Dreams of Twenty-One
This book is a collection of dreams that I recorded during the year of 2021. I have been recording dreams for years, but much like 2020, 2021 was different. The Covid-19 pandemic brought new stresses and anxieties on multiple levels. There was a constant underlying fear of getting sick. There were fluctuations in product availability on grocery store shelves. I had to continue to work, and even work overtime, on an open factory floor where social and physical distancing were impossible and most workers refused to wear masks. I didn't sleep as well or as much, and what dreams came were difficult to hold onto long enough to record, resulting in more and longer gaps, shorter reports, and repetitive sequences. I define dream as that which I experience in the state of sleeping consciousness: I go to bed, fall asleep (I hope), and dream (often). What I write down is whatever I can remember when I wake, whatever I can drag back across to waking consciousness. These are not stories that I have purposefully created – I dreamed all of it. Each entry is my objective attempt to describe what I experienced in the dream, and no more.
Hardcover: ISBN 9798404051438, 242 pages, 9x6"
Paperback: ISBN 9798404062809, 242 pages, 9x6"
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About the Author
Benjamin Gayle was born in Richmond Virginia, and has lived in the western mountains of the state for most of his life. Educated in math and electrical engineering, he has worked in a wide variety of capacities including factory automation in automotive manufacturing, and designing motor control systems for a drives manufacturer. He has been an amateur cyclist and bicycle mechanic for more than thirty years, and an amateur radio operator (N1NP) for more than twenty. Reading was an early passion, followed by writing in his early teens, though that was set aside for decades for career and other responsibilities.