Wednesday, July 29, 2015

The Warning (Vietnam, October 1971)

The Warning
(Vietnam, October 1971)





Dear readers, I have spoken of many escapades on my life, truth mixed with a little rhyme and filling up tightly netted details and descriptions, as best I remember them, with as much truth as I can recall, for these vignettes were left long ago to wither away, to become lost to posterity, but now I wish to tell you of the truth of dreams, which many people laugh at. I intend this to be a very short tale of what happened long ago that made me believe more in dreams than ever.
       This is nothing in accordance with Donkeyland, or my old neighborhood per se, although indirectly it has a bearing, for on my way home, once home, I’d become reconnected with my neighborhood buddies.
       Anyhow, while in the Vietnam in 1971, during the war, it was naturally very hard to sleep, but one puts up with it, since there’s nothing else to do. Night after night for six months I had this one dream, when you dream you are half asleep, they call it REM-sleep, and in this dream of dreams, I thought I was sitting in the back of an airplane, far back from the other soldiers on the plane, and something caused the plane to start ripping apart, as if the plane was seized by its throat, and this end section I was in, was being dragged along, people screamed for help. What prevented me from having not been cast out into the winds, at 30,000-feet, to an ill-fate I can’t reckon?  Right at that point, the dream fell short, cut off, and so this dream had no ending, no real advice for me at the time, that I could see.
       Thinking back now, dreams can be warnings. But at twenty-three, that dream was just an ongoing nightmare!
       There is an old saying: those who wish ill, dream ill. I have never wished any ill that comes to mind, so that’s a bunch of gobbledygook. Was it to be my misfortune this dream was it to be my reality? I felt there was no   realism to it. I’m saying that, thinking you might be thinking that. It never occurred to me. Think what you please as you read on, but I mean well, and advice the reader to look at dreams a little closer, and I’m not trying to frighten anyone. To this dream I was a blind man.
       Meanwhile, I’m at the airport leaving Vietnam in Saigon, waiting to board the plane with 250-other soldiers in the waiting expanse, looking here and there to see if my flight number is showing up, and listening for orders to go onto the gate to be prescribed. While I was doing all this a young man came up and sat by me, no rank on him, in green garb like the rest of us, talked on and on to me about God, and other subjects, I had scarcely time to think about what time it was, it was as if I was being held by his conversation, I lost recollection of time passing, prior to this man, time was dragged on, then as suddenly as he had showed up, he up and left. And I got up off the bench, everyone was gone, I asked the attendant, “My plane, when are we going to board?”  She looked at my orders, and my ticket, “Sir,” she said, “It left fifteen minutes ago.”
       “What is the meaning of this?” I questioned. She replied, “Indeed we called the flight number out several times, as well as the boarding gate, as you can see, you’re the only one left! I’ll pre-ticket you.”
       So I sat down by at a table and waited for the next flight, four hours plus, and as I was getting on the flight, I told the soldier in front of me, “Damn, I could be in Japan and on my way home had I not missed the last plane,” and thinking about that person who I somewhat blamed for my delay. This soldier turned around sharply, said, “Evidently you didn’t here on the news, it crashed just before reaching Japan, all 250-dead! You really lucked out!”
       From that day on, the nightmare vanished.    


No: 1096/ 7-9-2015