Resonance

The image above will be discussed later in this post. First:

My dreams break down into several categories. As readers of this page have figured out by now, some are either precognitive (literal view of a future event) or prophetic (I am shown something related to the future by someone within the dream, aware of my sleeping state).

In the precognitive group are what I call “markers.” These are images that, when recognized later in waking life, allow me to find the dream in my journal. Later, I typically discover that the marker item is only one of several details, all of which match something from the same day. For instance, on 11/30/1989, I had a dream about seeing “two stylized forty foot tall black Statue of Liberty's.” Other parts of the dream implied something very bad would happen in South Africa, though symbolicly presented. This led me to say to my wife, “on the day I see those statues, something bloody will happen South Africa, something really bad.”

It was a strong image that you could say “haunted me”, at least until 2/3/1990, when I actually saw it. There on 6th avenue, between 53rd and 54th streets in Manhattan, were the sculptures. They weren’t “Statues of Liberty”, but were close enough. They were by Jim Dine, titled “Looking across the Avenue”, and consisted of three colossal bronze figures (1 not visible from my position in my car). They were modeled after a famous ancient sculpture known as the Venus de Milo, not the Statue of Liberty, but due to their scale and color, they looked at first glance like a pair of Statue of Libertys.

At the time, I lived in Weehawken, New Jersey. Occasionally, my wife needed a ride into Manhattan to pick up or drop off illustration work for her clients. Those trips did not usually take me to 6th avenue. More often, we went downtown, to her agent in the 30’s, or one of the ad agencies in the 40’s. On this occasion, I had to drive north on 6th Avenue, when I happened to look to my left and was shocked to see the statues.

For those who are persnickity about description errors, which were much more common in early entries like this one, written only 6 weeks after I started the journal, and long before I learned to write my dreams more accurately, the following mismatches:

• In the journal, I recorded the sculptures were “black.” They weren’t. This may have been a conflation of the previous subject of the dream (black people in South Africa) or possibly shadows that made them very dark. It was February and days weren’t very bright according to the weather on that day, so it is possible.

• They were based on the Venus de Milo, a classical Greek sculpture, whose arms are missing due to damage. This is not the same as the Statue of Liberty, but given the scale, the drapery at the base, and color, it did resemble the Statue of Liberty at first. The location in NY probably helped, because NY isn’t well-known for outdoor sculptures apart from the Statue of Liberty and maybe the Merril Lynch bull on 57th street. That said, what matters was my perception, and at the time I saw the sculptures, I thought they were smaller versions of the Statue of Liberty, possibly because I was driving and didn’t have the time to look more carefully. I only later learned what they were and who the artist was.

Based on the sighting, I told my wife that when we got home, we’d see something on the news about South Africa, a massacre of some kind. When we returned, we did see such a story, about a “riot” that left 20 dead. It turned out that South Africa’s president DeKlerk had the day before unbanned the African National Congress, the Communist Party, and announced his intention to free Nelson Mandela. Less than a day later, police cracked down on jubilant celebrations of the announcement, leading to the newscast I saw on that day.

Regardless of the mismatches in my initial description, my prediction based on my memory of the image of those sculptures proved accurate. That is a “marker.”

A couple nights ago, I dreamed that I heard a voice say, “I sense an otherworldly presence.” Afterward, it seemed like the entire physical universe blinked out of existence, then God brought it back, but with improvements. I sensed that there were some very bad crises ongoing prior to everything disappearing, but God had made subtle adjustments so that, when everything came back, everything would be better.

Then tonight, I was drawing while I played Celebrity Apprentice, season 6, episode 9 on Amazon. For the record, I hadn’t seen a single episode of any of the Apprentice series until it recently landed on Amazon, nor had I seen this episode until tonight. My eyes were tired, so I sat on my couch to rest with my eyes shut. While resting this way, I was surprised to hear a voice say (from Celebrity Apprentice) “We have an otherworldly being on our team.”

The term “otherworldly being” is not something I hear spoken aloud every day, if ever, so it was interesting to hear it twice in as many days. Hopefully it means the other part happens also, and subtle corrections have been made.

As for the image at the top, it is from one of the most

amazing dreams I ever had. Yesterday, I noticed a flower popping out of some rocks in my backyard and it made me think of this part of the dream, so I photographed it.

I made quite a few illustrations for the dream, but they didn’t fit in the post, so I’ll have to share those later.