( No, it isn't black, it's Midnight Blue. )

(from my Dream Journal)

It seems there was a Dragon marauding the countryside and a Civil War era Captain (later, me) was assigned to deal with the situation. Through some means not made clear in the dream, the Captain was successful in convincing the Dragon to maraud elsewhere.

Now, as the good Captain is traveling home, he comes across a village where a Major has another (different) Dragon chained to the ground by the neck. All the Major had done was to wait for the Dragon to sleep and chained it down. Having word of his earlier success, the Major orders the Captain to get rid of the Dragon.

As the Captain is going back to his train, the Dragon awakens and begins pursuing the Major. The Dragon is magnificent, all metallic, red and gold, pursuing the Major by flying and tunnelling. I (now as the Captain) go to the village to help them defend against the Dragon. My wife is in the village and we use music and singing to convince the Dragon that we are not a threat and to leave us alone.

As the rest of the village joins in the singing one of the villagers hears a Machine running and goes to investigate. It's the Major and he's working on a Machine to defeat the Dragon ...

... and before I find out the nature of the Machine, our two cats start fighting and wake me up. Oh well. There's plenty to learn from the dream as it is.

First, understand that I've spent the last twenty-or-so years becoming an expert at machine control and that's how I make my living. Like it or not, machines play an important part in my life. They are the "concrete" or "real world" side of my life, the black and white of my Yin-Yang. This is where the business of living gets done. The advantage here is being concrete, it's easier to make changes, fix problems, adjust.

And I bet you can see where this is going. The Dragon is the other side, all in his red and golden splendor, representing the "unseen" or "magical" side of my life. It is the Dragon that inspires, dreams, and feels. The advantage here is in perspective. The Dragon knows about the Machine and can include the Machine in its considerations.

Neither side is complete without the other and both are interdependent. Now it gets interesting. The Machine seeks ever to become stronger, providing more stability and security. Unfortunately, the Machine doesn't perceive the Dragon and can try to gain strength at the Dragon's expense. This is possible for the short term, but must ultimately fail as the strength of the Machine is directly related to the health of the Dragon. So, only by working towards "Feeding the Dragon" can the Machine hope to grow in strength.

It's interesting to note that the activities that bring me the most satisfaction, freely draw from both the Dragon and the Machine. Wood working, Photography and building this web site each make use of my creativity and draw upon my skills with machines in order to produce the results I'm looking for.

Addendum, June 9, 2001

The Machine Me standing on Press #2 at The Seattle Times

As I write this, I'm at work for The Seattle Times as an electrician. It is part of my responsability to maintain the printing presses here. The machines are huge, though not as big as some other machines I've worked on in the past. I just did a walk around as we're running the Sunday morning edition, which, of course, runs all four presses at nearly full capacity. It occurs to me that there is a certain "magic" involved in all of this and I got a real sense of it just now. A connectedness to the universe through heavy industry. Go figure. The Machine is spiritual, too. Just as The Dragon lends it's inspiration to troubleshooting, The Machine makes the artistic expression a practical reality. And the Yin-Yang analogy is complete.