“I still have a dream … I have a dream today.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Here in my heart there’s a dream that’s unbroken
And it gets in my way, but it won’t be denied.
Oh, here in my heart, the door is still open
Waiting for you to walk into my life.
— Chicago • American rock band
Fall Classic Dream State: Part 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10
Once upon a couch, I was home watching the pregame show before the decisive game of the 2000 World Series — the Mets-Yankees Subway Series — but I fell asleep just before the first pitch, and soon I began to dream…
This dream started as a wild, death-defying roller-coaster ride — a metaphorical coaster, but literally death-defying because I somehow survived a nosedive from the top of the Empire State Building by landing, dream-like, on a pole vaulter’s cushion. I wound up in New York City’s Canyon of Heroes, along Broadway, where NYC parades have honored champions and lionhearts from Amelia Earhart to Jesse Owens (in the 1930s) to French president Charles de Gaulle and the Apollo 11 astronauts (in the 1960s) to Nelson Mandela and the Yankees (in the 1990s) — three times for the Yanks that decade.
Wait … the Yankees get three parades, while Mandela gets one? Yes, this mystifies me — does it seem incongruous to you too? What he’s accomplished in overcoming apartheid warrants 30-plus parades compared to winning three World Series.
You might also be mystified by something else — I’m referring to “this dream” … but how can I speak about dreaming as if I know I’m dreaming, and still be dreaming?
Good question.
The answer is easily found — the same way answers to every possible question ever posed by humankind are found here in the new millennium: Google Search, of course. (Do you detect naiveté, irony or sarcasm in the preceding sentence? For now, you’re on your own — no spoilers at this juncture!)
The answer that I’ve found easily on the internet is this: I’m apparently experiencing what sleep specialists call a lucid dream — “defined as a dream during which dreamers, while dreaming, are aware they are dreaming … it is unclear how many people actually experience lucid dreaming … it seems that this phenomenon may be quite common” (according to the Medical News Today website).
Yes, I’m able to access Google via the World Wide Web on my iMac — while I’m dreaming. Amazing, or perhaps bizarre … but I digress.
Since enduring that near-fatal fall from the landmark Empire State skyscraper in Manhattan — while Game 5 of the World Series is transpiring at Shea Stadium in Queens — I’ve been watching a strange parade. The first parade float carried a simple light-colored placard with what appeared to be six headlines. In dark block lettering, these headlines appear to forecast events after the current year 2000.
The first headline — 2001: Terrorist attack rocks NYC, reduces Twin Towers to rubble
In a stunning moment, after witnessing the inconceivable occur — the haunting collapse of the iconic Towers, followed by the harrowing crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania — I’ve somehow been transported back to New York’s Canyon of Heroes along Broadway … and I can see the second parade float, despite the soot-dark setting of this peculiar nighttime spectacle.
The headline of this second float reads — 2004: Red Sox rout Yankees in Game 7, finish historic comeback
Suddenly, I hear the faint strains of a song wafting in the night … it sounds familiar but I can’t quite make it out … yet now the organ accompaniment is unmistakable … wait, of course: Take Me Out To The Ballgame.
After starting this dream at Shea Stadium during the 2000 World Series, it looks like I’m going back to the baseball diamond — but this time either at Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park in 2004.
To be continued
© Bruce William Deckert 2020
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A Slow Life in the FAST Lane 