My Reoccurring Dreams
Ghosts in Grey & Flying down the road
Dreams, those slippery nocturnal messengers, have long haunted my sleep with two persistent visitors. Are they revelations from the subconscious, harbingers of unresolved strife, or merely the brain’s fanciful recycling of old neural pathways? In my case, they pull me back to the soil of South Africa, its schools, its roads, its half-remembered heartaches, with a fidelity that startles me awake, heart pounding, fully immersed.
The Grey College Reckoning
The first dream begins with a bureaucratic absurdity: I’m summoned back to Grey College in Bloemfontein, not as the pimply adolescent I was, but as the silver-haired man I am now. There I stand in the quad, absurdly clad in those iconic grey pants and striped blazer, the uniform that once chafed my teenage rebellion. “Redo Standard 6,” the decree comes, “and every year after. Improve those marks.” Principals Heyns & Volsteedt, stern figures from memory, greet me without batting an eye, as if geriatric pupils are commonplace. Classes unfold: I still love algebra, history recycles its dates, Afrikaans conjugations tangle like barbed wire. I pour effort into it, but the report cards arrive unchanged. Good but not brilliant like Jan von Delft.
Heyns fires our Maths teacher Truana & Hansie from Smithfield becomes our Maths teacher. He teaches us all we know including instructing Jan.
Yet here’s the dream’s quiet mercy, its subconscious sleight of hand: I never skid off my Western Flyer bicycle into that gravelly oblivion, the crash that left me bloodied & humbled. No bone-crunching rugby tackle snaps my leg mid-scrum, that agony that sidelined me for months. Those traumas, etched in real-life scar tissue, are mercifully excised.
And the girls, ah, the fleeting sirens of youth, parade through like cameo players in a faded film. Elaine Stewart, with her knowing smile; Stephanie Morgan, elusive and electric; the drama queen from Eunice High, a voluptuous ringer for Sophia Loren whose name dances just beyond recall; and that sweet, homely meisie from Van Oranje, a Van Rooyen girl whose plain virtues shone brighter than any spotlight.
What do the dream-weavers say of this? Recurring school dreams, especially as an adult fumbling through failure, are among the most universal, echoes of anxiety, a nagging fear of inadequacy or unpreparedness in life’s endless “exams.” Psychologists link them to self-doubt, unresolved pressures from youth, or even current stresses masquerading as old report cards. The inability to improve marks? A poignant symbol that the past defies revision, no amount of adult wisdom can rewrite a boy’s transcript. But the avoidance of trauma? That’s wish fulfillment at work, the mind’s gentle therapy: re-entering the arena safely, healing old wounds by omission. These dreams remind me I’ve come far, yet some part of me still seeks an elusive gold star.
The Low-Flying Jet Odyssey
The second dream shifts to the skies, or barely above them. I’m aboard a colossal jetliner, vast as a 747, yet hugging the earth at treetop height, no more than a few meters clearance. We don’t soar; we *skim*, in exquisite slow motion, over roads I could navigate blindfolded. First, the New Hanover Road unspools north from Greytown, that sentinel tree standing eternal vigil at the bend. Then the N1 into Bloemfontein, the wind-bent gums bowing us welcome. The road to Stellenbosch unfurls its first gentle curve, Papegaaiberg’s hulking silhouette rising like a faithful hound. On to Durban’s coastal ribbon, salt air almost tangible. Every pothole, every wild fig tree tree, every sign rendered in photographic perfection, hyper-real, as if my mind’s archived high quality surveillance footage.
Notably absent: the road to Johannesburg. That concrete vein to the City of Gold never appears, as if my psyche draws an invisible no-fly zone.
Dream lore paints flying as liberation, freedom, ambition, transcending earthly tethers. But in a plane, low and road-bound? It’s control with a catch: life’s journey on familiar tracks, ambitions grounded in reality, teetering on the edge of peril yet masterfully steady. The slow-motion clarity screams nostalgia, a meditative revisit to memory’s highways, roads symbolizing personal trajectories, transitions navigated with precision. Avoiding Joburg? Perhaps my inner pilot shuns the chaos of that metropolis, the grind of big-city striving, favoring the intimate contours of heartland and haven.
Echoes & Enigmas
These twin reveries bookend some of my nights, the school dream a backward tug to youth’s judgments, the jet a forward glide over life’s mapped miles. Together, they whisper of a man at peace with imperfection, unable to ace the past, yet soaring low and sure over its remnants. Freud might call them repressed desires; Jung, archetypes of the shadow self. I prefer to see them as grace notes in my story: proof that even in sleep, I’m still pedaling those Bloem roads, still scanning horizons for the next bend. And if they recur? I’ll welcome them, old pilots of the psyche, for in their clarity lies the truest map of me.