A Life in Two Dreams

A recent dream. Walking up a steep trail to what had looked like a ledge from far down below, where I started my climb. I must have been walking, climbing, for a long time. Now I have to struggle my way through tangles of branches, vines, flowers that ooze sap. Every now and then I see other people climbing, we smile but we don't talk much. Or maybe sometimes. Finally I pull myself up high enough to see over the edge. What I thought was a ledge is really a large valley. Sunny, warm. I haul myself up, I must step over a sort of railing, I see wide, far, beautiful land, all the colors of green. Clumps of trees here and there. A smell of water-- maybe fresh rain --or it could be a cool breeze (I sleep with my head under an open window). What a view! My eyes sweep this way and that, to a far horizon and under my feet: the little weeds I know so well. Ah, I recognize that clump of trees, And those palm trees and the plant with the chalk white leaves and small orange flowers… And the cycad is blooming, and.., oh, my house! Yes, that's my house. I know this land well, this is where I live. Of course. This is where my heart is, my soul, where I "live"
I glance behind me; the dark of the abyss. Shiver.
Most certainly I climbed up and... reached "home?"

I wake up, deeply content but with some ripples on the surface. Part of me lingers in the dream... Being, just being. Right where I am. I sense animals around outside, I smell night air, and a whiff of... manure? Oh, the ducks again. Gradually more awake. That climb up the mountain: the wild growth, the vines, are recent experiences. And yet the climb brings me here, home. 

Must have fallen asleep almost immediately again, dreamless until morning.

* * *

Three days later another dream: I am inside, a raging storm outside. Trees whipping in the wind, although I hear nothing. Maybe I feel a shaking, but cannot feel the wind. The storm is outside. Hard rain on the roof (corrugated metal panels we call "tin"). I wonder how big this storm is going to be. I look out the south window. A sound... a car coming up the road.  I think about the puddles and the mud. The rock on the left by that palm tree, the washboard lava further on. The car goes much too fast for this road.
(In the dream I see the road from my back window. In the awake world there is a thick forest between the road and my house, I can't see, but I can hear traffic -- not much traffic, only the people who live here, and visitors. I've never counted, maybe a dozen homes?)
In the dream I am inside, and see the road, the car-- several cars--a stream of cars, coming from where our road meets the paved road. Huge vans, SUVs, buses maybe, colorless, some of them old, most of them new. All the vehicles full of people, jammed in, I see them swaying, or perhaps they are dancing? Music seems to come from the cars, distorted by distance and speed. There is something eerily disturbing about swaying bodies packed into speeding cars... But overwhelming my observations is the need to warn, I must let them know this is not a road, they are driving much too fast, "you're going the wrong way!' They must not know the road ends less than a mile from here. I live here; I know. . I yell and scream; any moment I am expecting to hear the crash of cars; my throat is raw.
But of course they cannot hear me, they're dancing.

I wake up in a sweat. Thoughts, feelings, memories swirl all around me, my body in a kind of paralysis. I have to force myself to sit up, turn on the light, take some deep breaths. The clock reads: just before 3 am. Dark outside, maybe rain showers now and then.
Tried to sleep again, but it took a while to sink into a calmer state, then thought, might as well start another day.

robert wolff, 10 september 2007