Family Hunger Genealogy

© Copyright Todd Neel

12/21/2024 Saturday

3 am – I awake with discomfort in my bladder and awareness of recollection of a warm fuzzy dream, a good one that I want to hang onto.

I get up and go to bathroom in the dark, trying to preserve the threads of my dream – conscious jewels with the potential of mining them.

A deep dream, a deep dive. Is it worth it? What is it about?

I remember this dream was cultivated as I watched a movie on Netflix last night: “Freud’s Last Session” …

This dream, these threads I can still grasp … vague in my recall … something about my friend Marty interviewing me, facilitating an exercise … inquiries … a piece of paper folded in quarters … writing on the leading edge of each paper from a yellow legal tablet … lines … repeatedly folding causing deeper creases … crevasses … familiarity … the feel of the paper between my fingers and the content of the writing becomes more intimate with me … like a favorite book read over and over … and yet the words and phrases on the paper still elude me in my awakened state …

As I returned to bed, the monkey mind of other conscious thoughts intrude and interrupt the threads from my dream … thinking of Dave today … should I go to a meeting this morning? … Christmas shopping I need to do today … that book I need to return to the library …  

And then, INSPIRATION! SURRENDER! I realize I’m not going back to sleep so I turn on the light and gather a tablet of paper – with that yellow, lined legal paper just like in my dream. I grab one of my favorite pens and lay down again, turn on my side, aware of my body aches, and jot down a working title at the top: The Vast Interior.  

Random, tangential thoughts scratched in all directions on the yellow paper – THIS is a journal worth saving! I want to preserve it, a part of my identity. Is it my ego? Is it my Self? Is it a spiritual message from God?

I write:

From 9/1 to 10/9 (2024), I drove the vast Interior of Alaska!

Last night, I watched a movie on Netflix: “Sigmund Freud’s Last Session”, a piece of fiction about the end of life for Dr. Freud as he is dying of cancer, under the influence of alcohol and morphine, meeting with C.S. Lewis as they exchange thoughts about Life and the question as to whether or not God really exists, or at least the Christian version of God.

I’m pretty clear that this movie triggered for me active dreams, deep dreams to my own vast interior last night.

On my trip to Alaska, I could only view as far as wasn’t obscured by the weather or distance from the road or trails I was willing to hike down, or up. Aware of this, reaching for threads, I pick up a photograph I had recently printed of Kennicott Glacier at the end of McCarthy Road in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park (see photo). I am inspired by the massiveness of it, the details of the many, many crevasses of the fracturing ice, the elusiveness if it hidden by the passing clouds of the weather that the immense glacier and icefields have contributed to the scene, the gray and white blankets that hide, and then expose when sunlight leaks through …

This photo of Kennicott Glacier was taken approximately 5 miles away with telephoto lens from end of McCarthy Road, 60 miles into the park.

I can say or shout: “It is BEAUTIFUL!” I know this is my interpretation of it. In the bigger, spiritual picture, it just IS, not beautiful, not ugly. These are my judgments.   

Now, my memories of this are just a dream.

Total distance driven: 6,895 miles, much never before seen by me. I am deeply aware that I may never see this again. The awareness of my mortality is acute – I have limited miles on this body before it crumbles into dust. With this awareness of my limited physical health – open heart surgery, progressing AMD (Age-related Macular Degeneration), arthritis, etc. – I ask: Will I be willing or able to sit in a car this far again? Also, my awareness of financial fitness and finite-ness – Will I be able to afford such a trip again? Will I be able to afford this trip, and how long will it take me to pay it off?

This trip to Alaska exposed deep views, like deep dreams that I cannot permanently capture except in photos and words, to hold on to, and to revisit in my memories as my brain is an imperfect camera. I have views in my recollection that I want to preserve that are oh-so-sweet. The glaciers, the mountains, the ocean, the deep woods …

Ah, the deep woods … how safe can it be in there? What about the bears? The moose? The mosquitos and other bugs? Avalanches? What about twisted ankles or falling off a trail, never to be found again? Death before I’m ready for it … Physical pain that I don’t want? The medical bills?

It could be terminal, fatal if I don’t stay on the roads on the maps … Can I wander off beyond the end of the road?

How safe can it be in the deep woods of my dreams? Why are they so elusive? Why only glances? Why are my recollections of my dreams so elusive?

The deep woods of my consciousness, or more dangerous might be my unconsciousness: Is it safe? What are the risks? Is the shadow side too dangerous?

What are the costs if I don’t go there? Opportunities lost … potentials undiscovered …