The prophet Isaiah.
My head is hurting. I believe that I am delirious.
And now, I fear that this writing thing is itself but one part of an elaborately vivid dream.
My head is hurting. I believe that I am delirious.
In my delirium, I am hearing voices telling me that Barack Hussein Obama – A Black Man – is president-elect of the United States of America.
Why am I hearing these voices?
Why am I dreaming these things?
And for sure, why is my head swimming with things that remind me of the time when I was a boy growing up young and green Out East and when I learned to read from the Bible?
And as I remember, I was always fascinated when I read the story concerning Joseph and his brothers, and as to how this band of bloody-minded brothers conspired to kill the lad who also happened to be a dreamer.
I also learned other things about how life should be lived. And since, I was just a lad myself, some of these things were awesome – all that stuff about sheaves of corn bowing down to another sheaf of corn.
Awesome is the word – all that stuff about sheaves of corn bowing down to another sheaf of corn.
More awesome than this happened to be the time when dreaming was ended, prophecy was fulfilled and the time for real bowing announced itself.
This stuff is coming to mind as I herein regale you with a dream I had just the other night – one featuring a Black Somebody named Barack Obama.
In the dream I dreamed, a mighty host of people could be seen saluting and saying Hail to the Chief!
Lord knows, I must be dreaming.
My head is hurting.
I believe that I am delirious. And now, I fear that this writing thing is itself but one part of an elaborately vivid dream.
Like lots of my people, I am a dreamer.
And like lots of these same people, I have long suspected that people like us can do things that are impossible.
On occasion, people like us fly whenever and to wherever we wish.
Indeed, just the other night, I flew to Vermont where I had the longest of chats with my boy, Frederick, his wife and my two grandchildren, courtesy their precisely correct exertions.
That I flew there on the silky soft wings of a dream is today perfectly irrelevant. The fact remains, I flew to Vermont where I had the longest of chats with my boy, Frederick Felix.
Some others of our ilk – like Tony McKay came hither on a lightning bolt. And for sure, when some of us were birthed, mid-wives could be heard screaming and shouting as they witnessed fire and brimstone coming from the mouths of some of us.
On occasion, some of us can – if we wish – speak in a multiplicity of tongues.
One or two of us can and do walk on water.
Some like one of my other boys – Khalil Adam – can and does walk under water.
As for turning water into wine, that chore is for some of us the smallest of things.
I make this set of observations as prelude to a set of confessions.
I wish to confess that from time to time I dream things that seem so real and so very sweet in the dream I am dreaming that when I wake from dreaming, like the Caliban that I am, I yearn to sleep and dream again.
Just the other night, I slept and while I slept I dreamed that someone with the name Barack Hussein Obama was elected president of the United States of America.
And then I dozed, only to find myself smack-dab in the middle of a sweet dream: in the dream I dreamed, Barack Hussein Obama is the president-elect of the United States of America.
Just the other night, I slept and dreamed a dream.
In the dream I dreamed, I saw huge crowds of people – red, yellow, Black and white – assembled in what seemed to be huge outdoor spaces. In the dream, I could make out faces that seemed to be so very familiar.
I am certain that in the dream I dreamed, Jesse Jackson was weeping and smiling. And I saw a woman who was a dead ringer for Oprah Winfrey. And in the dream, I heard some snippets of speech – some things about yes we can and only in America.
Indeed, so vivid was the dream that I now wonder if I am – even now – locked in what some call a vivid dream. Here everything seems so very real.
Indeed, in the dream I dreamed, I dreamed about how I would sit down at a computer and write about that instance in the dream where I set out early one morning to find out what this Barack Obama thing was all about.
Lo and behold, in the dream I dreamed, I saw headlines saying as clear as day on a moonlit night: Barack Obama is President. Another headline blasted forward with the banner statement: Barack// U.S. President-Elect.
And even now, as I try to remember the dream I dreamed, all that surfaces has to do with the news I heard and felt just the other night. That new information indicated that Barack Hussein Obama is now the president-elect of the United States of America.
What a time I had in the dream I dreamed the other night.
So today, please excuse me as I share some other memories with you.
Like very many that continue to surface, some of my mind-stuff has to do with the world that birthed me, the things I have seen in my waking life, the joys and the pains I have seen through the eyes of others – and some of the wonders in this life that currently hold me in such thrall.
Here please be reminded that mine has been a life that was seeded in the aftermath of the Second World War. It is a life that has been deeply influenced by the so-called Cold War.
And for sure, it is a life that has been colored red by the blood of some of this world’s greatest heroes and martyrs, among them people like the Kennedy brothers, John and Robert, the likes of Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr.
This life that I have lived has also been deeply influenced by that of Patrice Lumumba, Eduardo Mondlane, Che Guevara, Cesar Chavez, Oscar Romero – and Frantz Fanon, among a host of others, inclusive of Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ.
In other words, my life and learning about the world and its peoples are inflected with the idea that life itself is about struggle, service, sacrifice and the surmounting of what might on occasion seem to be impossible odds.
In other words, mine is a life that is suffused with dreaming that there are times when –in truth and in fact – God can and does make a way out of no way.
In truth, it is no dream – Barack Hussein Obama is president – elect of the United States of America.
Barrack Hussein Obama is but a manifestation of the Dream as it is being realized.
Thank God, I am not delirious.
In truth, I am a witness.
My head is hurting because I drank too much of that red, red wine.
