It's a half hazy, partly cloudy day. Vast and endless frosty clouds of gray and black extend as far as the eye can see. In Florida there is a saying, "If you don't like the weather...wait 20 minutes." So perhaps the sun will win the bipolar climate battle before it retires for the evening. If the day were a smell I imagine it would wreak of vinegar and motor oil. Not the type of day that penetrates the house inviting one to frolic and pick daisies outside. My Aurora love has fallen sick, very sick. Six other children in her class are out with the same illness. Monday it was nothing more than a mild cold and now it is something much worse. She's been throwing up all day and running a high fever. As a mother, these are the most dreadful days of life. All one can do is pray, nurse her child with liquids and love, and offer sympathy. For the past two days, I have been mindlessly alternating between standing guard over her and running around with wet cloths, cough syrup, and cups of water and Orange juice. While I was sitting on the edge of her bed, she dug her tiny hand into her purple comforter, and I seized the moment to confess to Aurora, "Honey, if I could snap my fingers and heal you, I would do it, in a heartbeat, " and Mommy snapped nine times in a row.
I don't know how any baby can be as cheerful as Aurora, mid-puke. I was holding the bucket for her and in between heaves she said, "Mommy I have to tell you something...blaaaahhh" sniff, sniff. "Mommy, at the end of Monsters incorporated, the one eyed....Blaaaaaah" Cough, cough. "Mommy, the one eyed monster in Monsters Inc said to the little girl 'Go throw up now little girl!'" Aurora erupts into laughter, breathing heavily, and then the laughs are broken up by more coughs and heaves.
She is napping now. Just as sleep is a distraction from her illness, poetry and dreaming are my distractions from a mother's worry over what I am facing here.
And so I orchestrate my after thoughts into some kind of symphony leading up to a dramatic goodbye--for the day. Acid goodbye and bad eggs fried... (Dr. Seuss on drugs comes to mind) I have consorted with the sweetness of the sunshine, I met it in a dream last night. The angels and my ascended masters enjoy reinforcing modded themes through dreams (yes, I return there all the time.) People wonder why I dream like this, how I can take it seriously, but if they were wise, mighty they ought to wonder a little longer. When your eyes are closed, you don't have to think about all of the graphic bullshit happening in the outside world. You don't have to think of sick babies, of children getting killed as they walk home from school, you don't have to worry about bunk shots, about diseases,-- you don't have to watch the drama unfold. On any given day, the world is nothing more than a giant car accident and most of us can't stop watching. We are enshrouded in the ramification that will never fully be cleared away, it's like waking up to a living junkyard. John Lennon said of death, "I'm not afraid of death because I don't believe in it. It's just getting out of one car, and into another."
I saw two different cars in a dream last night and the quote is the best interpretation I could come up with. For a few blocks, I was walking around in New York City, looking for a different car after I had left my car behind. Sleep is something like another car. Sleep is the only time you grant yourself unflinching permission to stop thinking of the car accident that is the world is and THAT to me, is peace. I am not telling anyone to censor or downplay the significance of current events. Volunteer, donate to the Red Cross, write letters to congressmen, do whatever you feel called to do to make your voice be heard, but just know that it's every man for himself at this point and sometimes turning off the TV and dreaming up a different reality--is divine power.
And so, rambling on to nowhere as my child tries to dream off her flu, I come to open up the mermaid music box for you. I lack a spectacular starting point, other than picking up in the middle of my favorite dream scene of the week, not part of what I saw last night...I think this was a Sunday dream.
I was not on a beach, but just out of his reach, standing inside a cozy living room. Beautiful hardwood floors--either cherry on mahogany...they looked near maroon, but being I am no wood expert, they could have been pine. The floors were dark, but bore a tint of whiteness from the light drizzling in through large open windows. It was heavenly light...not a trace of smog or fogginess. Cream curtains danced in the breeze as the wind hurled around me, flipping my hair as if I were walking on a beach somewhere, by an ocean with fish to spare. It was like a white chocolate commercial--- the girl standing in a never-ending hallway with a utility fan blowing a long white sheet behind her, making the air appear more expensive and ambient than it is. No, the crispness said we weren't in a tropical climate, but I sure did fall into paradise as I lingered in his blue eyes! Only when I'm asleep do I not have any needs, yet they are always met in superabundance. Like being a walking trinity. In related news, I have spoken to God, he said he likes redundancy. Why are we redundant creatures? Is the message always so concise? To love thyself as thy God and love another just as Jesus made it right, or else henceforth suffer at your own price.
