Since writing my last essay, a week ago, about dreams, and about all the people who have suddenly been populating my dreams since I became a social organizer, my subconscious seems to have become quite emboldened. Now it’s saying, “So you’re finally taking me seriously, huh? Okay, have I ever got a lot of good stuff for you!" 

A few days ago, upon waking, I tried to speak to my father. Or, I should say, my father tried to speak to me. My father, who, by the way, is long since dead, stood there with a long pencil-shaped contraption sticking out of his mouth. It was an obvious technological attempt to help him communicate. My father very seldom talked. He was a taciturn farmer, except that in his case it wasn’t a romantic ideal but a fact; he was just shy. Maybe to find a way around talking, he had, as a young man, taken a creative writing course by correspondence. Thus the mechanical pencil. I still have a small cardboard box full of his manuscripts that he had sent off to publications in various distant cities. All were rejected. They weren`t very good. 

During this last week, I`ve been thinking about the sources of my own shyness. A particularly violent event when I was a baby was the most obvious cause, but also of course my father was a role model for me, as well as a source of inherited instinct. Which is partly where shyness comes from. Or so I’ve read. Anyway, I’ve always wished my dad had offered a bit of advice on living occasionally. And even the tiniest bit of praise would have gone a very long way. But no, he would either just work outside or sit on his couch reading his Braille version of Science Journal. And I would look at him there occasionally. 

I’ve always been intrigued by dreams. I guess it’s partly because I’ve always had a deep desire to understand everything, and dreams just aren’t easy. I’m attracted to them like mountain climbers to mountains.

With most dreams, you have to use everything you’ve got: your analytical ability, your experience of the world, your general feeling of reality, your best understanding of the workings of the unconscious mind, whatever knowledge of symbolism you have, and more than anything your intuition. And beyond all that, you have to try to get to know the dreamer, yourself if that’s who it is.

For most of my life, the great majority of my dreams have consisted of surreal adventures into  strange situations. Most have taken place in the country, surrounded by forests, valleys, sky, odd houses, small villages. I’ve always been amazed by the beautiful colour in them, the detail of the leaves in the trees, their shimmering movement, the feeling of walking through them. I grew up on a farm, so all this makes sense. Even after living out the bulk of my life in cities, I still feel like a farm boy. An outsider in the city. In my dreams, I've sometimes found myself walking into a city, or into city-like buildings, and they would always be strange and surreal, as would the few people I would meet, or pass, in them. 

I`ve been following the R&D on the space elevator idea for many years, and here`s the latest big study, just out, from the International Academy of Astronautics. The space elevator is an extremely exciting future-tech development, which, barring an eruption at Yellowstone Park, will likely come into fruition and change the world radically within most peoples`lifetimes, about 2035. 
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/176625-60000-miles-up-geostationary-space-elevator-could-be-built-by-2035-says-new-study/2