden of what will become of it weighs heavily upon
my conscience. It will all be a dream, hard to recall in detail.
My college athletic past and notoriety shrunk from view so fast
that it makes me think of the song that says: "The things we did
last summer, I'll remember all winter long". Gone in the "twinkling
of a calendar year"! Years of school teaching and coaching are
fading more slowly, but I now have a hard time recollecting any
but a few special students and athletes. I was the driving force,
so how would others, less committed, remember those days?
An obsession of my elderly years is wildlife photography. But
what will all this concerted effort come to when my time is over?
The photos will have to be exceptional if anyone, or school,
would want even some of them. Their ultimate destiny, like
school notes so carefully taken, will be the fire. So one must
milk the present for what satisfaction they get because in the end
it will become a "Dream World". Perceptions of that past world
will be as varied as each individual dreamer!
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