Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 145: Sailor’s Delight

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

“Flicker In The Water” by Bob Gonzalez (https://flickerinthewater.com/)

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend Bob Gonzalez. He is an author, or he is the author of a Flickr in the Water available at flicker in the water. We're going to get right back to him in two seconds. This cat is all up in my paperwork as per usual. Would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers, viewers for the game streams. Also, 16 currently available works of historical dream literature, the most recent

dreams and their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson. All this and more at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com, including downloadable MP3 versions of this podcast. Also, if you would, head on over to Benjamin thedreamwizard. Dot locals.com, trying to build a community there attached to the Rumble platform. That's where I would prefer to receive any sustaining donations if you would be so kind. And that's enough of the shilling. Bob, thank you for being here.

Hi, Benjamin. Thank you for having me. Hey, hey. And, you know, we can just start here real quick. technical difficulties every time. Don't worry if we connect and there's some stuff we got to sort out. It happens every time. It's the nature of internet communication.

You know, no big deal. So I just always appreciate guests that are willing to work through that trouble because it's a pain in the ass. Yeah, no problem. Thank you for your patience. Yeah. Good deal. Okay, well, what is a flicker in the water? You said it's a C.

What was the subtitle? A flicker in the water? Inside the Tales is the subtitle. It's a collection of mostly non-fiction sea stories. Most of them take place in the Gulf of Mexico. A lot of them are my own, not all of them, but a lot of them are. And some take place in the Atlantic around the Bahamas and the Caribbean. I think it's a fun read.

I think you don't have to necessarily like fishing or even have ever been on a boat to experience what I'm trying to convey in the book. think it appeals to landlubbers and experience fishermen alike, semen. And it's good for kids, too, starting around age seven or eight, any kid can enjoy it. And I think they can learn a few things and have fun doing it, just like I did. Very cool. I am definitely in the landlubber category. I'm more like mountains, lakes, and rivers is kind of my thing. More than, more than the ocean. The ocean is kind of a big, scary place. I tend to stay out of personally. But, you know, there's a, there's a certain type of person that just really loves that environment.

And probably a lot of it has to do with lack of experience or lack of true stories about here's things that happen in this environment. And you said it covers a kind of a broad range of different experiences at different locations, some in the Atlantic, some in the Caribbean. Yeah, yeah. Most of them are in the Gulf of Mexico. So I talk about some of the things that we would hope to catch, and sometimes we're successful at it or other times not.

Anybody who's ever battled with some of these fish knows that you don't get them every time. And a lot of times it has nothing to do with your skill as a fisherman. It's just that the fish have a say in these things too. And we've caught our share, but we lost our share too. And I also talk about just what it's like being out there. I try to put the reader out on the boat with us and to enjoy the experience, you know, without having to worry about being seasick or anything like that

or being afraid of not seeing any land, which I know that bothers some people. But it's never bothered me. I just, you know, you have your navigational tools, your sonars, your radars, you know. And if you have to, you have your stars in the sky and your sun. So, you know, the sun always sets in the west. So you pretty much know which way to head

if you ever get lost out there. In fact, Ernest Hemingway had a famous saying in The Old Man in the Sea, said a man can never get lost in the sea. Yeah, for sure. No, that would actually be my, I would trust the stars more than any electronic device. Even if, you know, those are our go-to first line of navigation because they're very convenient and probably also very reliable. But still, if the, say, the GPS said to go this way and the stars and the same,

sun said to go this way. I'm following the sun of the stars. GPS was obviously wrong. You've got to compare it to the natural environment and trust those ancient ancient techniques of navigation. Yeah, for sure. It's not for the faint of heart. You know, there's always some

bit of risk anytime you go out there. But you know, there's risk on land too, you know. So it's never bothered me. In fact, you know, I enjoy it and I relish the challenge of it. Yeah, that's a fair point of, you know, so there's some people that say, I don't go on the ocean, there's sharks out there. Well, there's bears in the woods. You know, it's anywhere you're in the natural environment. You're going to, you're in the mountains. You could be subject to, say, in the winter of a flash flood or an avalanche of snow. On the ocean, you can hit a storm or, you know, the rough seas. You're not really going to avoid risk anywhere you go in life. It's going to be there. Anytime you leave you up the front door. And even, even danger can come to you. Get an earthquake collapses your house. You never know. There's no. There's no. you know but i think there is a very unique kind of bravery to traveling on the ocean that is a

