What You Don't Know Can Hurt You
Stargazing through the obituary pages
So, it starts with a dream this past Thursday early morning, November 17, 2022.
I had many dreams that night, but this one stayed with me. I was meeting a friend Friday night and hoped to tell him about it, but no chance; we had to rearrange our plans. I was worried the dream would fade away, as dreams do.
Dreams are changeable like clouds, so just let them pass, right?
Nope, not this one. I had to quickly write it down.
So it here goes, for all to see:
There was this major contest of minds and we’re all given a precise amount of time to deliver to a committee an adaptation of any work the committee found acceptable.
Sound vague enough for ya? Well, yeah…it was weird. But I was up for the challenge.
In the dream I get a team together. I can’t recall them individually, but I canvassed people who apparently knew things and I ask what they know, even though the contest clock had started ticking. Others were working on their own adaptations, so they’re wondering if I’m trying to steal their secrets. Hey bub, I’m just getting info! This strikes others as a strange way to work (and compete) but I shrug and move on, asking more info until I get a handle on a source—some esoteric rare book—and immediately get my ragtag team to pull it apart and remake it into something new.
I clearly recall this stage of the dream: It was my favorite part. We pulled text from the source and plopped it into the contest document. I was happy we were getting a first iteration down in record time. But because I’d spend time canvassing others about their material, this caused an uproar and a tribunal meeting was called.
HUGE groan amongst the team.
A tribunal!? WTF?!
Suddenly “the tribunal” calls the meeting (with the contest clock still ticking away) in the “tribunal hall,” and I’m watching the proceedings from an upper level and suddenly ceiling pieces fall and kill two people below, causing a break in the proceedings. I see blood and recall I knew one of the victims, someone I mourned bitterly about—both were women, one older, the other younger—and I slunk away from the terrace because more breaks might be coming down…
Immediately I was blamed for their deaths since the tribunal was called due to my “not-by-the-book” contest prework, where I argued (unsuccessfully to the well-placed, appointed winner the judges seem to have already favored) that whoever agreed to the tribunal could also agree to a “stop-the-clock” on the contest so that it would fairly compensate everyone for the time lost due to our two friends’ deaths. Nobody seemed to care. It was a political shitshow. And I was the loser. It felt awful.
I was ostracized. Screamed at. Hated. Reviled. I felt dogged by the others until I woke up tired and confused and—well, pretty scared.
Yeah, my friends. I woke up terrified. I wanted to wake up. But I also wanted to finish my adaptation, because I knew it was an attempt at honest work.
But was it true?
Why an adaptation and why should anyone be timed out to complete one? What is a true story? Why was it on a timer? Who gets to judge that?
What is dream life and how could it hurt me? If you had a similar dream, how might it hurt you? And how would you even know?
Perhaps the dream was a vision of a world some may have lived in and some did not. All I know is it was new to me.
This past week this hit me squarely in the head—a lovely 18-year-old woman I have never met, named Aela Assana Schewe died. I read obituaries because one day I will be become one. (Psssst, you will one day, too.) When I read her obituary, I stopped. It stopped my brain, and I didn’t know why. It was something that needed an answer. And I wasn’t even given the question. Or who to ask it to.
And if I that ever happened to me, it would be my epitaph, my last words, pstash! my lifetime of mere scratches. It will be my last published piece. (And yours.)
But Aela left our planet with a sly knowing smile and a love legacy with her family and friends and an amazing personal history that I cannot even in my old age surpass. Some people you will never forget, and some people you never knew you will never forget. Aela quickly became that for me. I’m drawn to celebrate her here and share her luminosity with you.
It’s part of the dream that I had, specifically about that esoteric book that needed to be cobbled together by people other than just me. That’s why I canvassed others, asked questions, reached out, tried to make something that would be more than just who I am. Maybe that’s who Aela was. I enjoyed learning about Aela’s many published books, Snakes Take Dates (LOVE this title, and love that she wrote at all) and The Adventures of Snaily McSniggins in 2014, bring together a young life richly lived (and I love that book’s title, too).
But her obit photo is pure Zen Buddhist purity—it inspires me because it seems say, “Here I am. I am Aela. Go be you. As I was.”
I can’t ever know if that is what she meant, but never mind. Oh beautiful girl. Your spirit is good. I sensed it immediately. Just passing it on if I can.
Then, yesterday, November 21, 2022, was the 100th birthday of this esteemed gentleman:
I’m proud to remember and celebrate a friendship with Al Milgrom over the years, probably starting in the late 1980s when I joined the Minnesota Screenwriters Workshop and began my journey into screenwriting. Al was then founder of the local film festival and an accomplished documentary filmmaker. Through him I met some amazing people.
Not the least of which was Al himself.
And yet it’s a mystery to me. Al died last year at the age of 98. Aela was 18.
So why this, with Aela and Al? And why my dream? What is the relationship of each to the other—or is there even a relationship at all?
I do know that stopping to celebrate the lives and stories of others is at the meaty core of it, and I’m happy to share that feast with all of you.
I never met Al, but I saw him many times at the U Film Society back in the nineties. Because of him, I experienced a world of international film, which ultimately had a huge influence on my life. I wish I could have told him that.
You’re lucky to have known him.