All right, so it isn’t November.  Here we go anyway.

Another dream, another story, guided yet not, that will play a role in future thought, future writing.  I write it down so as not to forget. And I write it down so as not to avoid remembering.

I am outside a lodge in the woods, somewhere in the northern United States, Michigan, perhaps.  There is a spacious porch all along the front of the lodge, replete with chairs, tables, and some type of early-evening meal.  A handsome couple is sitting at the central table, facing me, and there are other men standing around them.  They are all in their late-thirties/early-forties.  Even though I don’t recognize them, I realize that I know them.

I then remember that the both members of the couple had served in the United States Army.  The man looks at me and speaks.

“I’ve got to go back to the Army, or at least to the Reserves,” he says.

“What was your MOS (military occupational specialty)?” I ask him.

“I was in JAG (a lawyer, i.e., Judge Adjutant General), and I want to go back there and serve.  That’s where I was happiest.”

He looks at his wife, who smiles back at him and then turns to me.

“Me, too,” she says.  “I’ve just got to go back.”

“And your MOS?” I ask her.

“I was a truck driver,” she replies, though I also intuit that she had very specialized and technical duties as one.

Several of the other men agree that they wish to go back into military service, also in the Army Reserves.  One of them, a younger Latino man, finally says to me, “Don’t you want to go back?”

“I was never in the military,” I reply.  “I don’t think I ever would have made it.”

“Why do you say that?” the lawyer asks.

I pause, because I’m not sure I want to tell the truth.

“I don’t trust authority enough.  I could never just simply obey orders.”

The Latino man smiles.  “Civilians have a hard time with that.”

“Yes,” I say.  “It’s hard for us to believe that a soldier could be ordered not to move, and then just sit there and listen to another soldier scream at him for hours and hours. To do that, sit there, just because that’s what you’re supposed to do: I could never believe in anyone enough to do that. ”

The Latino man, still smiling, walks to my side.  “You know, something like that would likely never happen, and if it did, the other soldier would likely get in trouble.”

“You know as well as I do,” I say, “that things like that sure do happen.”

“In garrison (i.e., United States bases), maybe,” he says, now standing in front of me. “But you know it’s different over there.”

We stare at each other.

“Obey so that no one dies?” I finally say.

He nods.  Again, we stare at each other.

“I could never do it: obey someone because he is who he is.  That’s not enough for me.”

A pause, and then the Latino man says to me, “Really?”

And I wake up.

The important take-home from this?  The dreamer’s rule-of-thumb:  everybody in the dream is you. I dreamed myself in each of these persons, “myself” included.  I spoke “me” in all four persons.

See you in November.  Unless another dream comes my way.

The brain, the unconscious have ways of messing up plans.