big and it's no surprise that you know my brain goes to the to the associations with the greek god because of the way the greeks conceptualize the sea as a god as as its own force uh you know they would they would personify the forces of nature in in that way in their gods and say you know this is something to be respected and properly worshipped in in a way that uh you know if you flout the will of Poseidon, he will swamp your boat because nature don't care. Yeah, it does whatever it wants. And sometimes when it wants, you know, it doesn't consult you either.

It just does it. For sure. Yeah, and we have to learn. And it changes on a dime. You can't, sometimes you can't predict what it's going to do, even with the best equipment that we have today. For sure. So I don't know if you wanted to give an example of one of the stories

so people know what they're in for. You know, something you found interesting or, descriptive of the experience? Well, the title of the book, A Flicker in the Water, was it came to me when we hooked a massive tuna. We were fishing

an area of the Gulf of Mexico where there's a lot of oil rigs. In fact, I don't know if you remember, but they had that horizon oil spill. I think it was in 2011 or something like that. I remember, yeah. And that's the area where we were fishing. This was before then. This was before the spill

happened. And we hooked this I think it was a yellowfin. It might have even have been a bluefin. We hooked them around 2 o'clock in the morning, and we fought them for several hours, and I talked about the back and forth and what everybody was doing on the boat, and the reflection that he gave,

because they're very vibrant. They have vibrant colors. They're all kinds, the yellow fins especially are the most colorful fish out there, the most colorful tunas. And it just looked like a flicker in the water to me, and that's the first thought that came to my mind. that's what inspired the title for the book.

Very cool. That's an amazing thing that I would say, yeah, land lebers like me don't understand about the idea of fishing is not only is it hit or miss, you throw the lure in the water and you hope you get a bite, but when you get a bite, it could be a couple hour struggle to bring in a really large creature. I mean, tunas are not, they come in tiny little cans and that's how a lot of people think of it, but no, that tiny can is made of, you know, it's like thousands of tiny cans and you get. of tuna. They're huge, right? Yeah, well, it depends on the kind of tunas. There's different kinds. The bluefin tuna is

the biggest, and that one can be huge. It could be eight, nine hundred, even a thousand pounds, some of them. Yeah. Then you have your, then, you know, they go down in size big eye tunas, yellowfin tunas. There, you know, could be three, four hundred pounds. And then you have your smaller tunas, like your albacore tunas, they call them. And your blackfin tunas. They're smaller. There may be 20 pounds. pounds, 10 to 30 pounds most of the time. In fact, the blackfin tuna, they're known as footballs because their bodies are shaped like, yeah, their bodies are shaped like football. So that's the name they have.

A tiny fishy hand. But yeah, most of the can. Yeah, most of the tuna you'll see in a can is either albacore or yellowfin these days. Bluefin and yellowfin are in a lot of sushi markets. That's what they use those for, mainly. but they're all beautiful, but the yellow fin is especially beautiful with all its colors. So I'm getting a better idea of the contents of the book, say, so this is mostly your own personal experiences,

or have you gathered other people's stories from different locations? No, there are other stories. A lot of them are my own, but there are definitely other stories in there. In fact, I talk about some of Christopher Columbus's voyages in the book. I talk about Poseidon, the God of the Sea in Greek mythology, and what his mandates are in the ocean while you're out there. And there's a few other stories like that from other fishing, but a lot of them are my own. Very cool.

Yeah, well, I'm glad I brought that up, too. It's like, and there's actually a long tradition of, you know, tales of the sea. I mean, the, what is it? You know, sailors come back and they get to land and they're in the port and they want to tell stories. Guess what happened to me? Let me tell you the almost tall tail style in some ways, but a lot of them are just amazing enough because you survived some of those experiences. Yeah.

