Palestine Mon Amour

I woke up abruptly at 7:00 a.m., at the end of a dream discussion, I didn’t know with whom. An unknown male – the same one who woke me a month ago by calling my name? – was quizzing me about the Israeli election.

“The talking and the violence will drag on forever,” the voice said. “Something must be done.”

“I think a whole lot of people should go to Egypt and Jordan and just stand at the border crossings,” I said. “Stand the whole length of the border if they can. Stand in patient protest until the bombing and the occupation end. Until the Palestinians have a country. Forty thousand people, maybe – that’s not so many if they come from all over the world. The Israelis wouldn’t bomb 40,000 foreign nationals.”

“No,” the voice sounded anxious, like a family member a bit aghast at what might happen to me.

“And if they do – well, I’m willing to have a bomb dropped on me, to die even, if it focuses international attention on the problem, on the murderous disgrace of it, and achieves nationhood for Palestine. Or citizenhood. I feel that strongly.”

“I know you do. It’s a good idea,” the voice still had that tender note of concern, of someone who knew me well, with a hint of apprehension underlying it.

“Maybe 50,000 people,” I went on, trying to allay the fear. “The Israelis wouldn’t kill 50,000 foreigners standing along their border.”

“No.” I sensed a fleeting smile as the presence faded, an echo of enveloping love that was achingly and suddenly familiar.

As I sat up in bed with the crisp edges of the dream already dissolving and a raucous chorus of Canada geese squawking outside the window, I realized I’d been talking to Piglet. That it was his voice I’d awakened to several weeks ago, just before my father fell. I don’t recognize the voice as his anymore because of the distance he’s travelled since March of 2003. Apart from me and far from me. But not away from me.

In what windy land
Wanders now my little dear
Dragonfly hunter?
(Chiyo-Ni)

I’m no mystic and I have no explanation for the certainty of a dream like this, but I believe it at the deepest level of my being. I don’t know how such encounters happen, only that they do, like Sylvia Plath’s “rare random descent” of the poetry angel. A blurring of the divide between this world and whatever lies beyond it. Through a glass darkly. Many have sought words to capture the intangible but it remains the province of poets. “There are more things in heaven and earth...”

The real question is whether or not my idea has any merit – an idea that did NOT come to me in this dream. It’s been playing at the edges of my mind for several days. The more news articles I read, the more I learned of protests in various countries, the more opinions I absorbed, the more I concluded that a positive, constructive solution for Palestine is as far off as it’s ever been. What can break the deadlock? I wondered.

This morning’s dream simply brought the idea out into the open and allowed me to articulate it. Could it work? It would require massive planning and organization, as well as massive commitment. And where to start?

Is it a workable plan or a flimsy pipe dream?