Brexit Dream 1

I was going to call this “The Vision of Perfection”, I’ll try and explain later. But then I jotted down the outline of a confused dream I’d just woken from. An interpretation slowly took form. To dream it at all seemed exhausting. There was a great deal of fruitless effort being made, seven nights in a row. It was too abstract to comprehend. I’ve been having lots of vague unpleasant dreams lately, ever since my heart was reset with electric shock treatment, and has now to learn from scratch, like a baby, how to respond to each situation, taking clues from my brain. Even when we’re asleep, stuff happens, and affects us, I guess.

It wasn’t till the seventh night within this dream that anything definite took shape: a young woman. She offered herself: what she offered and to whom was not made explicit, but she was young and beautiful. Many called her a victim, and affected outrage at her alleged treatment; but she hotly denied any such thing. Not only was it her choice, she said, but by giving herself completely, as an act of self-sacrifice, she found pleasure enough to feel amply rewarded. It was a relief to me: finally to have a dream, albeit uneasy and troubling like other recent ones, with a happy ending, even if I couldn’t say what it was.

Just when I thought it was time to celebrate, I heard (everything was conveyed by hearsay, I was not witness to what happened) that the whole ordeal of seven nights was to be repeated one more time. And so it was, I couldn’t understand why. Again? I was so frustrated, it woke me up.

Lying there in bed, in the darkness before dawn, I suddenly realized that there are only seven nights remaining till March 29th, the designated day for Brexit.

So who was this beautiful young woman? Could she have any connection with Theresa May, our Prime Minister, commonly caricatured as a desperate harpy? In real life, she has no children, so could be portrayed mythologically as a pure virgin. I do consider she has been cleansed by her sense of duty and suffering, stands as a martyr for the country she represents, lacks guile and ambition. I’m sure she longs for release, to live out her days quietly. Her predecessor David Cameron fled from politics the moment he lost the referendum, which he would never have considered calling, but for a desire to redeem himself from a failed mission to Brussels in quest of better membership terms. Our national frustration with what was once called the Common Market goes back decades.

In my dream she was pure & lovely. It was her heroic act of submission that gained the prize, whatever that was. If Theresa May had the charisma of Joan of Arc bound to the stake, might she have succeeded in securing a deal before now? Wouldn’t it have raised her up in Britain, within her government, party, Parliament and people, and dazzled the top figures in the EU? I don’t mean by literal sex-appeal.  Margaret Thatcher was a power-dresser; but she made men quail with her brilliance and authority. Right or wrong? We can judge for ourselves or leave it to history.

So, dream mystery solved, except for the bit which woke me up. Why twice? Then it strikes me that if you are to surrender your own self to the will of your country, that will must have first been reconciled and unified. Winston Churchill had been reviled as a warmonger for decades, stood on the fringe of politics. Then came a moment of decision. You couldn’t fight Hitler’s war-machine half-heartedly. You either stayed out of it and watched or you risked countless lives in the attempt to defeat him by military means. Churchill had the charisma to win the hearts of his people, and whatever it takes to win. He united his country’s will. Again, right or wrong? Not for me to say.

In the matter of Brexit, the country is divided and so am I: a spectator who wants both sides to win. Remain, or Leave? Probably better to remain and help change it from within or get the concessions we want. Leave without a deal? There are many prepared to brave it out, like outnumbered heroes in Westerns & war movies, gambling on a favourable outcome. I might secretly hope they’d win, but wouldn’t want to encourage them.

Unfortunately our Prime Minister scuppered herself when she called the last election, only to reduce instead of increasing her majority as hoped. So she’s been stuck with juggling parliamentary votes, instead of leading from the front and gaining popular support from the voting public.

So my dream exposed an impossibility. You can’t submit twice, pleading a different cause each time. The EU have told this to Mrs May, in plain terms.

Perhaps you will say this has nothing to do with “The Vision of Perfection”. That’s precisely my point. Everything this side of the horizon looks negative, if we stay within the panorama presented to us by those who make a living from it, or get a kick out of it.. Natural disaster in South-East Africa—perhaps an effect of climate change worsened by humanity; gun atrocity in New Zealand, with fear of copy-cat violence elsewhere; Brexit; the collapse of politics and effective democracy; murders, rapes, knife crimes; poisonous effects of social media . . .

More than ever, we need a vision of perfection. It hasn’t died and cannot, for it renews itself each moment. In writing book reviews, one recently published on this site, another in progress, I see that artists impassioned by more than dollars do have such a vision. It comes in fragments. It makes their effort worthwhile regardless of material reward.

But I don’t see it in our communal panorama, this digital mural painted across our sightlines, masking what’s truly happening. Our communities don’t build great cathedrals like our medieval forefathers. We don’t trust in Providence, we don’t hope for heaven hereafter. We foolishly imagine we can eliminate misery, inequality and death. We’re too occupied in blurred dreams of the future, mock grief and outrage on others’ behalf, to notice the perfection of moments before they fall into the well of oblivion.

See also Brexit Dreams 2, 3 and 4