Well, the reason I was asking, too, was that it would have been an interesting thing if you have personally fished in all those different locations. Not that it's beyond the realm of possibility, of course, that someone could get around, but it's also cool that you're collecting other stories. There's actually a long tradition,

a literary tradition of collecting Tales of the Sea in this way. Were you inspired by any of those other books, or did you read those as a kid? And that helped spark your man. imagination? Well, the old man in the sea, probably more than any of them, you know, inspired me and sparked my imagination the most. The old man in the sea was written in Havana, Cuba in the early 1950s. And my dad was just a teenager back then. He was from Cuba. So he was there when that book was written. Wow. And in fact, I was lucky enough to have Mariel Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway's granddaughter, write the forward for my book.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She really really. liked it too. She said it gave her a deep sense of appreciation, so that meant a lot to me. And yeah, I talked about fishing in Cuba when my dad was a kid on how they used to fish with handlines. And then, you know, he came here to the U.S. when he was about 14, and there's a few stories about his experiences. There's an April Fool's Day experience off of New Jersey with a fluke. A fluke is similar to a flounder, and there's a story about that in there. There's other stories from other manners.

There's other people that we fish with, too. Like, I'll give you one guy we called Keith, and he used to say, you know, everywhere I, like we call him a weekly fisherman because everywhere he went, they would tell him, oh, you should have been here last week. Oh, it's supposed to be coming through next week. Yeah.

Yeah, for the stories like that in there, too. Yeah, that's really cool. And that's one of the interesting and fun things about, I would say, hunting is a sport, but it's not it is and it is it's very serious you know you're you're you're out there to kill a creature to eat it that kind of a thing but it's also there's a there's there's there's that element of of chance so beyond risk is chance is like they're not the fish aren't biting today or where the the school in the ocean isn't in the spot it usually is and we got to look around for it it's a it's a it's a very

you really do have to hunt a lot of these a lot of these creatures because they're not just going to come to you they don't just jump on your plate and say eat me you know there's a whole a whole experience to it, a whole process. Definitely. It's a lot of hard work, and I talk about that, too. You've got to fight through the pain. You know, you've got to fight through the frustration. But usually if you can persevere, eventually you will land what you're after.

But you have to just keep fighting and keep going through it until you can claim your prize. And there's not a fisherman in the world who hasn't been skunked. You know, going back to even olden times. I talked about the story in the Bible. where the disciples were fishing in Lake Galilee, which is a freshwater lake, by the way. I thought it was a saltwater, part of the Mediterranean Sea, but it's not. It's a freshwater lake in northern Israel, and they fish, well, maybe you know the story. They fished all night, and they came back, and Peter was at the shore, taking his nets off,

and he said, we fished all night and caught nothing. So Jesus told him to lower his nets out in the deeper water. And he said, no, I don't want to do that. But then Jesus said, go out there. So Peter said, all right, if you say so. So they went out there. They lowered those nets. And as soon as they lowered those nets, those fish started.

They were catching them left and right. They almost caught so many fish. They almost capsized. So that's part of the frustrations that I talk about that happens to fishermen. You know, you just have to persist and persist and persist. And usually you'll be successful. But it's a lot of effort involved. Not always.

Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes you get those bites. Yeah, you get those bites as soon as you throw your line in the water. You just never know. That's part of what makes it challenging and fun, though, too. Yeah. I think that's a great lesson as well. And that's, I think, something that, you know, say, you know, hunters especially understand is that you're not getting anything done without persistence.

There's just a very valuable lesson in those kind of stories where it's like, you know, anywhere along the way, until that moment of victory, you could have given up. You probably wanted to give up. You wanted to escape the pain of the frustration of not finding what you were looking for, the hassle of all the effort that goes, that goes into the hunt itself. And even sometimes, as you were saying, you fought a fish on the line for,

you know, a couple of hours. Probably during that, you're like, I could just let him go. I could just, my back is killing me. My arms are tired.

The sun's in my eyes. You know, I'm sweating like a beast, but that perseverance. And there's like, I don't know. It's a platitudes that you see on those, you know, motivational posters at work. Perseverance, you know, just hang in there.

And there's something to the mockery of that kind of thing. But there's something to get, that's the only way anything gets done. You see it through. You choose to finish it. And to keep trying until it gets done. Those are, oh, the dog's uncomfortable. There you go. Like a dog in my lap.

