Daydreaming
By
Schaefer Kendrick

In life there are things that really matter, not because they beat on the weighty problems of humankind, but simply because they enrich the soil which sustains it.  Daydreaming is just such a fertilizer.

When to do it and where to do it are important matters to decide, for the success or the failure of the venture will depend on these decisions.  You can’t daydream driving ten kids to the skating rink in a 1982 station wagon with slick tires through a summer downpour.  Dream generating can’t happen on the threshold of presenting a report to the executive committee of the company you work for.

There are lethal enemies of daydreaming:  stress, disappointment, despair, frenzied activity, anxiety – it’s hard to find a caboose once you start coupling these words.  So, in addition to the when and where must be added the frame of mind.

For me the place to daydream is on the bank of a slow moving river fishing with a cane pole.  You don’t want your reverie interrupted by some fool fish getting snagged on our hook.  That’s why I fish in the Reedy River.**

I take a small cooler with three bottles of R.C. “Belly Wash” Cola (Pepsi or Coke are too highfalutin’), find a bank on the Reedy that matches the curve of a Morris Chair, and build my nest.  I stick the end of the pole into the ground and, to keep from making a farce of the fishing part, I put a shy worm on the hook hoping to discourage any interest of some errant fish, should there be any around. I place the cooler so I can reach an R.C. without having to get up from the comfort of my repose, pull my old felt hat (which has never seen a better day) over my eyes, and begin some serious daydreaming.

To my forebears daydreaming was a waste of time.  When a relative failed in business the voice of consensus dismissed him as a daydreamer.

I don’t agree with my forebears.  Daydreaming is a fine art that laces life with beauty, romance and adventure.  The daydreamer becomes an author, a painter, musician, a philosopher – whatever he wants to be.

I think about the Reedy.  About its faint memories of its friend, the Cherokee Indian, who respected its autonomy, and its independence – the Cherokee Indian who was called a savage by the white man.  How the white man desecrated the Reedy and ravished her as a wicked man ravages a virgin.  And how the white man is finally learning what the Cherokee had always known – to rape the bearer of Mother Nature’s gifts is the sure road to self destruction.

On a late day in October, staring at the deep blue autumn sky, I become a philosopher.

Everything has a beginning but God.  So my mind ponders the origin of things, of people, of ideas.  Who had the idea of the alphabet?  How were the sounds and symbols selected?  Why 26 letters, why not 55 or 52?  How can 26 letters be put together in such a way as to produce over 600,000 words?  What ancient Arab conceived our numbering system and how did he do it so that two plus two always equal four, three times five always equals 15 and how it is that I can use 11 of these numbers and talk to my daughter many miles away, she being one of 250 million Americans?  Where do the laws of mathematics come from?  How can these laws be so totally consistent?  Is it that man is made in the image of his creator because he has been endowed with the power to create?

My reverie weaves a tapestry of thought.  When was the first time a poem was written?  When was the first time a contract was entered into?  When was the very first time a woman and man said “I do?”  When was the first time somebody shouted, “Hooray for our side?”

The answer to this last question I know and it is not original with me.  It was when Lady Godiva rode sidesaddle through the streets of  Coventry!

** - The Reedy River flows through the center of downtown Greenville, SC.  At the time this article was written, there was a definite pollution problem with the water.  In the last decade the City of Greenville has creatively revitalized the area, cleaning up the Reedy and making it the centerpiece of the effort with a pedestrian suspension bridge now spanning its flow.  If you get the chance, you should visit,