You Had To Be There
Luky is a little stiff and sore today. He's got that post-marathon type of soreness. That's because he decided to fly kites two nights ago in Piedmont Park (http://www.piedmontpark.org/).
After prancing around on the hills along Tenth Street for about an hour I knew he was going to be paying a muscular price for his exuberance.
Such exertions leave him exhausted, too. Sled Dog!?! Yeah, right! He raises his eyebrows with worry any time I say "I did" anything - because, I have surmised, he's afraid I'm about to mention the "Iditarod."
Anyway, he often takes a nap after harrowing efforts like that, and he definitely dreams. Like me, he doesn't remember them very well unless he immediately recounts his dream as soon as he wakes up. I've always wondered why our dreams can be so present of mind upon our waking and then so easily disappear just a few minutes later. In fact, Luky agrees that it's even weirder when you get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of a dream, and then with an odd kind of nostalgia for something you already know isn't real, you head back to bed trying to locate chapter and verse of the action. (Luky says the same thing happens to him when he stands up and turns around three times on his rug.)
So, yesterday afternoon as he was napping when he started trembling, his hind legs shaking like he was trying to run down a gift-wrapped refrigerator-box packed with Milk Bones, and singing his guttural howl as if hailing the entire wild pack of great northern ancestry, I couldn't help wondering what he was dreaming.
"I have to ask," I said. "What was that all about?" He had just looked up - I think he actually woke himself in mid-chase.
"I was saving us," he said.
"Us? As in you and me? What was the danger?"
"We weren't really in trouble. We were chasing."
"We were 'chasing' . . . chasing what?"
"Freedom from despair," he said with the certainty of one now awake and wanting to appear cogent in spite of the obvious circumstances. "You were trying to catch your tail and I had to explain that you didn't have one. You were having trouble with the verbal explanation and needed a demonstration. I think that was it."
"Wow!" I tried to express as much satire in one syllable as possible - but I think he was too awake - by that I mean, he was awake enough now to actually be making up a ridiculous story so he could avoid telling me what his real dream had been about.
"You had to be there," he said.
After prancing around on the hills along Tenth Street for about an hour I knew he was going to be paying a muscular price for his exuberance.
Such exertions leave him exhausted, too. Sled Dog!?! Yeah, right! He raises his eyebrows with worry any time I say "I did" anything - because, I have surmised, he's afraid I'm about to mention the "Iditarod."
Anyway, he often takes a nap after harrowing efforts like that, and he definitely dreams. Like me, he doesn't remember them very well unless he immediately recounts his dream as soon as he wakes up. I've always wondered why our dreams can be so present of mind upon our waking and then so easily disappear just a few minutes later. In fact, Luky agrees that it's even weirder when you get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of a dream, and then with an odd kind of nostalgia for something you already know isn't real, you head back to bed trying to locate chapter and verse of the action. (Luky says the same thing happens to him when he stands up and turns around three times on his rug.)
So, yesterday afternoon as he was napping when he started trembling, his hind legs shaking like he was trying to run down a gift-wrapped refrigerator-box packed with Milk Bones, and singing his guttural howl as if hailing the entire wild pack of great northern ancestry, I couldn't help wondering what he was dreaming.
"I have to ask," I said. "What was that all about?" He had just looked up - I think he actually woke himself in mid-chase.
"I was saving us," he said.
"Us? As in you and me? What was the danger?"
"We weren't really in trouble. We were chasing."
"We were 'chasing' . . . chasing what?"
"Freedom from despair," he said with the certainty of one now awake and wanting to appear cogent in spite of the obvious circumstances. "You were trying to catch your tail and I had to explain that you didn't have one. You were having trouble with the verbal explanation and needed a demonstration. I think that was it."
"Wow!" I tried to express as much satire in one syllable as possible - but I think he was too awake - by that I mean, he was awake enough now to actually be making up a ridiculous story so he could avoid telling me what his real dream had been about.
"You had to be there," he said.
posted by RAM at 8:11 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home