Dreaming & Dunking

I am one who dreams significantly. My psyche texts me videos when something momentous is at play. Basketball, the source of some of my greatest frustrations, tends to be a court for my nocturnal imagination. I have some victories in basketball, but more defeats.

I recall when I was working on my Dissertation Proposal, I had a dream that I was playing in a five-on-five basketball game and Kobe Bryant was on my team. He was getting ticked at me because every time I tried to grab the ball it became like a feather and would float away from me. I would try to grab the ball and I just couldn't get a grip on it.  A greased and floating pig. Yes, it was a true revelation. Seemingly, the harder I worked, the more the prospects of completing the Dissertation would bounce and drift away from me. My Kobe advisor essentially demanded more and more when I gave more. Being a hard-worker, this academic catch 22 was really messing with my head. It was exhausting and I was existentially beaten.

In real life, we finally had an argument over the phone one night where I basically put it to him like this: Either tell me what I have done is not good enough and let us end this maddening game once and for all and I will quit the program OR let me win this game (the Dissertation Proposal) and agree to accept that what I have done as sufficient. Time to move on either way. No more bouncing away from me balls that I couldn't grip. He did the latter and from that point onward, the Ph.D. was fairly smooth in comparison to what had transpired before. Not easy mind you, just smoother.

Last night I had another dream. I was dunking with ease on a 10 foot rim. Like I had a scary sky. A vertical that Jordan would admire. OK, I was dunking a volleyball, which in real life is typically the largest ball I can palm with one hand. I have small hands for a big man, it looks like my hands should belong to a painter or piano player. Thin, not meaty fingers. Plus, my right hand is still busted from punching my brother's head over 30 years ago. My pinky is at a right angle. But, in my dream, I could have just as easily dunked a basketball with two hands. I was looking down on the rim from above.

I was even higher than Julius Erving, Dr. J., in the photograph. So, this dunking with domination was suggesting that I have triumphed over something, which I take to mean as the book I have been writing. Basketball and Writing have been my two great pastimes in life. When I blew my left knee out and could no longer play BBall competitively, Writing in fact replaced it. So, this dunk is very significant symbolically.  

On his deathbed someone commended the Puritan pastor and writer Richard Baxter for all of the books he had written (over a 100). He said, "I was but a pen in the hands of God. What praise is due a pen?" I will switch the metaphor a bit. If my book scores big, my posture should be, what praise is due the ball?