So yes, redundancy, I come twice-- different day, the same unfinished dream. I stood next to an entertainment center, my fingers over a dial, tinkering with the frequency of a stereo. "Fine tuning" Archangel Gabriel says. I was too preoccupied to care for intuitive blare though, for in a dreamer's stare, I thought I looked into love. Darling, darling, paces away, there he was. After I got over the initial rush, I flashed him a promiscuous grin and dared to walk over next to him...again. I am comfortable dreaming alone, but let's be honest---where is the fun in that??? Play or go home. And so, by the wand of a telepathic dream Godmother, I was not downtrodden in the honey stickiness of my own sin. Rather, a piece of heaven let me in-- in the consecrated form of him. One of those forbidden living men. Well maybe not forbidden, that can't be the right word! He's not married so I guess it's a free for all--like those loony sales in malls that only happen really early on black Friday.(I am not literally comparing him to the nutty compulsive shopper chaos, i just felt like illustrating country club wives, beating each other with overpriced purses and fighting over periwinkle cashmere sweaters)
I am breaking my own rules even talking about it, about the year of ravenous cosmic rendezvous's. Only last spring, in the midst of our nocturnal fling, he said to me, "I had a dream about you." And I believed him too, oh how believing him imitated the right thing to do. But how long? How long does the novelty of a dream stay in bloom? If he has a name, it is not his name i fall for or broadcast, but dreamer darling alas, we found togetherness and prayed prudently it would not come to pass. I felt the halo of his hands roam over my skin and I cried inside because I knew it wouldn't last long enough and soon would come the acid goodbye. I wanted to tell him, I wanted to confide, but my boldness grew legs as fast as my speech died. So I mumbled softly to myself, I choked on the air and finally expelled, In his arms, I want nothing else, I have a happy place to be alive.
"You're quiet today." I heard him say.
"I want to share the stillness with you." I warmly proclaimed.
"You are are not the same....as the others...you are not the same."
"It's not the world I obey, and in this way, no, I am not the same."
He laughed and didn't look away but buried his head into my hair and then I felt his kisses everywhere.
Don't wake up, don't wake up. It's okay to dream yourself into love.
He's an adult, but there is a childlike caress in the devout way he desperately needs to feel love. Maybe in this light, we are much, too much the alike. For only with each other, in dual dexterity do we halt the search for fleeting fame, there in the content of these dreams we share. We approach with neutrality, yet with the utmost care. For a time we reside in the same world, in the same space. In these most delicate of moments, I see an identical look of vulnerability on our face. But... in the real world, we live in two very different worlds, yet both worlds are flooded by mistakes and sometimes the rafts we cling to are the devices the past used to hurt us where trust would betray. I wanted to snuggle with him and build a sanctuary in a cavalier choice to stay, but the clock was ticking, ticking and tearing me away. Before I am done writing, that damn old clock says it will be too late, so I rolled further into him and held on for dear, dear life until the dream diabolically drove me away. And early, early as the morning came, I checked for evidence of the trip, to to see if his fingerprints were pressed into me like red roses on white hips, or maybe I would find the faintest taste of salt from his lips....but there was only love. Love goes back and fourth like this in a splendid poet's text for how long? How long? You tell me when. Maybe after our cars collide. Then and only then, I pause to to write a story too good to believe. Car passes car, star passes star, all the while my seed out grows a dying tree. Procreation does not create relief. At last, after all the seeds and leaves leave me be and the last car has been cleaned, a voice of solace came to heed, "I'll dream in you if you dream in me." And while tomorrow is an elusive day, for now it seems only a in dream can we be as real as we want to be...
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