Dreamer

by Mel Waldman

In the sixties, I used to hang out in Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village, especially each spring and summer. They were quixotic days: always light, never dark.

I was a young man then, when I gazed at beautiful young college girls and drifted off to a dreamer’s paradise. I wasn’t wise: just a visionary, free to explore a vast, beautiful landscape of possibilities and hope. My dreams helped me cope.

I dreamed of the perfect love and marriage and career. Near the Washington Arch, I dreamed of world peace and the spiritual community of mankind. Perhaps I was blind. A Jewish kid from Brooklyn, I knew about sin and broken dreams.

Still, I gazed at beautiful young girls and drifted off to a dreamer’s paradise. I wasn’t wise, even after JFK died, and I had to say goodbye to shards of my soul, even after Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were killed, and I could not will the universe to be good. Even then, I could not let go of the grand vision of a loving G-d in a divine galaxy.

Always a dreamer, I have survived the wrath of an apparently chaotic universe. Decades have passed and now, in this new millennium, I drift off once again to Washington Square Park. I sit near the Washington Arch and dream divine dreams.

Outside, a golden sun is setting and it is almost dark. Yet my dreams illuminate the universe. And I believe.