Troubled dream about a dark time for my family member.
Hypnagogic images can appear on the threshold of sleep. Clear lines I am seeing, black on murky grey. The woken lurking image seized its moment, fumbled to the surface of the dream. It was moving left to right across my view. While it did I heard the exultant voice of the young woman I now believe was my grandmother say “In the cellar. In the cellar.” I recognized it. It was a pig.
That morning I went straight to the basement intrigued to see the authority of the dream put to a test.
Would a pig to rush out when I opened he door? I saw it as a real possibility. Braced myself with a smile, was primed to step aside to let the beast burst out.
The absurdity that a dream that led me here to what must surely futile embarrassment – clay dust, boxes full of knick-knacks were scattered round inside as I walked through, treasures, books waiting for a home, the detritus of our recent relocation.
My torch shone along the gloom onto the concrete posts supporting the joists.
At eye height on a nail hammered into a beam I saw it.
It was the pig.
My father had had a troubled childhood abandoned by both parents. But staunch mining and farming stock among his cousins aunts and uncles, produced family networks that protected and galvanised him through early life. Then as he listened to dinner table stories, he found pride in the family’s connection to proud moments in history such as the workers uprising against injustice at Eureka. One day he produced to me an heraldic family crest made of pressed copper and wood.
On it was the image of a wild boar or pig as mother used to say contentiously with her thin rouged smile.
There was a motto underneath the plaque I held. In Latin.
Dum Spero Spiro. While I breathe I hope.
Here was wisdom beyond any ability of myself. It was the result of a quantum arrangement of events, first of the neural influences of my dream, second of someone’s arm that moved to absently attach that sole particular item to the basement roof.
I remember the transcendent message today while I still continue to breathe while running along Plenty Gorge, and I keep the unbroken commitment to my loved family member. I trust in its meaning, cling to my steady hope and follow despite waves of despair, those simple words.