Three tempests

I had a dream several weeks ago. It was the third in a series of dreams I have had since sophomore year in college. The second one occurred in the year after graduating from college, and an 18 year interval has passed. This most recent dream placed me in a beach-side resort. I was helping my mother down to the beach from the tower we were at, and my family was on the beach already. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people on that beach. Then a cry came up and people started running. Some ran away from the water, others ran to the water. Three waterspouts arose, sucking up the people. I could clearly see their bodies and faces spinning like dust in one of those fancy cyclonic vacuums. I wondered if they could breath if their heads broke the water. A great sadness came over me. I heard a voice, not of this world, asking me a question, but I can't remember it now. The first time I heard that voice over twenty years ago, it said "We are the society of Darwin (a firm declaration)." The second time it said, "Who can resist the beast? (asked rhetorically?)" This third time, it said something that left me sad, I woke weeping, and in those moments after I woke, when I remembered what was said, I wanted to do something, but now I can't remember, because I fell back to sleep.

Looking back, I think that the three tempests represent the three things that trap people: desire or want, addiction or attachment, and finally pride or narcissism. These are the hazards that we face everyday.

What's up for today? Life being a metaphor for golf, today is a 348 yard par 4 with a drive over water that edges the whole right side of the fairway, dogleg right with trees and sand on top of the turn's knuckle, the whole outer curve being OB, being bounded by ancient temple ruins. Approach protected by a thousand year old baobab tree that will block anything lower than fifty feet. If you're big enough, you can drive the green, but anything less than perfect, you're taking a stroke.