Prognostication's Rewards: A Traveler's Tale
Seven years ago, I had a dream that my brother and my sister-in-law lay dead, side by side, in our family's laundry room. A year later, my sister-in-law died of an accidental drug overdose. A year after that, my brother died of an asthma attack.
When I was in seventh grade, I dreamt of a girl named Doreen, on whom I had a big crush. She and I were holding hands as we walked around a red house. We sat on a picnic bench. Some dark-skinned children ran into the backyard and played a game like ring-around-the rosy.
A year later, Doreen and I would briefly "date", and that exact scene would occur: Her neighbors, who occupied the same large, red house, were Indian and had a lot of kids who ran into the backyard while Doreen and I held hands on her picnic bench, as though on cue.
During the summer of 2001, I went on a Zen retreat. When I returned, I was having drinks with my friend Rachel (England Rachel for those of you who have read the previous post) when she told me that she, Chloe and my now fiance but at the time new friend Genevra were going to go on a road trip. And then a flash. I think it was because of all the meditating I had been doing. I saw Rachel in front of an alligator. More specifically, though Rachel doesn't remember this detail the same way, I saw Rachel standing in front of what could have been an alligator sign, and in front of her was some kind of small road.
Rachel thought that was odd because they were going to the Southwest and were not expecting to see any alligators. But I was pretty sure of what I saw so I made sure to tell Genevra and Chloe seperately to take a photo of Rachel in front of it if they saw an alligator sign.
While on their trip, they wound up getting turned around, and drove quite a ways in the wrong direction. And then they saw it--a huge alligator sign.
I still have the photo.
There have been many other instances of my having made predictions or having had dreams or instincts that seemed to come true, though these three strike me as most memorable.
I've taken to weirding people out now by warning them when I think I've had a prophetic dream. I dreamt that a friend of mine got his girlfriend pregnant. I warned him to be safe. I dreamt that my brother-in-law-to-be (hi Brent) got a job as a door man at a bar and was shot in the feet by a woman who was robbing the place. I warned him not to take a job like that. They both probably thought I was being a little odd, even though it happened that the couple hadn't yet settled on a method of birth control, and Brent had recently applied for a position similar to the one that I'd dreamt of and I didn't even know he was looking for work.
I don't see myself as psychic, though. But I also don't think it was coincidence.
I started paying more attention to my instincts one day when I was moving out of my apartment in Andersonville. My girlfriend at the time and I had just broken up and were going through probably the most amiable seperation one could imagine. We had always been good friends and worked together well. Somehow, dismantling the lives we had built with each other and literally dismantling the apartment went as smoothly as most of our relationship had.
At one point we decided that since we had so many books to cary out of the apartment to give or throw away, it would be a great idea to throw the books out the back of our third floor window and gather them into boxes below. I stayed below while Elyse tossed the books to me. We started giggling at one point because we noticed that if you threw a stack of books onto the paved walkway, they would hit the walkway in a stack and then burst upwards into an arc of books that launched away from the house. They became almost as fun to watch as fireworks.
I learned how much distance I needed to keep between me and the drop zone. But then there was this one stack of books that hit the ground and arced toward me--the top book somehow much more propelled than usual. The book came at me and began to lose momentum about 18 inches from my chest. In fact, it slowed so much that it was almost difficult not to reach out and grab it. I did so instinctively.
And when I grabbed it, it was facing me perfectly--front frontwards and upright, binding to the left. The title was something like: "Freeing Your Intuition. How to Unlock Your Own Psychic Powers." It had been a book that Elyse picked up at her job and brought home because she had thought I might be interested. I'd never looked at it.
I then decided to keep the book. I did learn a thing or two from it. Mostly I've learned how to tell the difference between my instinct and my imagination--a skill I very much value.
There was no way that I could have prevented my brother's and his wife's deaths. I may have predicted getting to hold Doreen's hand, but I didn't predict her dumping me in a matter of weeks, nor was I able to predict her untimely death when she was in her mid-twenties. And while I may have predicted the aligator sign, Rachel, Chloe and Genevra found that sign the day they left for their rode trip on September 11th, 2001. So I was able to predict the sign, but not the deaths of thousands on the east coast who died a few hours prior.
Feelings come and go constantly: which elevator will open to take me to lunch; where exactly is the best place to stand on the El platform so I can get into a car first. But they rarely predict anything important. As for predicting the events of my life, I didn't even know that I was going to end my relationship with Elyse until the words came out of my mouth--and then I knew like I had always known. And Genevra and I happened suddenly and unexpectedly at a time when I saw my destiny very differently. In September she will be my wife.
It would be nice to be able to save the world, to help others, but I think somehow to be able to predict events in your own life would not be so nice. I think, we are here for surprises. We're here to learn how to appreciate the good ones, and survive the bad ones.
