Axar.az presents an article, "Three Dreams" by John Samuel Tieman.

We all have dreams. Thomas More had his “Utopia”. The sailors in “South Pacific” gazed at Bali Ha'i. Three Dog Night sang of the road to Shambala. In 1825, Robert Owen tried to set up a utopian socialist community in New Harmony, Indiana.

My dreams are a bit more humble. I'm an old man. But it's not just age that spurs me to think in dreams. Here are three dreams I have had much of my life.

Cafe Tacuba – I Dream Of Riches

When I lived in Mexico City, I now and again stopped at the Cafe Tacuba, just a few blocks from the Zocalo, the city center. The Cafe Tacuba is a pastry and snack joint built in a colonial nunnery. It's a popular lunch spot for government workers. It's built right on the old Aztec causeway leading in and out of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec name for Mexico City. Today it's just one of the many doors in the many high rises in the center of Mexico City.

It was along this very street that Hernán Cortés and his crew were run out of town on La Noche Triste, 30 June 1520. Somewhere, right here somewhere, he and his crew dumped the entire Aztec treasury, this to lighten themselves for their getaway. Those who did not, those soldiers who kept the gold in their boots and uniforms, sunk down into the mud beside this one causeway out of town. Later, after the conquistadors slaughtered the Aztecs, Cortés would try to find the gold, but the mud is just too deep.

So I and everyone who ever stopped at the cafe knows – it's right here somewhere. Within yards of this very bagel and a schmear, there's a gold plate engraved with the finest Aztec workmanship, a plate from which the mighty Moctezuma II himself ate his very bagel and a schmear. But today, that million dollar plate has a fifty million dollar office building on top of it. So there our fortune sits, just sits. Right here somewhere.

Just For Tonight – I Dream Of Love

“Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, / Make me a child again just for tonight!”. So says the poet, Elizabeth Akers Allen. We are soon to renovate our basement. I'm a packrat. I've been cleaning out old boxes. And there are tons of old letters, papers, poems I wrote when I was 23. My Honorable Discharge from the U. S. Army. Stuff I haven't seen in some cases in fifty, almost sixty years. Perhaps most poignantly, letters and photos of friends who are gone.

I love the life I have right now. I don't want to go back. Except. Except maybe for a day here, an hour there. For a few minutes, I'd like to go back to those minutes, almost 37 years ago, in that little church when my bride-to-be walked down the aisle to me. I'd like to relive the hour I first enrolled in college. I'd like to spend an hour as an undergraduate with my buddies at the student union. And many years later, the hour I was awarded my doctorate.

Vietnam was probably the worst time in my life. I hated it. That and I've been clean and sober for almost 40 years. But I wish I could spend an hour in that bunker with my war buddies, The Heads. C. W., Poncho, Dick Bittner, Mike Finn, Chuck Willis, Ollie, Thompson, and many others, my war buddies. My war name was “Buddha”. Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, / Make me a Head again just for tonight!

I'm 76. There are times when I pick up an old photo, and I realize that, of the folks in that photo, I'm the only one left. My mother, my father, my brother, my aunt and uncle, folks from the Chicago side of my family. And buddies who are gone, Rudy, Ralphie, Les, so many others. So many others. Rudy had this magical quality of being happy and sad at the same time. Ralphie could switch between a dozen languages as easily as you and I switch TV channels. Les and I were in the army together. I want, for just a moment, to go behind the barracks and smoke a cigarette again with Les. I want to hear his Oklahoma accent. I want to hear his laugh. Les and so many others.

Places – I Dream Of A Home

I'm from St. Louis. I joined the army. I lived for a decade in Texas. I taught school in the West Indies and Mexico City. I couldn't run far enough. My family was troubled and dysfunctional. I was traumatized by Vietnam. I drank too much, did drugs, womanized.

Then came Phoebe. Phoebe grew up four blocks from me. I traveled the world in order to marry the girl next door. We were married in the parish church in which I was raised. Later came five years of psychotherapy.

I love many of the memories of living overseas. But I ran from my torments, and overseas didn't help with that. Nor did beer. Nor did LSD. Nor did womanizing. I found neither Bali Ha'i nor Shambala. What have I found? Within the six square miles of my hometown, there's an infinity of intimacy. My wife. My neighbors. I serve on our City Council. So I always stop and talk with folks. It's the best part of being on the City Council. I love my neighbors. I meet some of the most interesting folks, folks who live just down the street and around the corner. I chat for an hour with a young Hasidic woman, an immigrant from Israel. I sit on a stoop with a Catholic priest. A Lutheran minister gives me a copy of his beautiful sermon on “The Beatitudes”. A woman tells me how her basement flooded. One fellow I chat with invites me to join the family for dinner, a tempting invitation I politely decline. So many interesting people. A restaurateur. A sculptor. A barkeep. A woman, a retired Navy captain, over 100 years old. I love these folks. Near here, there's a century-old grocery store that was converted into a restaurant. Around the corner is a former synagogue that is now a nondenominational church. I admire their pastor. Within the six square miles of my hometown, an infinity of intimacy.