sweet dreams

"Images of broken light, which

Dance before me like a million eyes,

They call me on and on across the universe."

- John Lennon

35mm slide, circa 1956

lake george, new york

Friday night, February 5th, I was sorting through a box of 35mm slides which had been misplaced for a number of years.  My father had taken photographs using 35mm slide film throughout the 1950's.  Most images are candid family shots with good composition and rich color saturation.  There are about one hundred slides, and I was looking for one particular image I had seen when I first started sorting.  I wanted to scan and enlarge this image and share with several others.  Once I found that shot, however, I decided not to use it since it was not exactly what I was looking for.  

As I kept looking, the image above caught my interest.  As with most slides, I could not see the overall picture or any detail.  I placed the slide on a light board and took a picture with my phone camera (my stop-gap measure until I can access a good scanner).  As I rotated and cropped the picture, I studied the image.  Within a few seconds I felt a shudder of recognition go through my body.  The following dream had come to me not 48 hours earlier on Thursday morning, February 4th.  I realized in that moment that the slide image, which had come to me after the dream, mirrored the dream in almost every detail.

I called to Emily to share the profound synchronicity.  We sat next to each other looking at the slide image on my tablet.  After a minute or two of conversation I stopped and looked at Emily with what must have been a stunned expression.  We were - at that very moment - in the same setting as depicted in the dream!  Emily was to my right side as we looked through 'a glass' (the computer screen) at the scene on the water.  My parents were facing us from the slide image displayed on the tablet.  The moment was both surreal and sublime as we felt a sense of direct connection between the gross world in which we live and the astral world in which my father may dwell.  Intuitively, I knew that he is here, helping us, communicating with us, supporting us and sending love through time and space in a way which I do not understand yet welcome with all my being.  An unforgettable sweet dream.

dream transcription / february 4, 2016

Reflections on Gary's dream (Emily):

"Here, I want to show you this.  Remember I told you I had that dream about my parents in the water? This is what they looked like (pause, head shakes left and right).  This is that dream.  We were just like this, looking through glass at my parents," as you motioned with your hand to our position side by side, on the bed, gazing at the deep blue hues and loving smiles of two heroic lovers. 

"We are in the dream!"  And you shook your head again.  It felt as though we had stepped into a cosmic vacuum.  All was still in this moment of cosmic embrace.

Listen: Across the Universe