I can cats on my notes. That's how it is. But I think, yeah, I think that's probably, you know, one of the most important things people can learn from a lot. lot of real life stories is, yeah, I wanted to give up, I didn't, and I got it done, and you can too. I think that's a big deal. And then that stays with you the rest of your life, too. You never regret having fought through the pain. Yeah, definitely. Um, well, I know your time is short, uh, in general. I'm happy to keep talking, uh, about anything and nothing. I, I give people as much time as they

want, but we can also move on to the, to the, to the, uh, dream side of things and, and do the, uh, you know, the actual purpose of the show, so to speak. Yeah, let's go ahead. Let's go to the dream. All right. Good deal. Let me write down a little timestamp here. All right.

So as per my usual process and, you know, good advice in life in general. I shut up and listen. I'm going to hear the story beginning to end as it was experienced. And then we're going to go back through it again and try and pull out something relevant and personally meaningful to our friend Bob. So I'm ready when you are. I'm ready. Well, I, um, I studied, uh, I have a degree in psychology. and I studied Sigmund Freud when I was in school

and his dream interpretations, he was big on that and is a subject that was always fascinating to me. In fact, when I saw your name, I thought of Joseph, the youngest brother in the Bible of all those brothers who God gave him an ability to interpret dreams and they served him well later in his life. And it was what was able to make him reconcile with his family after years of being estranged.

Oh yeah, a personal hero. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure, yeah. My dreams, you know, if they run the gamut, like they probably do for most people. Well, one of my most fun ones is I've had dreams where you're like you're floating on a cloud, you know, and most things are good, you're happy, you know, you're walking on air, so to speak, I guess you could say. I just, that's the one I enjoy the most for myself and interpret it however you will. but, you know, I like that one. When's the most recent time you can remember having that dream?

Maybe a couple months ago. Okay. Maybe you could take me through what that experience was like a little bit. Like when the dream first started, what did you experience? Where were you oriented in an environment? How did that play out? Well, I was just at home. And I woke up one morning and I said, geez, yeah, that was that dream I was

when I was on a cloud, maybe I caught a lot of fish that day. I don't know. But maybe so. But yeah, I guess I must have been feeling good because, you know, I think that's a good nature kind of dream. Yeah. It very much is. Definitely. And you bring up a good point, too, the idea of your emotional experience in the dream.

Now, if you were, say, up in the air and terrified because you're, and then what you're really thinking is I'm falling or my feet are not in contact with anything solid. I can't move or orient myself. It's a whole different experience. But if you're just light as air floating and feeling a sense of say euphoria or happiness, it's a completely different dream experience. When you when you think back on the dream, that experience itself is all that remains, just that snippet of knowing where you were and what was happening.

Or was there a sequence of events to the dream? You know, first I was over here, then I went over there, or I rose from the ground at the beginning. How did it actually play out? You know, I really don't know. What's vivid in my mind is the cloud part, being on the cloud and just floating through space. I should probably keep a pen and a paper next to me when I'm sleeping. That way I can write him down. It's usually one of the best ways.

It's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that presents me with a little bit of a difficulty. I mean, I did have one interview with a gal where her experience was nothing but falling through a void. And it was not a pleasant experience for her. And we. I'm sure it's not.

I've never had anything like that. Yeah. And it wasn't a plummet. It wasn't a terrified screaming plummet. It was actually a very slow descent, but it was through absolute nothingness. And it was definitely a feeling of sinking, you know, going down, not up. And we were able to make something out of that. Maybe your dream, if you have a more clear recollection of the events of, say,

you mentioned another dream of running in place but being unable to move. Well, yeah, you know, I haven't had that one in a long, long time, you know, a dream where you're trying to run and you can't, your feet can't move. They just stay in place while you're trying to run. It's like the roadrunner when it's been in his wheels, you know. Oh, yeah. And I haven't had that one in a long time.

