New Yort

There are stories about my family reunion in CO before this one, and stories of my birthday and things since then that I will have to post later. But I wanted to journal this today while it was fresh in my mind.

I dreamed about Yort!

That is a very uncommon dream. Usually he appears only in brief cameo, usually only in the company of others. But this dream was different.

I didn’t sleep well, so my memory of the dream is somewhat disrupted. I had spent most of the night in a dream where…it was almost like a class reunion. The setting was similar to a furniture showroom, where walls could be moved and furniture rearranged in a flash to facilitate whatever the group was doing. I found that I was holding mostly background roles, and…I ended up completely ruining two outfits of clothing, forcing me (twice) to have to take a shower (in the showroom tubs).

Morning was growing, and my mind was looking for that change of scene to end the reverie on. I’m not sure how I got there, but I was walking along an abandoned road…

You know how sometimes, when a developer is opening a new neighborhood, they will go in and lay down all this brand new asphalt and curbing, but it runs past only forest and glenn? Thats what these roads were: essentially in the wilderness on the outskirts of some unfamiliar town (actually, its not unfamiliar. Its a region south of College Town 30 minutes away, and it is remodeled to match my “internal” universe – the world my dreams take place in.)

Anyway, again I don’t remember the exact detail, as the circumstances were otherwise unremarkable, but as I was walking alone (I thought) on these vacant roads in the wilderness, Yort happened upon me and offered me a favor.

I’m not certain now what the favor was – it was some kindness appropriate to wandering back roads – but what struck me about it was both its selflessness, and its unselfconciousness. No pretense, as if the offer was made strictly for my benefit, and nothing would change whether I accepted or refused.

That is what struck me. It appeared that Yort had finally learned some things, or rather, that he was finally living them out. Moreover, that he had reconcilled things for himself, worked through his difficulties, to where he could initiate, he could offer such things to me (and others).

In the dream, it so floored me, that I had to follow up. When he approached me, we were walking in opposite directions. After Yort made the offer, I was so struck that I began to follow him. We rambled pleasantly – it was such a nice change from years of silence, or prior years of self-focused diatribe.

In all sincerity, I offered to help with whatever he was doing.

Soon, the streets were filled with water, floods, as if they were actually swolen streambeds. At the terminal ends of one of the streets (the water flowed on past, of course) Yort had a shanty of somekind – functionally built without any asthetic, which is his way. I don’t remember what his original chore was, but in the end together we were going to try to get a canoe (made out of a large loaf of french bread – I’m still trying to figure out where that came from) upstream and across a cross stream (where the streets crossed).

We tried paddling it, but the current just getting up the slight hill to the intersection was too swift; crossing the Delaware (sic.) would have been impossible in our bread craft. Instead, we decided to line it along, and set about how to get a line across the cross stream.

As this was the last dream of the morning, it didn’t last long, and only had one iteration. By the time we were trying to get the line across the water, my brain was becoming a mosaic of competing images, and eventually the dream faded (as I considered how to attach a rope to an arrow, and how to get it to loop a tree and return…).

In the aftermath of the dream, I am excited that maybe my dream was an omen of friendships to return. And if not, then at least I am thankful for those few minutes of kindness and comradery.