These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These dreams that sleep when it’s cold outside
Every moment I’m awake the further I’m away

These Dreams-Heart
I suspect that many, if not all, of you are having the same experience that I am having. That is instead of our regularly scheduled dreams our programming has been interrupted by what I have labeled as quarantine dreams. Dreams in which the subject matter is related to the trials, tribulations, and challenges we are facing during our forced incarceration due to Covid 19.
Fortunately, my dreams have not been fever dreams. Those would have been a nightmare in every way conceivable.
My quarantine dreams have been much more benign. Not panicked. Not desperate. Just a steady release of built of sturm and drang as executed through my subconscious. While I am sure Freudian and Jungian psychiatrists would make a small fortune through analyzing my dreams to me, a mere BS in psychology, they seem fairly straight forward.

For example, last night I had two quarantine dreams. I was in an immense store. Aisles that were kilometers long (I am in Brazil…metric) and I am pushing an empty cart searching the near empty shelves for the things that I need to find the most. I am running and my companion, Elaine, is giving me instructions on how to find things she wants while I am skimming the shelves for things I think we need. The pursuit seems endless but finally we agree to make do with what we have and go to the check out line which is, of course endless.
This was the 2nd quarantine dream I had. The first was right after I had fallen asleep in the evening and was much simpler. I was in a car. The car was in a painted circle in a large parking lot. Within the circle there were areas where you were supposed to park. When a klaxon sounded all the cars moved to the next spot. No cars ever left the circle.
As I have mentioned previously, one of my superpowers is to solve the worlds and my problems in the middle of the night. (You are welcome world.) Needless to say that upon awakening after my dreams in the middle of the night I got to thinking about dreams.

I recalled that in the days and weeks following the attacks of 9.11 I had similarly themed dreams. Mine were mostly about my friend Todd Rancke who died that day. How when he left for work that morning, he was full of dreams and hopes the least of which was probably that he would make it home that night. His dreams died with him that day but I realized then that the dreams of many others had also died that day. Certainly, those of the nearly 2000 people who died that day but those of their relatives, loved ones, friends. Some of our country’s dreams and the worlds dreams died that day too but far less than those of us New Yorkers.
Last night in the dark of the Brazilian night with my love quietly purring next to me I had an epiphany. That the Corona 19 virus has killed or derailed the worlds dreams in a magnitude that is not fully comprehensible. Not only for the 10,000 who have perished but for the 100 of thousand who have contracted the disease. And for the millions whose daily lives, their ability to work and to thrive have been permanently altered.
No doubt there are lessons to be learned from this. Certainly countries and their leaders have made and are continuing to make horrific mistakes (fuck you Trump) but that is for another time.
We need to mourn the loss of those dreams. There were so many. To not acknowledge their loss would be not to acknowledge our humanity.
For everything has it season a time to cry, a time to laugh, a time to eulogize, and a time to dance. The world’s dreams deserve a eulogy. An acknowledgement of their existence.
We also need to appreciate the opportunity we have been given. For the millions of us caught in lockdowns, quarantines and the like we have been given the chance to re envision ourselves. To throw away the things that have held us down and to imagine the world that emerges from this pandemic and what we want to do with it.
In other words, I thought in the middle of the Brazilian night we need new dreams. So I rolled over and fell asleep to a dreamless sleep. Thankfully dreams were made to be created during the day.
These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another
These dreams that sleep when it’s cold outside
Every moment I’m awake the further I’m away