Humaverse

“Listen,” she said. “It’s very simple.”

Although she was a little girl (four, I’d guess, and then remembered, oh, yeah, she told me that before, she is four) with a high-pitched voice, her tone carried a judge’s authority.

“I’m listening,” I said, injecting a hint of jocularity.

My hint gained me an eye-roll. “We remain in a humaverse. It’s only the timeverse that’s changed.”

I conjured up more questions. She stilled them with a small rosy palm.

“Stop. I know what you’ll ask,” she said. “The humaverse is the universe as humans perceive it.”

I pursed my lips to issue another question but faced the all-powerful palm again.

Eyebrows going up, she tilted her head. She did that often, resembling a small dark-haired, white parakeet when she did. “I’ve been through this before. Let me finish. Humans have certain perceptions and observations that create agreed and accepted preconceptions about how everything is supposed to work, like gravity, time, and light, for instance. I’m talking classic physics, of course. Light travels at cee. Gravity is a force that causes bodies to be attracted to one another, as Newton expressed in the most commonly accepted explanation in this humaverse. Time flows from the past to the future and can’t be revisited. Well, it can but you need to shed preconceptions to make that work. Most people can’t.”

Her glance lashed me. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m sure that you can’t.”

“Hey, that’s — ”

“Excuse me, I’m not finished. So, that’s why it’s called the humaverse. It’s the universe as humans define it. Others can use it, though, but they’re not usually limited by the humaverse’s laws. It depends.”

“Okay.” It depended on what? “And a timeverse?”

“A timeverse is an agreed upon reality within a humaverse based on the constraints and parameters established by the results from major events of a specific time-period, as humans think it happened.”

“Like…who won world war two.”

“Everyone always brings that one up.” She sounded mystified. “That, and Jesus of Nazareth. But, yes. There are many timeverses. Some people call them alterverses, but they’re not really. To be a true alterverse, enough residual chi-energy to change humaverse rules must be present. I’m talking about classic physics, of course.”

“Of course.” Like I knew, but I didn’t want another eyeroll. If her eyes were weapons… “So…there can be more than one humaverse?”

“Of course. Now we’re wasting time. Yellow will be coming after us. Let’s go.”

Swinging around, she marched off. “Adults,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she talked to herself, me, or someone else. All were possible with this child. “They can learn if they can just forget.”

As I hurried to catch up with her, I thought with cynical amusement, I never will.

Yellows

Wash me in yellow

the bright color of hopeful change

spritz me with marigolds

press me to get out of my lane

 

Soak me in yella

optimism and light

help me see past the madness and badness

and pursue what’s right

 

Drown me in yeller

make it an ocean of chance

a place where all are happy

and there’s singing and dance

 

Coat me in yellow

let it cover me all

like dazzling leaves on a tree

in the bright sunshine of fall

The Commercial Dream

It’s difficult to characterize and summarize this dream as anything except a commercial break between other dreams.

To my knowledge, this dream began October 21, because I posted about it that morning. Versions of it have been erratically but frequently recurring since then. It’s so short, like thirty seconds when I think about it, I’ve started wondering if I dreamed it or imagined that I dreamed it.

And it’s simple. I dream that I’m standing somewhere. There’s not really a background or place. I’m always younger. I look like I’m in my early twenties. Sometimes I’m bathed in a circle of light and I’m looking down on myself. Other times, I can see myself standing upright a few feet away, dressed, like I’m about to do something or leave. My clothing don’t really stand out. I just know it’s me. Sometimes, I see only my upper self, still dressed, from a few feet away.

In all cases, I then hear a voice. The voice is male and light. It doesn’t remind me of anyone. Sometimes it says, “Swaddle yourself in yellow.” Other times, swaddle is replaced by swathe, coat, or bathe. Yellow light then floods over me.

Only the first one that I remember in this series was different. In that one, I was spreading yellow butter on my forearm.

Then it’s on to other dreams.

Saturday’s Theme Music

Dreamed about being ‘slathered in yellow’ — again — so I awoke with “Yellow” by Coldplay (2000) in my stream.

Just A Dream Snippet

Just a dream snippet remains from last night’s viewing. It felt like the dreams were on, but like the television running in the background while I was doing something else. Not much seemed noticed.

