Buddha's Brother-in-Law

For the second night in a row, I had flying dreams. Not the kind where you’re free and soaring through the air, but the kind involving airports and planes. Now I’ve spent a good deal of time in those enclosed tubes looking down at the earth from 30,000 feet. But not now. Maybe some part of me misses it, but really, it’s just fine not taking off my shoes at Security and hoping I don’t get stuck next to a broad-shouldered man and wondering if my luggage makes it to Singapore. 

Now no one cares to hear another’s dream. But I’m going to tell you anyway. This one involved flying to a tiny airport in a place called Jacinto, Texas that was right on the border of Mexico and Texas and belonged to neither country. One could walk freely to either side without any paperwork. (Yes, I never heard of such a place and just looked it up and there is a Jacinto City in Texas near Houston, but your guess is as good as mine how this entered into my dream.) I got out and wandered the streets a bit for no purpose I could fathom and then decided it was time to go home again. But when I looked at my ticket, I noticed that it was flying me to Toronto where I would sit until 3:00 in the morning, and then go to Atlanta and then finally back to San Francisco some 14 hours later. How had I missed this? Asked in the little airport to talk to an agent but there wasn’t one. My ticket had cost $717 and I wondered how much more I would have to pay to change it. 

The dream shifted here to visiting my Pentatonics Jazz Band after months apart from sheltering, having a profound conversation with the drummer about how Orff teaching had unified everything he knew. I was struggling to remember what he said so I could write it in my next blog post and though it makes no sense whatsoever in the way that dreams do, came up (in my sleep) with the perfect title: Buddha’s Brother-in-Law. 

The mind is unfathomable, mysterious and often, just plain weird. 

But I do like that title.