Okay. Well, we can also just kind of discuss the contrast between those two types of dreams. And I think you were very correct to say, you know, the idea of I was maybe having a good day because having a good day when you were floating on air or suspended in the clouds. Because those, what am I trying to say? those the association with that kind of imagery is the positive happy successful um a lot of times elevation in a dream can tell us stuff you know i was going down into a dark basement i was going up a mountain into the clear clear air so there's there's um movement sometimes or or location is very important um by contrast the dream of you know um legs moving and going nowhere we we think of

of phrases like spinning our wheels. And that's very evocative of that, of that imagery. Immediately you see a car, the tires are turning and there's no forward progress stuck in the mud, perhaps. So my, my process of bringing a personal understanding to the dream or helping to, to, to pull one out, kind of relies on the dreamer having a little more detail of the experience. So which of the two, which do you think you have more vivid imagery of? They're both really vivid, but I don't remember much else except for those two things, because that's probably what I focused on after I had them. And I could have probably, I should have written down.

Maybe I'll start doing that. I'll start writing and keeping a log of the dreams. Maybe the one, like I said, on the cloud was just happy things were going well. And the other one, it seems maybe a little frustration. maybe I was trying to get some things done that weren't happening, you know, that kind of thing. And like I said before, that's something you have to fight through. And we all experience it, I think, at one point. For sure.

Yeah. No, I think those are good broad strokes. And that's usually where I start. I mean, so we're going to meta on my own process here. I start looking at it and I do those kind of conceptualizations of, okay, one floating on air, positive experience, happy, happy feelings. The other, rather negative frustration, no forward progress, unable to get traction towards, towards a goal perhaps.

Then I, from the broad strokes, I try to narrow it down. So if you, you had that dream of floating on air, you said maybe a couple weeks ago, do you remember what was happening in your life at the time? Had you just finished a project or you had gotten some bit of good news? You had persevered through some difficulty. Well, maybe it was the, had the book out there talking about the book, which is also enjoyable to me. People seem to like it. maybe it has something to do with that because that's the most recent thing that I've been doing.

Other than that, I really don't know to tell you the truth. I was a happy person. I've been a happy kid, happy person, you know, all my life. So I think that's just innate in me to feel good and to have pleasant experiences. So maybe it's just, you know, just natural for me to have a dream like that. I don't know. Yeah, it very well could be. So when you think about that dream experience,

what you said you were standing on a cloud or floating through clouds how how did that? I'm just laying on a cloud just taking it all in and floating you know loading through the air up in space. I was just lying on top of a cloud. Okay, lying on the cloud. Interesting. So you were kind of reclined almost like it was a comfy. Yeah, relax. And that's good.

These words jump to mind like relaxed. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's that's exactly why we look at this. So do you remember your specific posture? Was it, you know, arms like on a recliner where your hands behind your head, where you're, where they, you know, folded on your chest, resting, you know, fingers and interlace? Probably at my sides, I think. Okay. That can be a relevant detail as well because there's no, there's no effort involved in what you're doing that you're not swimming. You're not propelling yourself. You are. completely at rest. Your hands, not only are you reclined, you're not, you're not vertical, you're not facing forward like flying like Superman. You are completely at rest, relaxed. Your hands are your tools of, of, of, of, of industry, so to speak, your hands that make

things happen also at rest. Do you imagine, or when you, when you think back on it, do you see an orientation of the sun anywhere? Is it missing? completely? Is it to the left, to the right above? I don't remember the sun. I remember it being clear, but I don't remember seeing the sun. It was clear, though. It was like, uh,

there was visibility. It was light. But I don't remember seeing the sun, no. Gotcha. So there was not, you were not on one cloud in a dense cloud bank where your vision was obscured by other clouds around you. It was kind of a, you had maybe a solo cloud in a blue sky and you had, you clear. Pretty much.

Something like that. Yeah. Very interesting, too. That's interesting as well because we've got the image. As I said, it would be a very different experience to say, I was in a cloud and that cloud was in a thunderstorm. And all around you were lightning and thunder. Very different experience. But for you, clear vistas.

