Tuesday, March 26, 2013

What do we do with our dreams?

copyright: dichotomousproductions
Things of our dreams.  An Image I made some years ago. 


I had two very vivid dreams last night...  That is not out of the ordinary for me... but they were different than usual...   I woke up after the first one about 4 am...   it was about me making one of my goals, the second one was about making something mine.
I was on the mountain, standing there looking at all the flags going up and down the cliffs, in bright reds, whites and blues. Its an unfamiliar, foreboding place.  I was surrounded by strange people, speaking languages I can’t recognize. I could see how dark the edges of the rocks were all around me, and i could see it go on up above me, past the clouds.  I felt like I was nowhere. I was at Everest, at base camp on the Tibet / China side.  I can recognize it from pictures and documentaries, but in all the earth, this is its peak...  this is the hardest thing...  while I felt that I have come farther than I ever expected, I felt that l will never climb that mountain.  I stood at its foot and stared deeply into it.   Nothing I've ever felt in my waking life, felt like that... to stare into the abyss, to look upon it with favor, not disdain.  To be there with strangers and yet all alone before the summit of the highest point of the world.  The wind whipped so hard around me I couldn't hear anything but it and the banners snapping up the hills.  It was so surreal.  Even the smell of it was distinct.  I felt cold.  I felt weak.  I felt like my heart was giving out.  But I was there.  I remember that I walked to the edge of some bluff and looked out over nothing almost as far as I could see, and practically fell down on both knees before it.  Lost in thought, watching the flags and banners... the prayer cloths in the wind... the smoke going sideways from small fires... small little makeshift houses and buildings among the rocks and grass.  It was just open, nothing.  It was beautiful. It was beautiful because there was nothing, but there before me was the most majestic crag on this earth.  There was nothing stopping me from it except myself.   Somewhere a few minutes into being kneeled before it, is when I woke up.
A little miffed about waking up from that, I slowly drifted back to sleep.  I stopped to look at my phone, and noted it was 3:50am.
It became a little less typical of me to have a dream about everyday life.  I've definitely suffered from deja vu throughout my life.  I see small little pictures of things that I’ve come to realize weeks or months later are unfolding right before me.   As I grow older, I am experiencing longer bouts of it, but with less frequency.  As a kid, I saw a silver door knob, at a crooked angle: a month later in gym glass I fell, ramming my head into the wall, and sitting up I looked up to see that door knob. Other times I have seen road signs with sunsets behind them, or people walking and talking around me; all to find it all come true.  This time, it was a normal feeling.
I'm laying lengthwise on a brown leather couch [that I don't own], in a place that I don’t recognize [ie I don't own], but its clearly mine. My art is on the wall facing me. The walls are painted in colors I’d choose. Everything about this place feels comfortable to me. Its warm there. There is some sun light coming from behind me. And I feel that I belong. I hear a voice, softly, but don’t understand the words. I look down to realize I have someone laying in my lap covered in a blanket and she's staring up at me into my eyes.  I look at her and see she's biting her bottom lip.  She looks timid, but happy, and like she just woke up suddenly and was surprised to see me.  About as surprised as I was to see her like that.  The only thing I remember was reaching down, grabbing her with my left hand and squeezing her right where her but meets the back of her leg, as she rolls over. I begin brushing her hair out of her face with my right hand as she keeps looking at me with her big eyes. I keep my hand on the right side of her face, as I feel her rush in to kiss me.  I see her eyes close as our noses and foreheads touch and I kiss her.  It feels like the most romantic thing I have ever done in my life, and I feel her tears with my right hand, even though I know she is completely happy. That's when I wake up.   I don't have romantic dreams.  I just don't.  And so much of what was in this makes me wonder why I had it.  I wonder if that's a dream, or that's something that's going to come true.
Today, as I'm talking to my lawyer, I get an email with pictures of the inside of this condo I'm looking at buying sent from my realtor.  When I saw the layout, I realized where I've seen it.  Change the couch, change the pictures, change the paint... its that place.  After I left the office, I sat at lunch, looking through my email today, finding myself staring at the pictures. I wanted to cry.  Because there is so much in that dream I want to make real.
What do we do with our dreams?
Can you recycle dreams?  Can you save them? How do we even remember them… most times they fade so fast from us as we wake, we never can hold on to them.    When we are taken places we’ve never been and end up there in our dreams, how do remember that later in life if we get there?  How do we ever convince someone else what our dreams are, and how you know things from dreams? How do we transform our dreams into our memories?  That’s the secret to life.  How do you make that real, when you see it, when you feel it, when you know it, and its right there and you can do it… even when you cant, you dreams take you there. 

Conrad said,

"There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not see it any more; I had no time. "

/// S

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