Trueman ([info]rebelcoyote) wrote,
@ 2005-02-17 09:19:00
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Current mood: good

Last Night I had a dream. I made a wish that things had been different, that Robert and I had never Switched places that morning. As I wished this, a deep bellowing caw cut through the air and A crow flew down from the dusk sky to light on my arm.

The next thing I knew, I was back in the Humvee, just like that day. I could see history unfolding before us one were we were both wounded and but no one died. Then I began to wonder what would happen if we took a different route. I suggested we follow the main road around the front of the building (something which would not have been done in real life,) and soon we were back in the compound, all of us.

As we milled around the Humvee, I caught sight of about a half dozen enemy snipers in a building. We opened fire and a fierce, implausible firefight ensued. The battle was all at once both exciting and terrifying but it left me with a feeling of accomplishment. A feeling that this time around I was really a soldier not just an unlucky peace keeper.

There was more excitement which is lost to the haze of dream memory but towards the end, I remember everyone sitting around for a barbecue (which, for some reason, was at dusk.) As I talked with the guys I realized that none of it felt right. The whole place felt artificial, I didn't like the pompous self assured army guy that this new time line had created and although he was alive, for some reason I hadn't seen Robert once. As I thought, this the crow returned, silently this time, and I made a wish in my mind to return.

I waited a few beats but as I looked around me, nothing had changed. I began walking and went through a door. As I came through I saw the the sky filled with hundreds of crows, forming a funnel which stretched almost to the ground like a tornado, a vortex of spiraling crows. All this was happening in a parking lot, outside my apartment, I was home.



Then a gang of children on three wheel stunt bikes tore in and the dream went off in the bizarre direction which most of my dreams take.


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[info]cassielsander
2005-02-17 03:58 pm UTC (link)
Wow. That's an amazing tale. Thanks for sharing.

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cassiel the angel
[info]ignominia2
2005-11-27 05:16 pm UTC (link)
you are the angel aren't you?
The real on or just borrowing the persona?
I loved the movie(s) and the picture caught my eye, just wanted to know if angels write blogs.. ;)
Niki

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Re: cassiel the angel
[info]cassielsander
2005-11-27 09:06 pm UTC (link)
Just a fan, I'm afraid. But yeah, Wings Of Desire is an amazing movie (just about my favorite).

Have you seen the sequel, Far Away So Close? It's not as good, but still very interesting (and its where these photos are from).

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[info]roninspoon
2005-02-17 04:46 pm UTC (link)
I read a book years ago, the title of which seesm to be lost to time. It was an autobiography of a Navy SEAL that detailed his time in the Mekong delta of Vietnam. It was written years before the contemporary ideal of the SEAL as a super solider that can do the impossible and is invulnerable.

The author ends up getting almost completly deafened by an underwater explosion and a considerable portion of the book is devoted to his return to civilian life and his inability to cope.

The part that stood out the most to me as a youth, and stayed with me through my own time in the military (and the part that happens to be relevant) was an exchange the author had with his father after returning home.

Standing outside drinking a beer with his old man and watching the sun set against the trees and hills, he asks his father who was a WWII veteran, "When do the dreams stop?"

"How long do you reckon you'll live?" was his father's only answer.

Man, I wish I could remeber the title of that book. Amazon is no help. It was something like Mekong or SEAL.

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[info]phyxis
2005-02-20 03:17 am UTC (link)
It isn't clear if the story is fiction or pseudotruth, but I think what you're looking for is:

MEKONG: THE AUTHENTIC NOVEL OF NAVAL SPECIAL FORCES IN VIETNAM
309 PAGES published 1984
by JAMES R. REEVES
BALLANTINE BOOKS -- FICTION -- TRUE TO THE ACTUAL OPERATIONS AS POSSIBLE (from a 2nd Navy SEALs history site) This novel is supposedly based on the actual career of a Navy SEAL named James C. Taylor. But it is wholly fiction; Taylor was never actually a SEAL.

http://www.navyseals.com/dropzone/opcenter/report4.html

http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/FacultyPages/EdMoise/fiction.html

Here's his son's 'blog:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/3880064

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[info]roninspoon
2005-02-20 05:31 am UTC (link)
That's some mighty fine detective work. I'm both pleased that someone found it, and a little dissapointed to discover the controversy surrounding it. I had always believed it was non-fiction, but it's been a long time since I read it.

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[info]phyxis
2005-02-20 05:50 am UTC (link)
Well, you're half-heartedly welcome?

From what I can tell, he -was- trying to go for accurate-portrayal fiction.

