Last night's sleep was riddled by nightmares of nomadic wanderings in all manner of dark places: Caves, underground tunnels serving full-scale trains rather than the expected subway cars, and above ground places with a covering sky, dark and thick like a sooty, inverted Mason jar.
I was a watcher surrounded by hundreds of thousands of others I did not know, yet at the same time I experienced an undeniable emotional accord with everyone and had a visceral understanding of all that occurred, all that was felt, all that was missing and all that could never be in this nocturnal confederation of the damned.
This was not my first visit to this place. I'm taken there regularly by whatever force it is that corrals all those unspoken thoughts and caches of denial and compels me to reckon with them deep in the unconscious night when all pretense and contrivance sleep soundly. They are the shadows I ascribe to inappropriate or to selfish behavior in my waking moments.
When I was a kid I had these All About books: All About Mammals, All About Birds, All About Reptiles, All About Dogs.
I wish they had not stopped there. What I wouldn't give for a book, All About Nightmares or All About Where To Go From Here or All About Building A Righteous Life.
My conscious walk through the world at the moment feels not terribly unlike those stained, sepia-colored containers of non-being my soul travels to at night and its giving the stoic in me a pretty rigorous workout.
These nightmarish landscapes of bruised realities that settle over a good part of my mornings like an ill-fitting coat are not always easy to comprehend, yet I feel compelled to take the time to probe the All About and the connection between the imagery of my dark dreams and the liberal indulgence of conscience in the wake of my long days.
Many years ago we had our driveway asphalted by this buoyant and wise character named Delacey. He could neither read nor write and for a time my husband, who is a reading specialist, tutored him. One day after watching all the traffic clogging a local road, he said something that put it all into perspective:
"Nobody knows where the hell they goin', but they all goin' like Hell to get there!"
I'm not what you'd consider a 'type A' personality, but there have definitely been periods in my life when I felt that way; that I had no clue where I was going or why but that I was getting there on a souped-up bullet train of discontinuities.
That is not the case anymore. Life has slowed, but at the same time I am keenly aware that in order to move forward in this game, it will require a heavy investment of my best intentions and deepest thought. I've used up all of my get out of jail free-cards and cannot pass Go without one so the game has reached a stalemate.
But as I sit waiting for the bail bondsman of enlightenment to return me to the world of productivity and purpose, I am not idle. My brain is working overtime and taking me to a non-linear zone where thought all but obliterates despair, as well as keeping reality enough at bay that it loses it's immediate relevance.
I suppose that if you're stuck in jail, its better that it is the one of your own making. At least you know your way around the grounds and are on friendly terms with a couple of the guards.
It is not about escape. It is all about building.
I'm confident that at some point form will again be apparent in my life and around me a structure of clear perspectives and sturdy objectives will once more provide shelter for all these quaking doubts to put them at ease.
Yet I realize that the process of building a whole new exterior attitude on a house without any walls is going to be challenging. What will this new building resemble if it appropriately reflects my thoughts?
One thing I do know is that it must have loads of windows and doors without any locks.
I've had enough doors slam on me to recognize the value of open windows and the need for fire escapes. I want to ensure that plenty of air will be circulating my opinions and ideas from the intersection outside Myopia at the corners of Conventional and Dissenting.
In the meantime I've got a foundation to put down, which could take quite a while to set given the importance of making certain that it is a solid one.
And if I remember correctly, the first step before laying any foundation is to start digging and to whistle while you work. Good builders are happy builders.
If I had a hammer....
.....and a shovel and some nails, some two by fours, a rotary drill, reciprocating saw, some self-leveling concrete....
