Morning dreams

I woke up in around 330am and went downstairs for an hour or so. I woke up again at 630am with Mary Lou coughing loudly. She went downstairs to be considerate and I went back to sleep. I remember parts of a series of dreams, where I awoke after each one and fell asleep again. I finally got up at 930am.

The first series of dreams involved scenes featuring water.

1) Japanese coastal defenses at the end of WW2. I was with some Japanese military waiting for Americans to arrive in a destroyer. The war was not officially over but the Japanese had accepted defeat and were prepared to welcome the Americans without resistance.

2) Possibly a continuation of the dream above. I was with a group watching some people in circus uniforms walking together along a ridge to my right. Fireworks were launched, possibly from the destroyer. Instead of exploding high above us in the sky, the fireworks came at us like rockets. "We're under attack," I said, but I wasn't afraid because the rockets burst harmlessly with mild force. It was more like a playful display.

3) Again, possibly a continuation of the second dream fragment: Some men dropped objects into the water that turned out to be mechanical toys that were activated when submerged. The toys didn't have an recognizable form or purpose. Someone was explaining how they worked but the explanation didn't make practical sense, as it seemed to involve friction and sparks like old toy cars that made sparks when rolled along the floor.

4) The final fragment wasn't connected to the earlier ones. I was sitting in a living room with my mother and a group of relatives that included her brothers, Uncle Marvin and Uncle Linden Reeder. Some younger cousins were also there but Aunt Rubye, my mother's Sister, wasn't present. It was a typical family visit of the sort we often had when I was a child and my grandparents were all alive. It seems that my Mom and Uncle Linden both died shortly after the visit and I was thinking somewhat philosophically about the coincidence.

I relate to these dreams impressionistically. They tie in with the era I grew up in, the post-WW2 America that felt secure and fundamentally good, a time when I was naive and didn't realize humanity had darker and uglier dimensions. So much of my recent waking life is focused on the outrageously dysfunctional geopolitical process that has never produced a truly just society but has veered further toward the extremes with the election of Donald Trump as POTUS and the bold aggression of authoritarian leaders in Russia, Syria, Turkey, the Philippines and elsewhere.