The jitney dream

I dreamed I was on the sidewalk of a busy road. Busses were zooming by. A twenty-something-ish white boy was to my left. He said he had to go home to watch a movie. It might have been tited 2012, 0r 2013 0r 201X. He mentioned the movie -- something about the end of the world and a time traveler-- and said I probably wouldn't know what the movie is about. I was offended and told him the plot of the movie. He was surprised that an older black woman would know so much about pop psychology and pop culture. As he ran off to catch his bus, I shouted a crack like "Do you think I'm stupid?" He didn't hear and I guess that was overkill for me to shout at him, because I had already proven his premise about me wrong so I didnt have to be obvious. My subtelty had challenged him enough and had worked.

I ran across the street and walked a ways and soon found myself in an intersection where there was a bus stop where buses rarely went. A little jitney came up. I wondered about taking it but I wondered if I should really take it because it didn't have a real bus schedule ...only a printed xeroxed black and white copy of a schedule. I knew the route would probably meet my town sooner or later although it might not make it on the first travel loop -- cause the schedule showed that the bus route alternated routes every hour. So I could be home on the first trip or i might have to go round again and make two round trips.

I hopped onto the jitney. It was sub-contracted to the larger bus company but it was kinda its own company. The driver was black, the passengers were black. The bus had seats made of cut-up taped dried up brittle leather. This was a very ghetto bus. It was as if they had gone on a little trip/outing and were returning. I didn't want to sit anywhere. It looked so scuzzy. There was no seats for me to sit but there were little corners I could sit on..and I moved to the back and sat in the middle of the back, maybe over the back wheel. Everyone was singing and so happy.

Rose-Marie's interpretation:

well, i think the dream is about going the slow, poor people's way even though its roundabout and not plush.  the twenty something kid is

young and thinks he knows a lot but doesnt know that other kinds of people know things that he didnt expect them to know.  He represents

lack of wisdom, human pride, worldly wisdom, youthful judgment,   in the dream you struggle with not wanting him to think you are stupid but

you arent stupid! You would have known whether you told him or not, whether you said anything or not.  With  the "black folk" in the junky 

jeepney is happiness.  So its about the tension to be something noticed in the eyes of the world vs getting there with simple happiness!

amen! i could have dreamed that very dream!

 i struggle with the same thing. but then i think what else (ugh) i would have been, in addition to "successful" ;) if i had gone done any number of "successful" roads, i would have reached more people reason, and felt like i had lived up to my "potential" --how godly is that kind of thinking. I think down is better than up and Jesus constantly models that. down brings us to up when we have really seen Truth.  but we have to guard against is laziness, judgment and not doing what we are supposed to do, however lowly.   Not to take anything away from people who are "successful" but other than their craft, are they successful, and if so,
how comfortable would they be really beaten down and among the lowly.

i think that for many reasons, limitations fall upon each of us. We wont be able to get past some of them. which ones, i dont know--i g uess that becomes our life history. . i guess it dependson how much we work at it and that is mixed with god's sovreignty. I mean what if we were christians born in the Sudan or Egypt or Iran. How much could we change? and how much would we "accomplish" by worldly  standards?  We are limited by our social standing, our education both ways --too little or too much, by our looks, by our finances, by our family situations. I thinkwe have to see God in them and try to stand our post without thinking there is no hope. --sometimes there is a destined way out and we have to look for it, and sometimes there is no way out this side of heaven and we have to rise up victorious in our difficulties.  With the writing i gues you can only be true to your own vision and what you have to say! as you well know, lots of authors are only deemed "good"
after they die! argh! 

The pain i get thinking about my novels and my writing careers! I think i understand what the dream is about. I often feel the book represents my little writing career which seems to exist in its little ghetto. It isn't much compared to the great careers of some of my minority writer friends. It was sent to Publishers Weekly or to Locus online as my other novel Wind Follower was. But they didn't review it. It wasn't included/introduced in Wildside's seasonal newsletters. I assume trendy types probably think I don't understand pop culture or SF issues such as time travel and pop culture...but my career --lowly, though it is-- is a good one. And The Constant Tower is one heck of a good book. Good multiculturally, good as a Christian novel, and good as a Christian multicultural novel. Still, I do tend to cry a lot about my place in the writing world.