Notes From My Journal: Chapter Thirty-Nine

Notes From My journal: Chapter Thirty-Nine

It’s May 15, 2011. I’m sitting in my high school classroom writing a note to my counselor. I state that I have decided that I want to become a professional boxer. I feel that it is my destiny to do so. I receive a note from my counselor stating that I need to be sure to wear a mouth piece when I am boxing, and that I need to clinch my teeth tightly at all times when I am in the ring.

My dad tells me that he will be my manager and that I can spar with my brother C.C. who is a heavyweight. He explains that he will get some one in my own weight class as soon as he can. Since I am a lightweight I will be a little faster than Sonny, but I have to watch out for his heavier blows.

Sonny and I are in the ring. We are boxing bare handed. I punch as hard as I can. Sonny blocks a number of my blows, but is taking a beating as we go through several rounds. One of the handlers comes into the ring with a large glove. He tells me to aim at the glove and punch as hard and as fast as I can. My father tells me that I have really fast hands.

As I continue to work out in the gym, I’m thinking that I have made the right choice. I figure that I will go far as a professional boxer. Then a voice tells me, “Are you kidding yourself? You are seventy-three years old. Your time is over.”

It’s a month later. We decide to leave home to sleep over in a downtown apartment. I’m very tired and not at all happy at having to adjust to a new bed. Anne and I are going to sleep on a living room couch. It is too short for both of us to stretch out full length so I have to twist my legs and rest them on a footstool at the side of the bed. I try to get comfortable this way and find it is not as bad as I thought it would be. Anne is going to have a cigarette before she comes to bed. I tell her that she’ll be smoking up the whole room.

As I look at the wide window at the front of the room, I think that it looks just like the place we had on Grand Avenue in Oakland. I wonder if Stoke remembers living on Grand Avenue. It strikes me that he had his crib in the next room, and I can feel his presence there. He might remember the place, but his wife, Sheri, won’t remember it, I tell myself thinking that they are sleeping here tonight also.

I twist around on the couch trying to get comfortable. I’m thinking that it was really stupid for us to come here to spend the night. I listen to the city noise outside out window and grow a little frightened. This is not the safest place to be, I tell myself. The dog starts barking. I awake in my own bed at home, but the dream was so real that I don’t believe that I am here.

I fall back to sleep and find myself lying on a sleeping bag deep with the country. It is a couple hours before dark. I listen to the wind, and look at the towering pine trees. It is very beautiful peaceful place. I feel like I could stay here forever. But, I tell myself it’s at least a two hours walk back to the main road, and figure I better head back before it starts to get dark. I lay a couple of books and a jacket inside my sleeping bag and roll it up. Looking down at my feet, I discover that I don’t have my shoes on. I figure I must have taken them off to be more comfortable when I stretched out. I search the ground, but there is no sign of my shoes. I unroll the sleeping bag, but they are not inside.

A camp counselor comes up and tells me that he will give us a ride to the main road. There is a nice looking young girl and a middle-aged man with him. He heads toward one of four cars. I tell him to check to see if it has gas in it. I look in the back seat of another car and see four pairs of shoes. I yell back to the girl that there may be a pair of shoes in the car that will fit her. I see that I am now wearing my shoes. We find that the shoes are too big for the girl, so she stays bare footed. I’m hoping that the middle-aged man will ride up front with the counselor so that I can ride in back with the girl.

On awakening from the dream, I remember that Fritz Perls says that everything in a dream is some psychological force in one’s self. I realize that the counselor, the middle aged man, and the young girl are different aspects of myself. The girl represents the inner self, the spiritual aspect of myself.

In the beginning of the dream the person that I take as myself has no shoes. Shoes represent the ideas that cover the sensual part of ones self, the ideas that one receives through the senses. When the girl enters my dream, she has no shoes. This could mean that the inner part of myself is also without ideas or thoughts that would direct it. None of the shoes or ideas will fit the girl. Does this mean that I am looking for new ideas, new direction for both the inner and out self.

If I had shoes I could make my way to the main road on my own. Without shoes, I rely on the camp counselor to take me there. Is the dream telling me that I must fashion my own shoes, new ideas, new thinking in order to reach the main road on my own? In the first dream, I think that it is my destiny to become a professional fighter. It seems that my counselor, my brother, and my father agree. The I that I take as myself is a high school student. It takes a voice from my unconscious to remind me that I am really a seventy-three year old, that I can no longer pursue any career.

It strikes me that one of my prime efforts is to discover what I was sent down from a star to do, what my true destiny is. Even at 73 I have not yet discovered my purpose in life. At times I think that it is to write, to share the truths that I have discovered with others. At other times I think that my desire to be a writer is just a part of my false personality.

It seems that all three dream fragments have in common the idea that I have to get out of my old house, my old shoes, my habitual thoughts, and actions and find a new way of looking at myself and the world.