DREAMS

Living here in Prasat, this small town in northeastern Thailand, it's always "interesting" waking up in the morning. It reminds me of the first time I lived in Asia in 1977 when I was twenty-three years old. I lived for five months in a yoga ashram in Kerala in South India, and then for three months with a family in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Like now, I had a lot of time to myself, a lot of time each morning to wake up slowly and to remember, if I could, my dreams from the
night. Like now, I remember almost never having a dream set in the place where I was living, or with the people I was living with every day. I would dream about friends I had in junior high school, Chad, Matt and Everett (people I had virtually never seen since junior high school). They became characters, almost symbolic. I'd also dream often about the village of Ventry in southwestern Ireland, a place I had lived for eight months a few years before. Almost once a
week I would have a dream about walking on the road, along the ocean, heading for Ventry. But I'd never get there, never actually arrive in the village.

Here in Prasat I dream several nights each week about my father, who has passed away. The dreams can be about anything, but my father is a constant. The people I know here in Prasat – Pea, Gung, my friends from the Leelawadee – are almost never in my dreams, and almost never in a dream am I here in Thailand. Besides my father, I dream very often about "stuff", like one's worldly possessions. Junk. I will be at a great garage sale, or a farm auction, or at a thrift store. Sometimes these dreams are like nightmares, like arriving "home" and finding my possessions all strewn about a front yard, people having already walked away with many things. Or I will be in a crowd and discover my camera bag missing together with all my money, passport, and valuables. I'll wake up in a panic and look across the room, as one does, happy to know that it
was a dream.