A Pilgrim’s Digression

In my dream, I am playing poker with family members, including my recently deceased Grandmother and my father-in-law, who will have been dead two years on January 5, 2006. I have a good hand, too, a straight flush (spades). I am anxiously awaiting my turn so I can nonchalantly lay down my winning hand. However, folks are taking a long time to decide whether to fold, bet, or raise.

Finally, I get tired of waiting and go into the kitchen to get some food, leaving my cards on the table. We are at a holiday family reunion such as we used to have every year when Grandma was alive, but the “family” consists of the entirety of my family: my Dad’s family, my Mom’s family, and my wife’s family, the dead intermingling with the living. There is even a family pet, a Rottweiler named Cinammon once owned by my wife’s parents. The dog is several years dead as well.

The line is long, circling the table where the food is laid out, and I grow impatient, worried that my turn at cards will come while I’m waiting in line. Then, when I start filling my plate, the dog Cinammon starts harassing me for some food. I ignore her, but she grabs my pants leg in her teeth and starts tugging at my leg, almost knocking me down.

Finally, Grandma starts calling me from the other room. “It’s your turn,” she says. I lay the plate down, and Cinammon lets go of my pants leg. I hurry into the room and sit down at the card table, but it isn’t my turn yet after all. I can’t go back in the kitchen now, however, and I sit there glumly thinking about my food going cold or being scrounged up by Cinammon.

Then when I look at my cards, I notice that my flush is gone. Instead, I am holding a terrible hand, a measly two pair, deuces and fives. Maybe the two pair were what I was holding all along, I think.

At this point, the alarm clock awakens me. I push snooze and try to reenter the dream, but I can’t find the sweet spot where reality begins to fade. I start estimating whether I can afford the luxury of the snooze today. I’ve got to shave, I think to my sleepy self (I only shave every other day), so I need an extra ten minutes to get ready…ah well, the dream is lost. I get up and turn on the light.

In the shower, I analyze the dream. The dream seems to me symbolic of my whole fatalistic outlook on life. I’ve never really believed in free will. I believe people can make choices, however I believe those choices are influenced, if not exactly predetermined, by the weight of genetics, upbringing, previous experiences, and all the places where one has lived.

In the dream, I see my life portrayed as a game of chance, with the cards dealt by my family. I think I’m holding a flush, but in the end all I’m holding is a lousy two pair.

There is a sense in which the dream is also a provocation to action. It would be just like me to avoid action—in the dream, I quietly defer to family members instead of prompting them to hurry things along—and thus I miss my opportunity to play my winning hand. Therefore the dream is telling me I need to act, specifically I need to write, to play my “flush.”

I read the flush as symbolic of my writing, which I take for granted and neglect, and thus never complete. However, the flush could also reflect a certain self-delusion in terms of my talent. I think my writing talent is flush-quality, but really I’m not holding much at all.

Then there is the fact that my flush is composed of spades. Spades, representing death of course. Even the dog is dead in my dream.

Depressing, depressing dream. Maybe the dream is a foreshadowing of my own death. I have had an ache in my right jaw and temple all day, as if I had slept with my jaw tightly clenched. If I were older, I’d worry it might be a symptom of heart attack.