Nocturnal Nattering

Awoken from my slumbers with Classic FM at 4.50 this morning by a bizarre dream, one of those occasions when you are glad to return to "reality". And yet...the idea occurred to me, hardly original I guess: what if life itself were only a dream from which you could not awake? Frightening!
The dream started off with it apparently being midnight on Christmas Eve, or soon after. Despite this, it was bright daylight outside in my home street where I appeared to be. Something about me knew this was not right, yet it was still Christmas! I had gone into the entrance porch of my good friend "AFT's" home, and was apparently waiting to see him while playing with bits and pieces, child's toys maybe, which I found in the porch. Eventually he arrived, and seemed pleased to see me, but did not invite me into the house. He was eating a piece of meat and said he had two girls from Germany with him- Becky and (?) had to get back to them. Nevertheless, I remained in the vestibule for some time and discovered new things which fascinated me. After a while though, I decided to go back to my own family home as it was Christmas, though as has often happened in my dreams I seemed unprepared for it- I had bought no presents, for instance and it had crept up on me.
Home was actually just next door, but it seemed to be a very different home from the one I know and love now. My brother had now appeared, as had AFT. We went to look in what looked like my father's garage, but it was almost unrecognisable- it had no doors at all, and looked more like an open cowshed with bits and pieces of wood in. I was shocked and puzzled by this, and then AFT told me that they had taken the doors off and my father was dead.

Of course, in real life dear Dad left us five years ago now, nearly, but in the dream this came as a shock to me- as though nobody had told me and all the mourning and grieving was going on without me. I was becoming increasingly aware though that something was not right about this situation- I guess it was a lucid dream, where you are trying to prove to yourself this is not "reality" (whatever that is) and get back in control. The final piece of information which enabled me to do that- and wake up- was when I saw Mum, and many other family members, in our kitchen. It could have been a "normal" family gathering, except for one prominent detail. Mum was trying to cook on an ancient blue kitchen stove which bore no resemblance to any we have ever had, apart from maybe the New World stove we had until the mid-seventies.
It was almost as though I was trying to prove to some malefactor that I had the upper hand and was in control of reality-he could not fool me! This one detail woke me up, and I felt it was time for a cup of tea and a return to the normality of another workless Monday in Eastbourne.
However, before putting the kettle on I had to see if anything had arrived in my inbox overnight, natch! Needless to say, perhaps, most of it was useless unsolicited trash again, but there was an interesting posting to the BDXC list about the demolition of the Lopik transmitter in the Netherlands over the weekend. There was a link to a short video which Jonathan Marks had made of this occasion, intended to be part of a longer documentary.
The Lopik transmitter was demolished with explosives, a very sudden end to what was after all only a rather large piece of metal and yet which for me was full of "life". I felt the same sorrow at seeing it topple as when the remaining Shoreham B power station chimney was demolished some years ago, and a landmark was lost-but that of course was to find new life with the taller, more slender, metal chimney of the new gas-fired station. After watching the video footage, I posted the following to the Media Network blog:
"It's fanciful, I know, but it seems to me a radio transmitter tower is like a sentient being. A gentle giant, an elephant of the airwaves. All those words uttered over the years through Lopik, all the music that has brought cheer and expressed the zeitgeist, have now lost their body. The giant is dead, euthanased in a moment. Can the digital baby ever take its place? Maybe, one day. But we're a long way from that yet. The petulant wailings of digital chirps as I tried to listen to the output from another giant, the Heathfield transmitter, shows we're a long way from perfecting digital. Come on analogue, you can do it like the marathon runners- keep on in there til the end!"
That last comment was a reference to the big Olympic event of Sunday, where everyone had been building up the hype and convinced Paula Radcliffe would get gold for Britain. In fact, she dropped out at the 36Kilometre mark, unable to go on and totally exhausted. In contrast to the shots of tears of victory that winged their way electronically to the world's presses after the coxless four final, the shot everyone will see today will be of an inconsolable Ms Radcliffe sitting on an anonymous Athens street, not even with her husband or loved ones around her for support. I can't help thinking of Kipling as I compare in my mind these two images: "If...". How long will she be saying that to herself, but what good does it do? It may seem trite and trivial to utter it, but by contrast I can't help thinking "Pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and start all over again". Easier said than done for all of us, of course.

Well, the dark emptiness and loneliness of night gets pushed aside to other shores for another night. It's not a promising weather prospect outside as I type: there has been overnight rain and though it's approaching dawn, I see no sign of any sun. All the golden glow of Saturday seems but a distant memory already, after Paula's and many other disappointments on the track and field last night. But hey, that's life! Yet how hard real life can be, particularly at the moment of most disappointment. There's an almost sick irony that at the very moment we were watching our "golden girl" give up in agony, news came from Norway of the theft of a version of Edvard Munch's "The Scream", surely the most graphic and memorable image one can see of despair and insurmountable anxiety. I would not be at all surprised if some broadsheet journo makes the connection somewhere today.
Maybe that is the great draw of the Olympics- we feel both the triumph and the tragedy, the agony and the ecstasy, of those taking part. Vicariously they perform what we can only "dream" of doing ourselves and all of us are somehow at least for a moment led to yearn to be the best that we can possibly be ourselves, to give that extra bit more, to achieve, to triumph. Of course, the memory of great Olympians- like Justin Gatlin, the 100 metre champion who was the underdog but proved himself the world's fastest man last night- will outlive them, but others will replace them. But we have a need for immortal heroes- and yet even their reality can be very different to our dreams and the tales handed down from childhood.
Radio 4's "Prayer for the Day" a few moments ago was delivered by Tony Burnham, a Jewish preacher I believe, who spoke about the well-loved legend of David and Goliath. He went through all the oh so familiar details of the story, only to reveal that in reality, David was probably a grown man by himself by this time and hardly the "littlun" we love to imagine-but this doesn't make the story any less powerful, I think. It is the universal story we all love and long to hear, the archetypal "rags to riches" story of victory over adversity, of right over might. Burnham concluded that the real heroes of our society are those who care for those unable to care for themselves, and many like them. Its not for one moment to denigrate the achievement of any of the Olympians, but it kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it.
But then, the perspective which brings both the promise of immortality and restores reality is this: God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son. Gave a son of David's line up to the Goliaths of the world- the megacorps who maybe keep the Olympics going, perhaps- like a lamb to the slaughter. Everyone thought he was dead, that was it- what a miserable end to a promising career and the dreams and hopes his people held that he was their Messiah. The reality of course is, he was, and is- because he overcame even death and did not disintegrate to dust. He is seated at the right hand of the father, crowned champion not with a wreath of laurel but with thorns! Because of him, or as that lively Paul Oakley chorus says "because of you, because of your love...all our sins are washed away, and we shall live forever, now we have this hope, because of you" The 100 metre champion, Justin Gatlin, appeared to kneel down on the track, raise his hands heavenward in thanks, and cross himself after his win. Could it be that he is not just another American athlete, but is on the Lord's side? Time to check that out, and then back to bed I think- even though the street light has just gone out and there seems to be some brightness trying to break through the cloud. But if young Gatlin is a believer,alleluia (again!)- what a witness!