The forests call me home. The mountains howl for my presence. The seas and waterways ache for my return. And the wind whispers reminders of every place I have ever been. Something about the layering of the kosmos, the ether, the air, the earth, and the water urges me to question my perspective. How different would I be if I switched out my lens?
It came to my attention recently that my experience of dreaming is unique. Chatting with my sister about how we enter and exit our dreams made me feel like a foreigner, an intruder. Of course, it is no surprise that we all dream of different scenarios and remember them differently. But beyond the contents of the dream and its meaning - I found I experience dreams themselves much differently from others.
I am a thief. A voyeur. An emotional pirate. Scavaging moments from the collective library. An ethereal scrapbooker, if you will. I have no clue what is me and what is outside of me. Imagine my horror.
When I was eight or nine, I began recording my dreams. Writing them down as stories in a notebook I got as a souvenir from NYC when the Twin Towers were still up. I would trace over the themes and their supposed meaning and feel accomplished as I relived my memories/adventures transcribed in penned text.
As a child, I would confuse my dreams and my memories of present life. In school, I would tell tales of magical weekends; not understanding that all my stories were from cosmic away games. This form of deception evaded my awareness for years. I clung to friends that did not ask too many questions.
Dreaming for me is like splashing water on my face or feeling the breeze graze across my skin. It brings up new sensations, but my body does not go anywhere. I daydream constantly. I daydream the best with my eyes wide open; this happens most often while driving. This fact scares my partner, and he wishes he did not know. It is as if I generate new ideas and formulate new worlds only when looking at this mundane world directly in the face. And that is partly the point; this world is magnificent and dull simultaneously. Cycles and natural laws persevere throughout the many wild and demanding filters we place over them.
This is a place, a state, a world I have been to before. I have lived and breathed and suffered here. There is plenty of unfinished business.
I do not think I split my time equally between Earth and Ether. Maybe this is why I feel as though no one here knows me. Yeah, perhaps they know a few years with me, know my neatly laid out trauma, but me? I have spent a fraction of my time here on earth in my body, socializing with others.
I witnessed my face in a dream for the first time the other day. It was monumental. At first, it caught me off-guard because I knew that I did not see other people's faces in my dreams - Frankly, I cannot imagine a person's face in my mind's eye for the life of me - but it never occurred to me that I had not even seen my reflection or a picture of myself while in a dream state. I was in a car, a limo maybe, and caught my image in the blacked-out windowpane. So, this is me…?
Only when you finally identify the monster do you then realize - the monster itself does not exist.
Be present. Be here. Be awake
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