I haven’t been sleeping. Well, that’s a lie. I’ve not been able to sleep till around 5 or 6 the last couple of days and then sleeping in till 10 or so and my sleep schedule’s all confused and convoluted, so last night actually SLEEPING was greatly welcome, but I had a massive dream that left me confused and convoluted. And now as I write this I’m folded up on my chair, avoiding leaving my feet on the ground because there’s a huge spider LURKING under my desk somewhere that I totally failed to catch. We are now alert to one another’s presence and I don’t know what it’s terms are. Is this a truce? Is it waiting for my succulent feet? Has it run off? Is it defending me from other bugs lurking down there? All-in-all it seems better to shake the cobwebs from my mind while keeping my feet well away from the multi-legged monstrosities down below.
It totally counts as stretching, too.
The dream tho : walking down a central sidewalk strip in Pittsburgh as traffic whirred and roared to either side of me. People parking haphazardly on the concrete putting all us pedestrians at risk. I was putting extra effort into the “we’re all in this together” style friendliness that I exercise in traffic and in shopping queues but it was not being reciprocated. I began to realize I recognized most of the other people on the walk… as a car darts into park nearly on top of someone walking too near the curb they jump out of the way and I ask “are you okay” and it turns out to be someone I know from the open mic “you know, if you’d have been kinder I would’ve made more music”, and then I step out of the way apologizing to someone that I almost run into walking the other way “you know, if you hadn’t quit teaching you would’ve inspired me to save the world” – weird snatches that then were accompanied by massive memories- that weird memory dump that can happen in dreams that implies Lives LIVED in moments but with the weight of years or even more… and so I’d Live through the consequences. That student (from when I was teaching at Suitland) going on to become a politician that actually made positive changes and undermined the Trump movement… another becoming an erstwhile folk musician, another random person, if I’d said the right thing, would’ve led me to stardom myself…. not all of them were lost chances… one led me down a path not taken that would’ve resulted in his suicide. I’d saved his Life. But other paths led to fortune, others to solitude. And I kept ricocheting off of people in Pittsburgh seeing what COULD’VE been till my alarm went off leaving me… you know it…
Confused and convoluted. And, having Lived snatches of dozens of other Lifetimes – perhaps more exhausted than I was the night before.
“Twice as cloudy as I’d been the night before, and I’d went in seeking clarity. “
Indigo Girls – Galileo