It's a long, unpredictable journey. There's no way around that. One can ask only for a pair of shoes and a body, for now, to slip inside them.
When I was in seventh grade, I dreamt of a girl named Doreen, on whom I had a big crush. She and I were holding hands as we walked around a red house. We sat on a picnic bench. Some dark-skinned children ran into the backyard and played a game like ring-around-the rosy.
A year later, Doreen and I would briefly "date", and that exact scene would occur: Her neighbors, who occupied the same large, red house, were Indian and had a lot of kids who ran into the backyard while Doreen and I held hands on her picnic bench, as though on cue.
During the summer of 2001, I went on a Zen retreat. When I returned, I was having drinks with my friend Rachel (England Rachel for those of you who have read the previous post) when she told me that she, Chloe and my now fiance but at the time new friend Genevra were going to go on a road trip. And then a flash. I think it was because of all the meditating I had been doing. I saw Rachel in front of an alligator. More specifically, though Rachel doesn't remember this detail the same way, I saw Rachel standing in front of what could have been an alligator sign, and in front of her was some kind of small road.
Rachel thought that was odd because they were going to the Southwest and were not expecting to see any alligators. But I was pretty sure of what I saw so I made sure to tell Genevra and Chloe seperately to take a photo of Rachel in front of it if they saw an alligator sign.
While on their trip, they wound up getting turned around, and drove quite a ways in the wrong direction. And then they saw it--a huge alligator sign.
I still have the photo.
There have been many other instances of my having made predictions or having had dreams or instincts that seemed to come true, though these three strike me as most memorable.
I've taken to weirding people out now by warning them when I think I've had a prophetic dream. I dreamt that a friend of mine got his girlfriend pregnant. I warned him to be safe. I dreamt that my brother-in-law-to-be (hi Brent) got a job as a door man at a bar and was shot in the feet by a woman who was robbing the place. I warned him not to take a job like that. They both probably thought I was being a little odd, even though it happened that the couple hadn't yet settled on a method of birth control, and Brent had recently applied for a position similar to the one that I'd dreamt of and I didn't even know he was looking for work.
I don't see myself as psychic, though. But I also don't think it was coincidence.
I started paying more attention to my instincts one day when I was moving out of my apartment in Andersonville. My girlfriend at the time and I had just broken up and were going through probably the most amiable seperation one could imagine. We had always been good friends and worked together well. Somehow, dismantling the lives we had built with each other and literally dismantling the apartment went as smoothly as most of our relationship had.
At one point we decided that since we had so many books to cary out of the apartment to give or throw away, it would be a great idea to throw the books out the back of our third floor window and gather them into boxes below. I stayed below while Elyse tossed the books to me. We started giggling at one point because we noticed that if you threw a stack of books onto the paved walkway, they would hit the walkway in a stack and then burst upwards into an arc of books that launched away from the house. They became almost as fun to watch as fireworks.
I learned how much distance I needed to keep between me and the drop zone. But then there was this one stack of books that hit the ground and arced toward me--the top book somehow much more propelled than usual. The book came at me and began to lose momentum about 18 inches from my chest. In fact, it slowed so much that it was almost difficult not to reach out and grab it. I did so instinctively.
And when I grabbed it, it was facing me perfectly--front frontwards and upright, binding to the left. The title was something like: "Freeing Your Intuition. How to Unlock Your Own Psychic Powers." It had been a book that Elyse picked up at her job and brought home because she had thought I might be interested. I'd never looked at it.
I then decided to keep the book. I did learn a thing or two from it. Mostly I've learned how to tell the difference between my instinct and my imagination--a skill I very much value.
There was no way that I could have prevented my brother's and his wife's deaths. I may have predicted getting to hold Doreen's hand, but I didn't predict her dumping me in a matter of weeks, nor was I able to predict her untimely death when she was in her mid-twenties. And while I may have predicted the aligator sign, Rachel, Chloe and Genevra found that sign the day they left for their rode trip on September 11th, 2001. So I was able to predict the sign, but not the deaths of thousands on the east coast who died a few hours prior.
Feelings come and go constantly: which elevator will open to take me to lunch; where exactly is the best place to stand on the El platform so I can get into a car first. But they rarely predict anything important. As for predicting the events of my life, I didn't even know that I was going to end my relationship with Elyse until the words came out of my mouth--and then I knew like I had always known. And Genevra and I happened suddenly and unexpectedly at a time when I saw my destiny very differently. In September she will be my wife.
It would be nice to be able to save the world, to help others, but I think somehow to be able to predict events in your own life would not be so nice. I think, we are here for surprises. We're here to learn how to appreciate the good ones, and survive the bad ones.
It's a long, unpredictable journey. There's no way around that. One can ask only for a pair of shoes and a body, for now, to slip inside them.
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