Dreams and Going to Cuba

I love my sleep. I don’t always get as much as I’d like. In October and half of November, for example, I averaged 5.3 hours a night and I know this because one of the first things I do each morning is check my Fitbit dashboard and they email me a weekly report. The past two weeks I’m getting closer to seven hours of sleep and the only thing that forces me out of bed in the morning is a bathroom call. A couple of times I’ve been able to hop back in bed, pull my sleep mask over my eyes in an attempt to fall back into a dream I was having, like opening a book to where you placed a marker. It rarely works. Like this morning I wanted to know if I reached the shore before dark. I was swimming in the Boston harbor, dodging rowing crews and I was swimming for all I was worth, kicking up water hoping that a sweep of oars wouldn’t knock me out as they passed by. I know where the Boston part came from…another widowed blogger booked a room on the Back Bay for the week before Christmas and I loved that idea. The rowing crews came from the fact that recently, as I waited on a bridge for a red light, I saw a crew putting their boat in a storage building by the river near my house.
 

Can you believe it, 5-6 years ago our local high schools started offer the sport of rowing. Wikipedia says rowing as a sport dates back to Ancient Egyptian but I’ve always associated rowing with snotty universities where your daddy has to donate a few endowments and lawn jockeys to get you in. True or not, with dreams and their meanings the theory is it’s not the settings that matter, it’s the actions. Oh my! According to the dream dictionary, swimming means that “you are exploring aspects of your subconscious mind and emotions---it may be a sign that you are seeking some sort of emotional support” and the part about it getting dark, “signifies failure in some work that you are attempting.” The only work I’ve been failing with lately (that I know of) is knitting on the bias. I tore out almost as many rows as I knitted on my shawl before I finally got the hang of adding stitches on the ends and decreasing stitches in the middle of every other row. You’ve got to stay on your toes, count often and I’m liking the challenge so I doubt this activity played into my dream. My failure is probably more along the lines of feeling old and wishing I could find a cure for that. Old woman identity crisis going on. Nothing to see here, people, move along. Just don't hit her with your oars as you pass by.

This week I went to another travelogue about Cuba. The one I went to last year was about the specific places in Cuba the trip organizers will take their group this coming February---the cultural and educational things they’ll be doing as part of the People-to-People Program set up since the embargo was lifted. You still can’t just hop on a plane and go there as a tourist if you're a U.S. citizen. You have to be licensed to go for one of 5-6 specific purposes and keep a detailed diary while you're in Cuba. This time the travelogue speaker, an expert on Cuba, was a man who has been there over 100 times since 1999 to do humanitarian work delivering medical supplies. He’s allowed to come and go under strict licenses issued by our two governments and he had fascinating things to say about the island’s history and our country’s part in causing the climate that led to the Revolution. Hint #1: We helped the Mafia, set up shop to launder money and that made the rich richer and the poor poorer. He also said the all the tour guides in the country work for the government and you should only believe what you see with your eyes but not necessarily everything that you hear with your ears. Punishment for crimes is swift and harsh so the country is very safe for visitors. For example, killing a cow in Cuba comes with a mandatory sentence of life in prison. Beef is only for tourists, not the Cuban people.

With Fidel Castro’s recent death the speaker didn’t expect much to change in Cuba over the next two years because the man who is taking over for Fidel (until his retirement) has been unofficially running the country for the past five years. That’s also assuming Mr. Trump won’t keep his promise to undo Obama’s lifting of the embargo. The hope is that once he’s been briefed on the benefits our country foresees from the deal in terms of counteracting Cuba’s growing anti-American alliances with China and Venezuela Trump will do a flip-flop. Still, with the stroke of a presidential pen those in my travel club who signed up to go to Cuba could have their dream trip pulled out from underneath them.

I’ll never travel out of the country again---unless I get abducted by a UFO or go in my dreams---but going to travelogues enriches my life without having to pay a dime and we get free cookies and coffee as a bonus.   ©