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"I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?" - Zhuangzi
This final one that I want to mention definitely defies explanation. I wrote about it in the GroveZine several years ago, so some of you may remember it. I've lived at The Grove over 20 years, and I think that it changes your perception of things. Some of the things that happen here are, from the outside looking in, simply unbelievable... yet we've come to talk about such things as if there's as common as our cat Marley walking across the yard. This is one of those things.
Here’s the background info. I’m not like Hugh Hefner, sleeping in starched and pressed silk pajamas. Instead, for the better part of my life, I’ve always slept in an over-sized white t-shirt. Probably more than you ever wanted to know. Still, on a Saturday we were doing the laundry, and a load of whites got washed last. They were just finishing up in the dryer when we were turning in for the evening, so I grabbed a white t-shirt from there instead of getting one out of the underwear drawer. It was warm and smelled faintly of bleach when I put it on – it was one of those major comfort sensations.
I have no idea where the blood on my t-shirt came from, although I wondered if it had somehow manifested from my dream... if that's even possible. One more thing – when I first saw it that morning, it was bright red and fresh. In a couple of hours and it was already turning reddish-brown as it dried. Wherever the blood came from, it had just dripped onto the shirt and I have no explanation. Could it somehow have made it into our reality from the dream-world? I don't have a clue. It did make me think that maybe - just maybe - there are much more to our dreams than we realize.
07/04/2024 - Jefferson Salutes America
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Welcome to the "Dream Issue" of the GroveZine! I've spent a lot of time this year thinking about the nocturnal journeys that our minds take once we close our eyes at night, and I thought that I'd share some of these meanderings with you. I'm sure that most folks have dreams that make significant impacts on their lives - some that frighten, comfort, and even inspire.
Before we get into dreams, I've got a few things from the wide-awake world. I have to report that we've been getting a deluge of rain here in Jefferson. This is the rain gauge at The Grove, showing eight inches of rain that fell in a week... in one week! Big Cypress Bayou is as high as I've seen it in a very long time, and everyone's yard is saturated. Believe me, I'm aware that in August we'll be praying for rain, but at the moment, I'm tired of it! I mean, eight inches in a single week? Wow.
Once I tell you this, you can join everyone else in Jefferson by wondering, "What the heck is going on?!?" As long as I've lived in Jefferson there's been a car lot at the corner of Hwy 59 and road 2208. The Chevrolet dealership has been closed for a few years, and the rumor around town is that Brookshire's Grocery Company bought the land. The other part of the rumor is that the city sewer doesn't extend that far south, so that was causing a problem in planning the construction. The building stood untouched for a few years, but recently the car dealership was being torn down, as you see. What's coming? Well, as I said before, we're all wondering "What the heck is going on?" Stay tuned... answers to come as the saga unfolds.
Also, if you're looking for a trip to Jefferson in August, one of our local B&Bs is running a promotion that I just love. This isn't a paid advertisement, just a cool thing that some friends of ours are doing. If you book a room at Kennedy Manor in August, and you use the promotional code from their Facebook page, your room price for the night will be the temperature at 4:00 that afternoon. If it's 100 degrees, that's still quite a savings; and by the way, the record high in August over the last hundred years was 103.80 (Aug, 2011). If we have a cool snap and it's only 90, then that's even better; and by the way again, the record low in August was 66.70 (Aug, 1992). I thought that was such a fun promotion that I just had to pass it on.
I'd said that this GroveZine was going to be about dreams, and they are so weird to me that I thought I'd just see what you folks think. Natural, supernatural, or somewhere in between... I don't know. I mean that I really have no idea - but I find dreams to be always interesting. Sometimes it's easy to figure out why you had a particular dream, but the ones that really pique my interest are recurring dreams, and I have two very distinct ones that I'll share. The first one I've been having for the last ~40 years, and the second one for about 20 years now. After that I have several to mention that are in the "problem solving" category (although I don't know how), and then I have a final one to tell you about that I have absolutely no explanation for.
There's one recurring dream that I've had most of my entire adult life. In it, I find myself back in college, and it's final exam week. I'm walking around campus, and suddenly realize that I have a test that day in a class that I'd signed up for back at the first of the semester, but never attended. I'm not even sure where the class meets! I somehow find my way to the classroom, and it's full of students that I don't know, and a professor that I've never seen before - I've never been to the class, not even once, yet now I have to take the final exam. I always wake up in a panic... I don't know how many times that I've had that dream, but it's a lot. If I were to put on my "amateur dream interpreter" hat, I'd say that my subconscious is telling me that I'm not prepared for something. Thing is, I've been having this same dream through all the different phases of my life. This dream has showed up through all the ups and downs, no matter what was happening in my life... and I have no explanation for it.
There's another recurring dream that I've had for the last 20-something years since we came to The Grove. Prior to that, we spent about twenty years in Garland, a suburb of Dallas. We'd built a home on the outskirts of town which was very rural, but by the time we left the neighborhood had been engulfed in progress... we had a Chili's, a Home Depot, a Luby's, a Lowe's, and it looked like any other part of the Metroplex.