And there's connection to the idea of, you know, being out in the ocean on a boat where there's nothing but blue sky around you and you're floating. Yeah. There's maybe something there too. But I think you're, I think you're on to something. And I, you know, I always, of course, listen to the dreamer and you are the authority, not me. I'm kind of just trying to help pull out what meaning is already there for you. But you've got this idea of really enjoying talking about the book. Did you, at that time a couple weeks ago, had you gotten some news about sales numbers or gotten a, what am I trying to say,

gotten the good news that you would soon be featured on a very popular podcast or connection to, Well, that's been happening regularly. I may have gotten a good review on Amazon that day or something like that because I've been getting some reviews from time to time. So maybe I've got a review that made me really happy. It could be something like that. Maybe. It felt like a meditation.

You know, when you meditate, that's what it felt like. Nice. That's also a good case. So you've got this very relaxed meditative. there's a there's a feeling of effortlessness and that um the first thing that popped into my head would just when you said that meditative is the idea of um um athletes uh when they say they are in the zone and that they're yeah yeah yeah and i hope that resonates with you too because there's something to that where it's like they are expending effort they are they are focusing

their will they are moving their body but all that said it feels effortless it almost feels like they aren't even in control. They just think it and it happens. There's something very much. Now, did you, floating on that cloud, was it stationary? Was it drifting on its own? Did you have the sense of motion in a direction? It was drifting.

It was slow, slowly. It was like, but it was just like suspended in air. Okay. Also, very interesting. So it would have been a very different experience if it was zooming at light speed through the sky. That's a difference. Or if it was slowly descending or rising or whatever.

But it was kind of just drifting. It was just, it seems like in this current phase in your life, you're just happy to be existing where you're at. Is kind of what it feels like. Yeah. Yeah. Does that, does that feel like it strongly resonates or, or? Yeah. I just think things were going well.

And I think it came out in that dream. I think, I mean, you know, I think that's probably what it was. You know, things had happened in a positive way, and that's the way it manifested itself in that dream. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think we could all hope for exactly that kind of experience where our dream imagery, what our unconscious is processing about our current life experience is one of meditative, effortless happiness. uh, you know, and, and it seems to very much match your real life state of affairs.

This was not so much a, um, as Freud might say, a wish dream. I wish I were this happy. I wish I were this relaxed. It seems to be even a direct representation of God life is good. I'm doing okay. I'm doing what makes me happy and I feel good about it. And it, this doesn't even feel like work. And you're not, you're not feeling guilty about it either. You're not like, uh, I should be working harder. No, I'm working exactly as hard as I should, and it's paying off in precisely the right measure. That's just all of that wrapped up in this, in this beautiful imagery of being, you know, completely at peace and relaxed on a cloud, slowly drifting with nothing but clear blue skies, an open horizon in front of you where you can, you know, unlimited, unlimited potential in some ways is what that kind of thing says. Well, we got disconnected. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you pierce the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams.

Every episode of his DREAMs program features real dreamers gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New DREAMs episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks, highlighting the psychological principles which inform our dream experience and much, much more. To join the Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms, and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the Wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature, available on Amazon, featuring the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube.

YouTube and at Benjamin the dream wizard.com. Okay, let me, um, taking time. Okay, yeah. There it is. Okay, sorry about that. No, no worries. Technical, technical, technical difficulties. It happens.

Well, I think, um, you know, if there was more to the experience, we could have a longer conversation about it, uh, but it seems like it was very contained, very small. and the, almost the meaning of it came through with the experience. Was that, when you woke up from this dream, did you have a sense that you knew what it was about? I just had a sense that I felt good, you know, like you do when you meditate. That's kind of, you know, that's what you feel, you feel good when you meditate. You're like connected to yourself. I'll tell you what I'll do, though, is I'll get a pen and paper and I'll start taking notes.

and the next one that I have a detailed one, we can do this again. Sure. I'd be happy to have you back. And I'm not disappointed by this, too. Every, this is, this is my Zen meditative perspective on this as well. I work with what the dreamer brings me. And you can't do this wrong. So the experience you had that felt like you needed to share it was this particular one.

