March 24, 2009
And so it is upon departing from our dreams that we sometimes loath and often linger.It can be confounding to look back on what was unintentionally produced in the silent hours of the night... As though we are viewing ourselves based on the portrayal of an artist's abstract painting with the setting skewed and the faces mismatched against the list of those invited. It doesn't have to make sense and it doesn't have to line up perfectly -- not in order to affect us.
In my dreams I can wheelie my motorcycle down my hallway and up my stairs without consequence while outside it is still the dead of winter. I can finally feel the freedom of taking a horse of magnificent stature, bareback, to a gallop on the frozen lake in front of my parent's house just so they can see. I can kiss a kiss as long as daylight with the last person in the world I'd choose to shake hands with and wake up feeling wonderful, if not a bit secretive as well.
I also dream my little dreams about the one who is lying next to me, only in the dream he is not lying a mere elbow's nudge away but swaying with a bit of a swagger, miles off, delightfully engaged in tickling the finger tips of another lover whose eyes smile brighter than my own. I view the situation helplessly and hopelessly though within my chest, outside the dream, the tension swells as I hold my breath with angst. I struggle to catch up, to cease the affair, but I'm left standing still or resolved to quickening my pace in absolute and sickening slow motion while a stranger steals away my significant other.
Though we have the luxury to eventually wake and remind ourselves that "it was just a dream," it doesn't seem to sooth nor eliminate the remembered heat of jealousy.
Yes, I dream my little dreams... I've gone two weeks without being invaded with the mention of his name, a year without the gentle whisper of his voice and, just when I thought I was finished, his persistent stare erupts within the folds of my pillow. The mellow gestures he made as a man thought unnoticed, the absolute silliness of an emphasized emotion, the most tender touch that one cheek has experienced all rush back with the power of one day's absence and I'm down to knowing intimately, all over again, the structure of his neck, the bend of his wrist, the stamina of his step. As though it weren't lost but merely misplaced, I am repaired to the only arms that held me.
It was "just a dream."
What we consider reasonable and logical, right and noble, fair and adequate in a 'fully' conscious state during the day -- these things are squashed by the inevitable force of our dreams. What we thought we had forgotten, what hoped we had lost, what we meant to overcome; we remember, regain and relive. We are at the mercy of the incongruence of it all and watch it happen without recourse.
But the incongruence isn't the best or the scariest part -- those moments in which we can fly or those scenes in which a loved one dies -- it's the truth of it all that is the best and, naturally, the worst.
The truth is that, in all consciousness, we are not unlike our dreams. Sometimes we leap off of tall buildings and find we can fly and sometimes we struggle, helplessly and hopelessly, moving forward in a state that resembles three feet of legs in five feet of quicksand. We can't control it all or affect the outcome or write the story as we would if only the pen were always in our hands and sometimes we are just that; looking in on ourselves, fumbling along without symmetry, wishing there was more we could do, something we could contribute. It is here that we elongate the lines we cannot bend and it is here that we see the darkness while all along in pursuit of the sun. It's where our frustrations twist and tighten in agitation over the history we were not able to fold and put away just so. It's the truth of the incongruence that gets us. It's in our dreams, night after night, while we sleep and while we dream, and it lingers over us as we wake and while we walk through another day, after day, after day...
And though we might parse the meaning, linger over the impact and loathe the effect, let us not forget the wheelies.