To further complicate my study of dreams, I have some that have directly resolved problems where I had hit a roadblock in the waking world. For example, several years ago my wife had bought me a simulated wooden dashboard for our golf cart. It was supposed to slide right into place, but it didn't. In fact, after messing with it for several hours, I was ready to throw it in the trash. When I went to sleep that night, I had a dream about installing the dashboard. It's like someone was telling me, "This is how you do it..." as I watched it being done. It wasn't like I was piecing the process together as I worked through it - I was shown the exact method. It was like watching a how-to YouTube.com video. I dreamed the entire process, and then the next morning I got up, went outside, and had the dashboard installed in short order. Most folks would say that as I went to sleep, my subconscious mind solved the problem that my conscious mind could not. Okay, that's fine... but how did my subconscious know what my conscious, rational mind could not figure out? I suppose that I should just be happy that I got the dashboard installed.
After getting the dashboard in, I was having a problem with the ignition switch plate. The next night, I had a very vivid dream - much the same as the one the previous night - where I was shown exactly how to install the ignition switch. Again, it didn't feel like I was figuring it out, it felt like I was watching a YouTube.com video on how to do it. The next morning I took care of the problem in just a few minutes. Supernatural? One could make a very strong argument against it... I guess that it could be my subconscious mind, which doesn't get caught up in the minutia of everyday life, solving problems for me. Although it's strange how my subconscious knew the exact solution. Like I said, in the dream I wasn't working through the problem - I was shown exactly how to solve it.
And if that wasn't enough, a short time ago I was having trouble putting together the "UFOs Over Jefferson" video that I mentioned earlier. I kept running into problems as I edited it together - I was getting frustrated, and was ready to just walk away from it for a while. Before I could give up on it, though, I had a dream about editing the video, and in the dream I was told, "take this part out," and "enhance this part." I made some notes about the dream as soon as I woke up, and later implemented the changes... which made the video something that I'm very happy with. You can see it in the links above, or simply by going to 
That night I slept great, but just before I woke up I had a dream. I was on a crowded train, but it was not a cross-country passenger train – instead it was some sort of city public transportation. I suddenly realized that my nose was bleeding. For some reason, each seat had a sun visor above it like cars do (don't ask me why), so I pulled mine down and looked at the make-up mirror attached to it. Sure enough my white beard was crimson, and I was sniffing and wiping my nose to try to stop it. I was panicking, knowing that it might freak out the people on the train if they saw that my face was all bloody. The more that I tried to clean it off, the more blood was on me. Finally, we pulled into the station and I ducked my head and held my hands up in front of my face, and then ran to the bathroom to clean up in the sink.
I finally got my face cleaned up and decided to ignore the blood on my shirt. At that point I realized that some people were after me for some reason, so I started running for my life. The rest of the dream was like a chase scene from an action movie. I was running down streets, trying unsuccessfully to find an open building to hide in, taking alleyways and jumping over fences - everything that you’d expect in a Mission Impossible or a James Bond film.
I woke up while I was still being chased. I saw that the alarm was about to go off anyway, so I got out of bed and walked into the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker. When I looked down, there were drops of blood on the front of my shirt, just below my right shoulder (this photo is a illustration of what it looked like). My first thought was that my nose had actually been bleeding, which is what must have caused the dream. I went to the bathroom, and looked in the mirror, and there was no blood on my face at all – not in my nose, not in my beard, not even a little pink tinge. Next I took off my shirt to see if I was bleeding for some other reason, but there were no cuts or anything, not even a tiny mosquito bite - nothing. Next I went back to the bed. My wife was still sleeping soundly on her side, and when I examined the covers and sheets there wasn’t a drop of blood anywhere. Not on the sheets, not on the pillow, nowhere.
Before closing, I'd be remiss in my duties if I didn't include at least a few paranormal experiences from our house. The #1 question that I get is "What's happened at The Grove lately?" It comes from friends, neighbors, guests on the tour, people I run into at the grocery store, and from GroveZine readers. Well, in this case I have a few things to report from a couple of recent tours.
On another recent tour, we were all standing around the dining room table, and I heard a loud "bang" and looked over to see that a young lady had fallen back into the large portrait of Miss Daphne that we have on an easel there, pushing it back into the wall. She quickly said, "I'm sorry," but since she was okay - as was the portrait - I just smiled and assured her that everything was fine. I assumed that she'd taken a step back without realizing that the easel was there.
Finally, I need a little help - nothing to do with dreams or ghosts, though. My wife and I are going to Branson, Missouri later in the summer. Forty-five years ago we had an Ozark honeymoon, spending time in Eureka Springs, Branson, and other places in the area. We go to Eureka every year so so, but never made it back up to Branson, so we're going to do that this summer. There's a few things that we've already ear-marked to see such as the Titanic museum and the Sight & Sound Theater, but what I need are some suggestions for things to do, places go go, restaurants to try, etc. If you have any thoughts on that, please send them to me - we'd really appreciate it!
All that said, I'll close out this GroveZine and leave you with some of the day lilies that are currently blooming at The Grove. I know that this GroveZine was a little different, but I just wanted to share my wandering thoughts about dreams - if you're like me, I find the whole idea of dreams truly fascinating... and the more that I explore them, the more I realize that I don't understand. There's so much more there to explore. Anyway, thanks so much for reading the 'zine and for your interest in The Grove - it really means a lot to me, and is the main reason that I keep the GroveZine going. I'll talk to you in a month!
