Sci Fi Story

Well, the show is over from my last post. It was all over dramatised as I thought it was. I did get to see some familiar faces though, and the crew here was all amused.... The Oil, Sweat & Rigs episode was split between an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and the drilling rig I'm presently on. Wow, who could ask for a better segue than that.

The turn of the millenium found me working on offshore drilling rigs in the gulf of Mexico. I had been working them for an average of 300 days of work per year over the previous five years, and was feeling the stress of burnout. Further complicating my life, my father's health had been in constant decline. It was sometime during the year 2000 when the first component of the recurring dream began.

Frequently my dreams took me to the mountains (never sure which ones), and always the dreams took place in a nearly pitch black nightime setting. I would be struggling through the mountains in all sorts of weather, hiking off trail, up and down the mountains. I could see a massive beacon of light, which began at the summit of a large distant mountain and pierced the clouds above it. I was compelled to reach the source of the beacon, so every dream found me climbing mountain after mountain only to reach the top and find that the beacon was still somewhere beyond the next range of mountains. I would jump off the mountain I was on and freefall for long periods of the dream before crashing to earth and rolling further down the mountain. I would then dust myself off, descend to the valley floor, ford a stream and begin to ascend the next mountain.

This dream would repeat itself several times a week, and always I would awake in a sweat, breathing hard and tired. It was as though I was physically partaking in the dreams eventhough I'd remained in bed the whole time. This dream continued for several months, when my father lost his battle with lung and heart disease. I took a leave of absence to attend him when he went on hospice care, see previous blog entry dying words http://www.online-literature.com/for...80&userid=7179.

I suspected that the dream had something to do with my father's illness and death, but in the months following the funeral the dreams were more vivid and more distinct. I felt that maybe I should look into them more seriously, perhaps see what was behind the dreams. I informed my bosses that I would be quitting work in June of 2001, and prepared to take a 3 month trip across the Rocky Mountains of North America.

Dream is not a revelation. If a dream affords the dreamer some light on himself, it is not the person with closed eyes who makes the discovery but the person with open eyes lucid enough to fit thoughts together. Dream—a scintillating mirage surrounded by shadows—is essentially poetry. -- Michel Leiris

Next: Seeking the Beacon