Notes from a Dreamscape

The arc of a life and the big picture

When I wake up, I am still dreaming.

I’m dreaming the sunrise, the light moving slowly down the green-gold hillside across the lake.

I’m dreaming as I move through the house barefoot, grind the beans, watch the dark syrup dribble into the cup.

I dream the pristine white swan gliding across the lake, my mother’s delicate pearl ring on my right hand, my bare left hand moving across the page.

I dream the high stained-glass windows of my childhood church, the pale beams of light filtering through, the floating motes of dust rising toward the vaulted ceiling, the shadowy rafters, the faded hymnals, the murmured voices.

My nineteen-year-old self in southern France, riding a motorbike across town in crepe-soled shoes, my scarf and ponytail flying behind me. The still life of furniture in every room I have ever lived in, a stage set of revolving scenes.

The Golden Gate Bridge glowing in the dusk and the pack of cyclists flashing by my window in a vivid blur of color. The glossy hair of the girl in line at the coffee shop. The church bell down the street sounding its deep resonant chime on the hour.

Images rise and dissolve in the half-light. The shifting kaleidoscope of faces and landscapes floats by and recedes.

In the dream I am not my to-do list, my tasks and chores and projects. I am not my anxious thoughts, my restless mind, my worry about the future, the voice in my head driving me ever forward.

I am not my bank account or my marital status. I am not my lab results or my four-figure car repair bill. I am not my body with its aching left hip and constant fatigue and thinning bones.

High overhead I hear the drone of a plane. I look up and see the tiny dark shape silhouetted against the clouds. I wonder about the passengers and their destination. The pilot on his sacred errand, looking down at the miniature houses far below, imagining the people inside and their mysterious lives. His perspective from high above.

The arc of a life is a single dream, past, present, and future. I am living the dream and the dream is living me.

A flock of bright white birds wheels in sweeping patterns above the lake, like so many torn pieces of paper fluttering through the sky, each one a note bearing a message. The message is for me.

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Commonplace Book

We usually think of time as a river, a river like the Nile, with strong, swift current bearing us further and further away from what we have been and towards the time when we will not be at all…But perhaps we should think of time as a deep still pool rather than a fast-flowing river…Instead of looking back at time, we could look down into it…and now again different features of the past--different sights and sounds and voices and dreams--would rise to the surface and subside, and the deep pool would hold them all, so that nothing was lost and nothing ever went away.

--Anonymous ancient Egyptian scholar quoted in Meghan O’Rourke, The Long Goodbye