I had a dream.

"I had a dream", no not the poetic prophecy of Martin Luther King but one of my own, rare but simple confusing affairs that are a mixture of people and place, some recognisable some a mish mash of other places jumbled into one. I'm usually late to get somewhere and the route is strewn with obstacles, frustration and tension in equal parts. Its Old Cape Town and the route into the city from the suburbs, the harbour is ahead maybe I am catching a ship.  Another setting is Jo'burg,  trying to make it through the airport to board a plane which is just pulling out.  In my youth it was trying to catch a bus, even hanging onto the pole that you could pull yourself on board the open platform at the back of the bus but always the bus was accelerating away pulling me with it but too fast to jump on board. 

Perhaps that's the underlying story, wanting to be somewhere else, someone else, not quite content maybe but also not wishing to let go of the current situation. 

Is there a lack of confidence because of my background, not taught to naturally expect things to improve, one was always surprised at any change. There was no planning for the future such as inculcated by a good school and education, it simply happened and yet, the romantic side, the inquisitive side, always off, escaping like Walter Mitty on another fantasy was the antibody to an acceptance of mediocrity. 

How many of you have recurrent dreams, my dreaming is very rare at least remembering them is, but some people swear by them as predictors of a future event and uncomfortably they seem to often get it right and the dream comes true. I have regularly banged on about the power of the mind, even to question whether it is all there is to our experience (Kant, "I think therefore I am") which we establish through the senses, not a true reflection but a concoction of what our memory has on file to photo-fit what is actually going on around us. 

Mittys fantasy was real to him as perhaps my dream is real to me. It underlies the essence of the me as a brain consisting of previous experiences which are the sum total of my constituency.