Dreaming in Keystone

Last week, at the last minute my wife and I decided to ditch the kids and go out to Colorado for a couple days of skiing.  Not sure why, just thought we would get away and given its winter and we just wanted to stay in the US, skiing seemed to be a good option.  We found dirt cheap tickets, a reasonable place to stay, and we both had a some days off of work, so we headed out west.  It has been fun - after skiing what we have out in Minnesota you forget what big mountain skiing is like (it has been quite a few years since we have been out west to ski... even skiing in general actually, with kids and other things, we just haven't gone for awhile, even close to home).

This is my first time skiing in Colorado, and I wasn't really familiar with any of the places to go that were close to Denver.  My wife had originally recommended looking at Breckenridge, which I had heard of, so I was checking into options there, but then she told me she had a recommendation for another place we should go to instead:  Keystone.

I had never heard of Keystone before, but after looking into it, it is obviously a very well known place.  I just laughed at the name, with all of the posts here about Stones, and Stones being Keys, it struck me as serendipitous.  Key-Stone.

So here we are out in Keystone.

I am kind of beat after being on the slopes all day, to be honest, so I am just going to log a few things from various dreams this mornings and call it good.  I still need to do that Dream 3 of 3 post (as well as others mentioned but not yet written), but just easier to jot these down for now.

"On an island for something like a decade?"

This first dream actually got really interesting only later on this evening when I had a chance to look into it a bit more.

In the dream, I was on an airplane, and a woman who was sitting down by a window looked at me, and then some sort of recognition came to her face, and she asked me "Aren't you that guy who was on an island for something like a decade?"  The way she asked me seemed to indicate that this was a fairly well known piece of news or something that people had been talking about, and that it was some kind of castaway situation where I had been stranded on an island.  I woke up before I could answer her question.

After I woke up, I did a quick inventory for things that this reminded me of.  I initially landed on two possibilities:  The TV show "Lost", and the the movie "Castaway", with Tom Hanks.  Each of those possibilities seemed to have story elements that you could potentially think through and tie to some themes here, I thought.  I made a mental list to mention a few of those in the post.

However, later tonight, when I was thinking more about it, it seemed that in neither of those stories were the parties involved stuck on their respective islands for 10 years.  I did a quick search to verify.  Sure enough, Lost was 108 days on their island, and Castaway had Tom Hanks (and Wilson) stranded for 4 years.

And at first I just kind of shrugged it off, but the more I thought about it, the more I had to acknowledge that 10 years seemed to be fairly central to the woman's question in my dream.

So I did some more searching, starting with googling other castaway stories.  I number of real-life stories came up, but nothing that looked promising.  Robinson Crusoe also came up in the search results, but he was on his island for 28 years.

The "Robinson" made me think of Swiss Family Robinson.  I have never read the book, but as a kid I did watch the old Disney movie of the story (made in 1960!) a ton of times.  My dad had it recorded on a VHS tape, and I really liked the story.  So, I don't know if the movie is significantly different than the book, but it seems safe bet that in both the Family were castaways, and there was an extended stay on an island.  So, I searched for the number of years that family was stranded:

10 years!

Case closed, in my opinion (unless someone has any better idea).

I think the woman must have been referring to the Swiss Family Robinson.  And as I went down this thought road, I remembered that the Swiss Family Robinson story and theme has come up several times recently over on William Tychonievich's blog (with some help, I think, from some observations and thoughts from WanderingGondola).  Here, for example, is a post "Swiss Family Manhattan, by Christopher the Hum Exterminator" that WJT wrote back in November of last year that ties a whole bunch of things together:  The Empire State Building, my post on the Morley Hum Exterminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Robinson and 42, the "Run boy Run videos ... just a whole bunch of little ties or story elements and nods there in that short post.

What it all means, I don't know, but just wanted to call out I had a dream of a woman asking me, seemingly, about my being stranded on an island for 10 years, and that this almost certainly must be a reference to the Swiss Family Robinson story.

Lastly, I wondered why the woman said it as "Decade" rather than 10 years.  In looking it up, decade literally means "10 parts" or "Group of 10".  This had me think of the Lost Tribes of Israel, which are 10 in number, parts, or divisions.  Where to go with that, I don't know right now, but they do factor into the Book of Mormon and prophecy regarding the future, so just wanted to capture that thought here in case it turns in to anything.

"Delite"

I then had a dream where I was in a room and I caught a glimpse of a couple magazines lying on the floor.  On one of the magazines was a picture of a man.  As I looked at the man, he appeared to be floating in air, and not just floating, but in the process of rising to the sky.  Above him, in big bold letters as if the title of the magazine, was the word "Delite".  After taking in the entire image, I woke up.

I think Delite is another spelling for Delight, here, with the main meaning to be something like great pleasure or satisfaction.  But I was curious as to why it was spelled that way.  In looking at Etymonline, I found there is a meaning for the "-lite":

word-forming element meaning "stone," from French -lite, variant of -lithe, from Greek lithos "stone" (see litho-). The form perhaps influenced by chemical word-forming element -ite (1).

That was definitely interesting to see, that -lite brings in stone (or Stone) to a word. So, I basically assume the alternative spelling was intentional, and meant to mean that a Stone is involved with this delight, which seems consistent with what we've been exploring here. In fact, the magazine cover seems to tie the Faramir story together, with a man in the process of rising, with some measure of delite/ delight, as a result of a stone.


There may be other reasons or ways to look at the "de-lite" spelling, but that was the primary one I thought of and the implication that jumped out to me.

"Dad (Dad of Nation)"

The 3rd and final dream I remember from this morning involved a call from a cellphone.

I was holding a cell phone in my hand, which started to ring.  I looked at the screen, and the caller ID showed "Dad (Dad of Nation)".  It was as if the parentheses was doing one of two things here (or both) - giving a hint as to who the Dad here is, and/or clarifying which Dad we are talking about (if one were to have multiple fathers, for example).  I woke up before I had a chance to answer the phone.

In thinking about this, I think could be straightforward.  I have suggested that Faramir-Eonwe's father as we look to the creation of this world and Valinor, is Aule, who is Abraham.  Abraham's name means something like ""Father of Nations" or "Father of Multitude".   It seems to be a pretty clear fit with the title in the parentheses on the phone in my dream.  The exception is that on my phone it was Nation, singular.

In looking up Nation, although it is usually used today to refer to a political society (like the U.S.), originally it had referred to something more like a race or family. From Etymonline:

"a race of people, large group of people with common ancestry and language," from Old French nacion "birth, rank; descendants, relatives; country, homeland" (12c.) and directly from Latin nationem (nominative natio) "birth, origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe," literally "that which has been born,"

So, I think the change to Nation, singular, was intentional, and made to represent Abraham's family, as they have come through his children, Asenath and Faramir (being married to Joseph and Eonwe) - specifically, the Family of Light.

I think the added identifier "Dad of Nation" also suggests that my notion of Faramir's multiple fathers depending on what timeline you are talking about is correct. In a timeline long before this one, he was the son of Eru. In Valinor, he was the son of Aule-Abraham. And in Gondor, he was obviously the son of Denethor. Thus, the need to clarify on the call which "Dad" is being referred to.


Also, I believe that the scene involved a phone call might mean I was on the right track when I explored the possibility that it might be more than just Eowyn-Ilmare who communicates to him through the Stones in the "Anchorwoman" post. Other members of his family - Aule-Abraham, Yavanna, Asenath, for example - might be involved in a larger set of communications organized or coordinated by Eowyn.