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