The one time that I remembering seeing the Dream Vee, I had butter on my arm. It was a twenty-year-old version of me. I laughed about that and was talking with someone else, showing them where I had butter on my forearm.

I know my dream age, because my image was lifted off a photograph that I saw not too long ago. My hair was dark and thick, but cut military short, and my mustache was dark and heavy. My wife and I had gone to a shopping mall. At her encouragement, I bought a pale yellow, short-sleeved shirt, the top that you pull over, with a three-button Henley packet. It became a favorite shirt for a few years.

While I was laughing about the butter and attempting in dream-muddled-confusion to understand how I’d come to have this thick, long streak of butter on my right forearm,  I realized how yellow it was. At that point, I heard, spread yellow light over your body.

That’s all that’s remembered.

The Path Dream

Just did a walk-about writing break, and thought about one of last night’s dreams.

I was helping a man build a path. We each had a length of nylon rope. What I thought of as his rope was yellow and mine was white. The white rope was in my left hand, and the yellow rope was in my right. It was reversed for him. We were using the ropes to lay out the path. It was a long path, and were squatting down to do this.

So, weird, the path already existed in my mind, because he was laying the rope on a long and straight stretch of black cement. On either end was a platform that people were to use to arrive and depart.

Others were watching from grassy areas on either side of me. The man would shift the ropes one way and then the other as I followed his lead. I didn’t understand why he was doing this. “How’s it going?” an onlooker asked me.

“Slow,” I said. “I don’t understand what he’s doing. One, the path already exists. Why does he need another one? Two, why was he trying different paths? I don’t see what the difference he makes? Why doesn’t he make a decision? As part of that, I don’t understand why the path that’s already there doesn’t satisfy him. Three, shouldn’t the path, if you were going to make it, connect the platforms that people were expected to use?”

The onlooker said, “I don’t know.”

That dream ended.

Of course, thinking about it during my walk, I realized that I’m the other man. I have the path establish but doubt keeps me looking for another path. Why, I keep asking myself, just as I do in the dream? Clearly, it’s because I doubt the path, even though it’s already established.

 

The Kinetic Dream

I dreamed I heard crashing waves and knew it was the sea, and then entered a place. I wasn’t alone but was with friends (yet there was no one I recognized from my life).

We walked grassy paths which sometimes had stone pavers. The paths were narrow. It was a haphazard arrangement. It seemed like the lanes wove around multiple small cottages.

A sense of age permeated the settlement. Made of rough stone, the picturesque cottages had small, red or green doors, low roofs and soft, amber-toned walls. Yellow light, like candle or fireplace light, was shining through their four-pane windows. Many windows had flower boxes with red or white pansies growing in them. Sometimes I saw people, mostly children, in the cottages.

As I walked about the place, I had a sense that they’d been separate cottages which had then had a roof built over them to enclose them. I made that comment, which incensed an older man (tall and white, balding, with a dark, disheveled mustache and goatee), who was apparently the owner. I didn’t know why he was upset; it wasn’t anything derogatory, but he seemed to take it that way. I tried to explain what I meant and why, but he brushed me off.

Meanwhile, a younger white woman with short, light-brown hair, told me to remember to say things from time to time. I gathered from her I was there to give a speech. I was to talk about energy. She was a teacher; she wanted to ensure that I explained kinetic energy correctly.

She and I separated. She was with one group and I was in another. My group were adults. They were all friends. Children made up the teacher’s group. She was talking to the children about kinetic energy and explaining examples, showing how kinetic energy held things up. I started thinking, that’s not what kinetic energy is. She said that kinetic energy was what made walls and chairs stand up. Hearing her, I’d look at her, and she would make fists and cross her arms and say, “Kinetic energy.”

Even though I nodded at her in agreement, I was confused because that’s not what I thought kinetic energy was. I tried remembering other forms of energy so that I could talk to her. We came across a large window. In it were two chairs and a table. I looked from it to her. “Kinetic energy,” she said, smiling and nodding, her fists clenched and her arms crossed.

I awoke.

After writing this and thinking about it, I see how it fits into the series I’m writing, Incomplete States, but more thought is needed.

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