Note: Haloti Ngata plays professional football for the Baltimore Ravens. He is a defensive tackle, and, even by the standards of his position, he is enormous. Haloti Ngata is also one of the best names in sports. I love saying it. On Monday night, 12/13, I watched Haloti Ngata and his team play in a nationally televised game. On Tuesday night, I had the following dream.
My name is Haloti Ngata. I am a rhinoceros. I am walking down a lane in what seems to be a suburban landscape. Flat and open. Almost pastoral, but the grass is well manicured. The weather is pleasantly nondescript. I know my death is approaching. I am not aware of anything I have done to bring this about. No divine punishment, no disease, no misplaced vengeance. I am not scared, and I have no questions. What is coming is inexorable.
Death is approaching in the form of an elephant. I have never seen this elephant, but I know that it is larger than any I have encountered. I can smell him. A mix of dung, trampled grass, age old dirt and dust. A dryness to it. In the distance, I hear him trumpet. Soon, another trumpet, louder. The odor is more pungent. A feeling of looming immensity, doom.
I step through the doorway of a house I cannot see and enter the room I knew would be there. It is where I, Steve/Haloti, spent the first eight years of my childhood. The front room has wall-to-wall, dark green carpeting. To my immediate right is an open staircase. Two steps up, a landing, then, turning left, a long flight up. Heavy wooden balusters its entire length. I will wait at the top of the stairs for the elephant. My plan is to charge down as soon as I sense him begin to step on to the lower landing. Leverage, momentum, surprise will be on my side. I, Haloti Ngata, will die, but I will inflict some damage before the end.
The trumpeting is loud, the smell overpowering. The elephant is here, just inside the house. I wait, calm and determined. I feel the elephant about to set foot on the landing, and I begin my charge. We meet and find ourselves locked in an exquisite equipoise. My horn is directly below his throat, his tusks below my belly. I cannot jerk my head up to inflict a wound. He has not yet been able to force his tusks into me. But my strength is flagging. Time is on his side.
I wake up, but the dream does not leave. Haloti Ngata, the rhinoceros, is now a being apart from me, as I look at him locked in his terminal embrace.
A reverie overtakes me, and I am Haloti Ngata again. I am back at the top of the stairs, waiting. Once more, I sense the elephant about to set foot on the landing. Perhaps I have begun my charge fractionally later than before. Or maybe the elephant is no longer surprised. His trunk reaches around my front right leg before I can reach him. He uses my momentum to pull me up over his head, whip me around, and slam me to the floor. Even though there is no pain, I know I am seriously injured. Perhaps I can move, but I only want to curl there in a ball. The elephant still has his trunk around by leg. Up, around and crashing down again. Still no pain, but I know my injuries are mortal. Just as I know that the elephant is not through with me. I feel nothing, desire nothing. Then I am being twirled in the air. Blackness awaits. Nothing matters. Death and I have made our acquaintance. And I still have not seen the elephant's face.
And the analysis of the dream is....
ReplyDeleteWhat, I'm supposed to analyze my own dream? That's what you (and anyone else who reads this) are there for. Besides, I suck at dream interpretation.
ReplyDeleteBut even though it's not my job, and even though I'd suck at it if it were, I'll offer the following 3 takes as interpretation fodder.
Starting a post-retirement blog is an unconcious attempt to forestall death. (That my dream occurred so soon after my blog's beginning cannot be merely coincidental. I suppose it may be coincidental, but not merely so.)
I had a miserable childhood and have repressed my memories of it. In my dream, I return to and trap myself in my childhood home to meet my killer.
My killer is an elephant. Even though I'm big and seemingly powerful, I'm no match for the elephant. The elephant is the Republican machine. And Haloti Ngata could never be the name of a donkey. Maybe it could be an alternate identity for Barack Obama. Ngata/Obama? hmmmm....
Now, aren't you glad you asked?