Dream: Crumbling bluff

A dream the night before last: realized I was getting old, no longer with any connection to the younger generation. I felt vivid awareness of my inner youth belying my aging body. I walked along a rocky coastline, sliding with all the grace of a young 'skater' along a slippery ridge of half-submerged rock; I hopped to shore at the base of a towering bluff of reddish rock, a jumble of sedimentary rock and packed mud, noting my graceful leap and the strength and control I had of my body; a young man walking past saw me and averted his eyes as the young do, writing me off as an old guy devoid of any possible interest.

I saw and felt this, but also awareness of the self I am now and always have been -- a continuous, if illusory, sense of who I am regardless of the impressions of others. I began to scale the rocks, deeply conscious of the road I have traveled, my rich past, the boy I remain in my soul... To my consternation, the bluff crumbles; I can gain no solid foot or hand-hold. Every rock I try to grab pulls loose and falls; chunks of rock and sections of the bluff tumble dangerously under and around me.

Me on the Lizieux, France, 1973, 18 years old

Somehow I manage to clamber to the top, but find I am emerging from a narrow opening in a roof of a smaller room or shed inside a larger structure, a barn perhaps. Below me on the ground a young boy looks up at me, and at his feet I see a shaky wooden ladder. I ask him to prop it against the roof for me, and he obliges. I climb back to terra firma, wondering why everything has become so uncertain and difficult. I awake with very much the same thought.