I went digging a little bit to say, well, is the other dream. Maybe he's got more details. Not so much. That's fine. But I don't want you to feel bad or anyone out there. watching. So what if this is a short episode? That's fine. There's very often the case that people wake up from their dreams and they don't need an interpretation. They know exactly what it meant. They know exactly why that imagery and that form. And it just kind of intuitively make sense to

them. Hallelujah. You don't need an interpreter. But it's also nice to share those. And I appreciate you bringing it here. I work with whatever people bring me. You know, and each case like this presents a unique challenge. I've had folks where they, and these are some of my favorite episodes, too, where they say, I know exactly what this dream means. I woke up knowing what it means. I've talked to people. They confirmed independently that they think that's what it means. What do you think? And then I give them my suggestions that get very close or identical to what they said. And it's like this, like that's like multiple layers of validation that these are not meaningless, random images that just float through our head,

but they're very much connected to how we think and what we feel. And definitely, you know, I can see you now where I couldn't be for, but I can now. Good. Nice. Yeah.

Yeah. So, maybe that help. So I don't want. Logging back here. Yeah. No, that's actually,

sometimes just got, have you tried turning it off and on again, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, no,

so I don't, I don't want you to feel bad that you didn't bring me something good enough. There, there's, there's no way to do. this wrong. I think, and even that, even such a short thing, we were able to kind of dial in, why do you feel this way about this experience? What does this experience represent to you? So each of these is, for me, a great case study that challenges me to, well, what can I get from

this? What is, what is there? Let me ask you this question. Go ahead. You know how the old man and the sea ends, right? Do you have you read that book? I have not. I confess. Yeah, sorry. Okay. It ends with a dream. The old man, uh, uh, after coming back to shore with his fish. I don't know if I want to give away the whole story, if you haven't read it, but he's dreaming of Africa with the lions. That's the last scene in the book.

He's dreaming of the lions in Africa on the beach. Now, in the book, had he been hunting or lions in Africa at a previous part? Yeah, when he was a younger man. Ah, interesting, interesting. I'm sure there's a whole literary analysis. I wish I was prepared to do it. I probably should have read a lot more great works.

I focus more on philosophy than on a lot of literature sometimes. But, you know, I have passing familiarity. I know the book. I know who wrote it. I think I read a synopsis once a long, long time ago. But so he spent, and you can tell me this, I'm just speculating, basically questioning. Was most of the book about his experience as a fisherman? And it was very...

Yeah, most of the book is... Yeah, it was when he was... Well, it tells the story of an aging fisherman who's down on his luck. And he's like, nobody wants to fish with him because they say this guy can't catch any fish. He's washed up. He's no good anymore. But he knows different. He's got one kid who believes in him too.

And he goes out one day early in the morning. And he has a plan on how he's going to make this happen. And he does. He goes out there. He hooks into a big Marlin in the Gulfstream. and the garland begins to pull him out to sea further than he even wanted to go. And finally, after three days and night battle with the marlin,

he ties it to the side of his boat and starts to make his way back to shore. But on the way back in, charts start to eat the marlin because he couldn't bring it on his boat. It's a little skiff, you know, so it wasn't big enough for the marlin. So sharks begin to eat at its flesh.

And finally, when he does get back to the shore, the only thing that's left is the skeleton of the fish. So, yeah, so the townspeople were able to see that he caught that fish, though. And then, you know, he puts everything away. He goes back to his house, shuts the door, goes to sleep, and he's dreaming of the lions in Africa, which he used to do as a younger man. Very interesting there, too. So there's a, okay, so Hemingway, I mean, he was a hunter.

He had made excursions to Africa to hunt lions. So he's drawing on his personal experience. I'm sure he'd been out to see. But there's also an interesting thing of like bookending his life in that way of like, well, here's what I did when I was younger. And I'm thinking, thinking back on that experience. I think that's the point of it. Yeah. Does the book say anything about how he feels about thinking back on that?

Like wishing you taking a different path in life, stay in Africa to huntland? No, it doesn't say anything like that. I think it lets you interpret that for yourself. I think, I think it's just, I think what the interpretation I get is that after he got that fish, he was. at peace with himself and he was able to go back to when he was younger and he was dreaming of the lions. Gotcha. He'd proven what he needed to, to himself, to others.