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[info]rebelcoyote
2005-03-18 11:44 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, my father served in Korea during the vietnam war aws an infantry lieutenant patrolling the DMZ. He only saw action on one occasion when his platoon was fired on by a pair of North Koreans who'd been scouting the area. Two of his men were killed but I never thought much about how that would have effected him. Then a couple weeks ago, a little while after I wrote this, he casually, and some what out of context, mentioned that the dreams neve stop. At that moment I realized how similar his service, and his experience had been to mine. It really changed the way I thinkk about my Dad.

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[info]etrnl_dreamscpe
2006-10-21 01:34 am UTC (link)
Trueman -

You have gone through so much since last I saw you. I hope that things get easier for you, and that you are able to escape the dreams that haunt you. I miss you, and think of you often. I hope that you and your parents are all well. Tell them both that I say hi if you get the chance. I wish you all the best that this world has to offer.

Jamie (from LP)

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[info]jaded_dreamer
2005-02-17 06:51 pm UTC (link)
Wow. What a dream. Hope you're ok. *hugs*

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[info]cristalyte
2005-03-20 01:54 am UTC (link)
Hi.

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Your writing - the BOOTS Anthology project
[info]razzilou
2005-03-22 07:10 pm UTC (link)
Hello Trueman,

I found you through the most circuitous route! A post by someone last April to a live journal blog who mentioned your writing when talking about Ginmar's blog from Iraq. This morning I tracked that guy down - the one who admires your writing - and he sent me here to find you. I'm a writer/editor from Maryland working on a book project - an anthology of writing from soldiers deployed to Iraq/Afghanistan - and I'd really like to correspond w/you via e-mail if you think you might be interested in contributing some of your livejournal posts [or other writing]to the book. You can reach me at www.robinp01@comcast.net. I really hope to hear from you! I'm moved by your writing . . .it's fine, fine, fine! Best to you, Robin

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[info]cathubodva
2005-05-30 05:11 pm UTC (link)
You don't know me, and I don't know you.

But it's Memorial Day, and so:

Thank you.

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that was an important dream
(Anonymous)
2005-07-12 01:33 am UTC (link)
you should make a point of telling that dream to every and any Native Americans you come in contact with, especially if there's a medicine man or an ancient tribal elder to talk to.
The Crow is a longtime symbol, harbinger, or messenger of Death to come. I'm thinking of an old english lullabye called 'the crow on the cradle' that Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young did, on one of their live concert albums on LP.
I'l take a swipe at interpreting that dream for you:
you wished your friend had not died. So the Crow, the messenger of Death, came and took you on a journey, to show you what it would have been like. As it played out, you felt deep in yourself that it was artificial, not right, not real. That was your soul, your deepest self, letting you understand that the emotion of what happened, is real and a necessary experience for your knowing what it is to be human.
Death is not fun, but it is deepening, and texturing. without experiencing it, we would be shallow and crass, and less than we are. Going thru the loss hurts, beyond words, but we don't realize why it happened to us, until a long time after, when we come upon someone else that it is happening to, freshly, and they can't articulate the pain, nor bear it. They feel utterly alone, lonely, isolated, cut off from the rest of life. It is at that time that we know we can step forward, without any words, and stand in it with them, communicating that we know, that we have crossed thru that dark passage ourselves, and will bear the unbearable with them; for them; alongside them, during the time when they feel that no one could possibly understand them.
It is given to us to help those who come after us.
You return thru the doorway, to see that tornado of crows, whirling in the sky at dusk. That sight tells you- and me- many things. It says that your one friend, lost to you, in death, is not alone, that he flies now with thousands of his fellows, all together; he has companionship, fellowship, comradierie, that he is free [ flight] in a way you are not [yet], and the tornado suggests a storm, a cleansing, perhaps the strength of all those soldiers who have died so far, and gone to join together in that whirlwind of their peers. Their spirits are still fierce and moving, they still band together, and scour the countryside, even now, still searching out their objectives and targeting their quarry, wherever they spy it in the landscape. The crow who came to you was both an emissary from that world, and perhaps a symbol of your transfigured friend, who hears your heart from in the spirit world, and came to show you why it is all right that it happened the way it did. He showed you how it would have been, had things not happened this way--BORING, artificial, not ring true--and why he is content to be in his new realm.
when you see and hear the crows, now, think to him, wave, and smile.

you chose 'rebel coyote' as your netname. Coyote is the Trickster, in the Native American pantheon. Go in search of asking them what The Crow is, then hunker down and listen at their feet. Tell them your dream. And take in their counsel.


----Janet in Venice

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