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Lawrence and the Bedouin

  • 26-05-2018 12:55pm
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,961
    ✭✭✭


    Lawrence of Arabia, who looks like Peter O’Toole, and a Bedouin, both wearing full Arab robes and headgear, are in the hottest part of the desert in the middle of the day. It's a frying pan, like in that part of the film where they crossed a really hot part of the desert to attack the Ottoman settlement on the coast. My point of view is very close to Lawrence’s. It’s almost the case that I’m Lawrence, but it’s also like I’m a detached observer.

    The Bedouin says to Lawrence, It’s hot, have you ever been this hot? To me, it’s obvious that the answer is no. Lawrence is from England, where the weather isn’t this hot. The Bedouin knows this but just wants to hear Lawrence say it. Lawrence agrees with him that he has never been this hot.

    It’s later. Dusk, almost dark. They’re still in the desert, but the landscape has changed. The ground is covered in dust and gravel. Not quite gravel; chips of stone, like building rubble. There’s a tall chain-link fence coming in from the left, which ends abruptly. It’s not joined up to anything. You can just walk around it if you want. Behind the fence the ground rises up like a sand dune, and is covered in small rough stones. A large white dove, big enough for a meal, flies overhead and settles on the top of the mound. While Lawrence waits on the near side of the fence, close to (or maybe identical with) my point of view, the Bedouin circles around the back of the dune and kills the dove with a thrown stone. The stone is deflected by the impact with the dove, and arcs towards where Lawrence is crouched, but he raises his left hand and catches it easily, near his head. He laughs in a fake cinematic way, deliberately loud so that the Bedouin can hear, and raises the white stone for the Bedouin to see it in the half-light. The Bedouin appears over the top of the mound and comes over to where Lawrence is, and Lawrence is about to throw the stone away, but the Bedouin says, No, keep it, Lawrence, it’s your lucky stone.


    Trying to think what influenced this dream, there were a few things:
    I listened to a few of James Joyce's stories on Audible yesterday morning, and in one of them, the protagonist says, "But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad." Another of the stories was called 'Araby'. Later in the day, I read a story that included the element of a small green jade stone used as a protective talisman. Before going to sleep, I was reading about 'dromomania', which is a compulsive need to walk aimlessly or take flight. There's also the weather; I've managed to grab an hour in the sun several times in the last week and get a bit of colour, including yesterday.


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Comments

  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 9,336 Fathom
    CMod ✭✭✭✭


    Read T.E. Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom, but no dreams. Also saw Lawrence of Arabia. Same. You are lucky to have such cool dream experiences LionelNashe.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 9,336 Fathom
    CMod ✭✭✭✭


    Talked with Arab exchange student. Coffeehouse. For real. Not dream. Wish I had your dream to talk about LionelNashe. Conversation piece it would have been.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,294 banie01
    ✭✭✭✭


    Funny that the dream was about Lawrence, my favourite description of what power dreams may hold is actually from Lawrence's 7 pillars of wisdom.
    All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 9,336 Fathom
    CMod ✭✭✭✭


    banie01 wrote: »
    Funny that the dream was about Lawrence, my favourite description of what power dreams may hold is actually from Lawrence's 7 pillars of wisdom.
    Different POV on daydreams. Good source too banie01.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,961 LionelNashe
    ✭✭✭


    Mostly my dreams are boring. They'd involve people I haven't seen since secondary school; the occasional 'leaving cert' dream; running dreams (not running away from something or towards something but just running effortlessly for miles for the enjoyment of it). Two nights ago I dreamed I was kicking a beachball down a beach, and then I woke myself up by kicking my bedroom wall and hurting my toe.

    I had the following one a few years ago, which I thought was interesting::

    I was on a train, where you have pairs of seats facing each other, so people can sit in groups of four, if you know what I mean. I was sitting alone in one of these sections, with the train window on my left. On the opposite side of the aisle, diagonally opposite me so to speak, was a Buddhist monk. In the section behind him, in the same seat position, was another monk, and in the section behind him, another. Maybe four monks in total, all sitting alone in a window seat, facing in the same direction. It would have made a great photograph, with this vanishing perspective of monks going all the way down the carriage. The one nearest me did a little dance with his fingers in the palm of his other hand. I somehow knew that he belonged to a silent order and that he was using sign language to ask me some question. I shrugged my shoulders and flashed my palms at him, to say, Sorry, I don't know any sign language, and he nodded and smiled, to say, Ah, OK.


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  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 9,336 Fathom
    CMod ✭✭✭✭


    the occasional 'leaving cert' dream
    Cramming for exams now. Had similar dream.
    I was on a train, where you have pairs of seats facing each other, so people can sit in groups of four, if you know what I mean. I was sitting alone in one of these sections, with the train window on my left. On the opposite side of the aisle, diagonally opposite me so to speak, was a Buddhist monk. In the section behind him, in the same seat position, was another monk, and in the section behind him, another. Maybe four monks in total, all sitting alone in a window seat, facing in the same direction. It would have made a great photograph, with this vanishing perspective of monks going all the way down the carriage. The one nearest me did a little dance with his fingers in the palm of his other hand. I somehow knew that he belonged to a silent order and that he was using sign language to ask me some question. I shrugged my shoulders and flashed my palms at him, to say, Sorry, I don't know any sign language, and he nodded and smiled, to say, Ah, OK.
    This would make for a cool short story publication LionelNashe.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,961 LionelNashe
    ✭✭✭


    Fathom wrote: »
    Cramming for exams now. Had similar dream.


    This would make for a cool short story publication LionelNashe.

    I did use it as part of this one, eventually:
    https://lionelnashe.com/2018/02/19/resonance_story/

    Don't read it now, you're supposed to be studying :)


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 9,336 Fathom
    CMod ✭✭✭✭


    I did use it as part of this one, eventually: https://lionelnashe.com/2018/02/19/resonance_story/ Don't read it now, you're supposed to be studying :)
    Anticipation! Cool. I'll wait. Thanks LionelNashe.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,532 Black Swan
    CMod ✭✭✭✭


    I did use it as part of this one, eventually:
    https://lionelnashe.com/2018/02/19/resonance_story/

    A dream helped inform the contents of your Resonance story? That was a grand read LionelNashe.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 9,336 Fathom
    CMod ✭✭✭✭


    I did use it as part of this one, eventually: https://lionelnashe.com/2018/02/19/resonance_story/ Don't read it now, you're supposed to be studying :)
    Cool story LionelNashe. Dream and write more!


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