When I was in New York two years ago I stumbled across a wooden ramp pushed up against the sidewalk - a hurried, makeshift arrangement put in place by a delivery guy to enable his wheeled trolley to move freely to and from the delivery truck. On it, someone had scrawled in big letters: “BECOME YOUR DREAM”.

I stood for several minutes, considering and photographing this piece of impromptu street graffiti, oblivious to the delivery guy passing repeatedly in front of me. Eventually, he said jovially “Hey buddy – you look a lot like Lee Majors. Anyone ever tell you that?”

As an Englishman in New York, the comparison was oddly comforting. It reminded me of home – not the bricks and mortar or green-and-pleasant lands I know as the UK – but of my childhood home. The home where my dreams were dreamed in all their glory without the wing clipping device we all know as “reality” getting its unwelcome blades in the way of my exploring fingers. I grew up watching The Bionic Man, a man who was a super-man in the true sense of the word. This was not a man from outer-space, energised by a green-glowing icicle, nor a gnarled, tattooed mini-superman energised by a green vegetable known mysteriously as “spinach”… No; this man was built. We built him. He was a broken man and we rebuilt him.

You will notice that the graffiti did not say “Achieve” your dream, or “Dream” your dream, or “Go for” your dream. It said “”become” your dream. Become it. If we become something, we change. It has a sense of possession and of ownership about it. The thing itself no longer exists, because we have become it. Not only has it changed, we have changed too. In many ways it is the purest form of alchemy – two separate states becoming each other and creating a third, singular, and changed, state.

So to that delivery guy, who bestowed upon me a fleeting kudos that I neither deserve nor could ever generate of my own accord, I say “Thank you”. In that single moment, that serendipitous, spontaneous, unexpected moment, you defined exactly what it means to Become Your Dream. Life, inevitably, breaks us down. Each day, in tiny ways, something of us is taken, or breaks, or decays. It is the nature of the human beast. For us to do anything, even before we dream, we must learn how to repair. We must learn how to be emotionally bionic and where we cannot repair ourselves we must seek out others who can do the repair for us. We are all broken in our individual ways, and the delicate skill of self-repair is what, ultimately, will really allow us to become our dream.

Ravens and crows have always held a fascination for me. In my writing processes I spend a great deal of time walking, (and thinking), and I try to do that deep in nature, alone. Very often, on these walks, I am watched by a crow, or a raven, depending on the landscape, but this has never been a source of worry for me despite the general perception of these beautiful birds as feeders on carrion, (the decaying flesh of dead animals),  or soul-stealers who will whisk you away to the spirit world. In my experience, they bring peace, and even seem keen to be part of the silent, contemplative creative activity.

In Shakespeare’s Othello, it is said that the raven flies “o’er the infected house”, and this has always had a strange resonance for me. Not because I see the description as relating to a specific house or location, but because I see it in much wider terms. If the raven flies in the skies above, then the infected house is Earth itself, with all its sorrows, its difficulties, its injustices and its horror.

The history of the relationship between humans and crows or ravens is characterised by ambivalence. From being the instrument of God in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible (“You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there” 1 Kings 17:4), through to Shakespeare’s assertion that ravens precede the appearance of death or evil intent, the great black bird has inhabited every space from saint to sinner.

These are clever birds, able to hunt in packs, to adapt to ever-changing environments; to be inventive and ingenious, to be cheeky, callous, unreliable and shameless, and yet also feature amongst the few species on Earth who mate for life. If that isn’t a mirror image of human I don’t know what is.

Which brings me to my favourite raven story. There is a Ukrainian legend that suggests the birds were once multi-coloured with beautiful singing voices. After the Fall of Angels, their feathers turned to black and their voice became the now familiar caw. When Paradise is restored to Earth, so too will the ravens’ original
beauty be restored to them. I identify with this story because it is linked so closely with the human story: childhood has a degree of innocence to it that is not repeated in later life as the inevitable moral dilemmas and unpredictability of human interaction takes hold. But there is still hope, still a shot at redemption. There has to be, because without it, the Tears on Earth’s Face will never be gently dried, and the weeping will be forever.