He'd established himself as, you know, this is finally able to accomplish it. And it's very often that we do have dreams, say, of our childhood experiences and relate them to where we're at now, by comparison. Sometimes wistfully, I wish I'd taken a different path in life. Sometimes saying, I'm able, just as you said, I'm able to now revisit this. past memory pleasantly because I don't doubt my path anymore. Sometimes we call back those those things. We summon them up and say, I'm in a good place.

I made the right decision. That can be a very, yeah. There's something akin to literary critique, literary interpretation that is similar to dream interpretation because you've got these. And in some ways, this is fascinating too. I think Freud didn't do this method. I think Carl Jung did, which was, okay, you don't have a dream to share. Let's put you into a relaxed state, almost meditative, almost trance like,

tell me a dream, make up a dream. Basically, daydream a fantasy experience for us to then analyze. It was basically fabricating dreams consciously during a session. And I think that's very similar to the idea of stories that we tell. Literally, it's a fabricated fantasy of a thing that never happened. but it's imbued with meaning based on why we chose that story, those people. Why did they behave that way? So that's something I'll probably have to put into a book one day.

I'll do a chapter on, you know, the similarities between dream interpretation and literary critique from that understanding point of view. It might be interesting. Yeah. Well, if you feel like we looked at your dream sufficient to understand it to your satisfaction, we don't have to drag it out anymore. I know your time was short, and I'm happy to make shorter episodes as well. Did you have any additional questions about it

or commentary on your own dream experience? No, I enjoyed it. I hope I gave you enough to work with, but I think let your audience decide, you know, what they think of it. I'm sure they'll come up with their own interpretations. Maybe so. Yeah, yeah. I hope to grow sufficiently in size

where the comments then are below. Ben, you missed this obvious thing, or, hey, did you consider this? Or wait a minute, That imagery, what if it meant this? I'm like, oh, yeah. And then I'll be learning from them too because, you know, I love the idea of the wisdom of the crowd where I cannot literally,

no human can think all the thoughts that are possible on all the things that are possible to think about. So sometimes you've got to get a dozen, two dozen, a thousand different people and they've all got a different suggestion of what something might be. And then that, wow, blows my mind in that breadth of possibility type, type of thing. So yeah, someday, someday soon. I was going to keep at it. Well, this has been episode, yeah, 145.

So as I was saying, I think, did I say it off, off camera and whatnot? You know, by the time I hit a thousand videos, I will be a real wizard. And well, that'll be the marker. This is kind of a famous, what is it, martial arts saying. I don't remember where it came from or who's, but, you know, do something a thousand or 10,000 times. And that's how you become a master. That's how you master. That's how you master whatever you're trying to practice.

Practice makes perfect type of thing. Yeah, or at least practice grants mastery. So, all right. Well, yeah, if you're good, we'll just, I'll wrap it up here. And I'll say to everybody listening, this has been our friend Bob Gonzalez. He's an author. And he wrote the book of Flickr in the Water. You can find it at flicker in the water.com.

Link in the description below, of course. Also available on Amazon Barnes & Noble. But it looks like you want to go to the webpage. There's more interesting stuff there, videos, you said. Yeah, there's videos. There's interesting things about the oceans. and links to everywhere you need to be. Nice.

I like that one-stop shop. That's why I do the single website as well. Everything's there. All right, then, you know, for my part, I'll say, would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, share this video right now, click share, send it to somebody you like who might find it interesting. Definitely if they're interested in dreams or just discussion of seafaring adventures,

real-life, real-life stories. 16, currently available works of my own historical dream literature, the most recent dreams and their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson, all this and more at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com, including MP3 downloadable versions of this very podcast. Please also head on over to Benjamin thedreamwizard.locals.com, where you will find trying to build a community there. Also, exclusive recipes for the themed cocktails that go with everyone in my video game streams. That's become a thing I'm trying to do. I think it's a unique thing. I don't think anyone else is doing that. So, yeah, check it out. That sounds really

interesting. Yeah, yeah. Each new game has its own cocktail because I like to drink and drink and play video game. So there it is. Only thing left to say is Bob, thank you for being here. Good talk. Thank you, Benjamin. I enjoyed it. Take care. Absolutely. And everybody out there, thanks for listening.