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Practical advice and thoghtful rumination about life, writing and personal transformation from an American writer from Hawaii living in Berlin who decided, at the age of 60, to make a new life for himself.

My Dream of "The Duel"

E.T. Hansen

Dec 19, 2022

And a beautiful Monday morning to you!

Here in Berlin it’s freezing cold and silvery gray and everything is covered in frost and it’s beautiful.

Here’s my Monday morning video for you:

https://youtube.com/shorts/ZLFNfnQo_aw?feature=share

I apologize for the nose hair – I didn’t see it until it was too late!

My Christmas Present to You:

As a Christmas present to you, I will be sending the next newsletter on Christmas Day and it will include my Christmas story The Cat’s Christmas Gift – it’s sad and sentimental and about a cat, which is how I imagine a good Christmas story should be.

Have a great week everyone!

And here’s my dream of Eugene Field’s “The Duel”:

(The video version of the poem will go up on my YouTube-channel Poetry & Purpose later this week – these are my thoughts inspired by the poem.)

I saw the dog and the cat eat each other up.

I climbed to the moon on two ladders, placing one atop the other until I arrived. I journeyed the oceans and deserts through the clouds in my bed, its legs like skinny skyscrapers stilting its way across the earth. I floated through space in a school bus and plucked stars through open windows and kept them in a jar. I wrote to pen pals in Babylon and Atlantis and Sumatra and they invited me to come visit and I did, in my dreams. I saw the dog and the cat eat each other up.

I lived for a time in a land where gravity does not hold, scars heal and falling down does not hurt; where men and women were honest and true and gave me candy, where dreams came complete in gift wrapping under a tree and I clutched them until I was satisfied, where there were no bedtimes, but night crept up on me like a lover holding me in a warm embrace until the bright morning sun woke me again.

Time is a journey and no one told me when I passed from one country to another. I want to go back and explore those continents and islands I didn’t have time to; say the things I forgot to say, embrace the friends who did not cross over with me, and dig up the treasures I buried for later.