Thursday, July 20, 2017

Dream Drained




I cannot adult today. I can not do it.
I woke up from a dream that was mostly good and sweet about a huge celebration in Roseland at the old elementary school I attended which is now a little museum.


The building where I learned to read and to sweep, two of the most valuable learnings of my life. 

The details uncovered from my subconscious were rather amazing and despite the fact that I kept losing track of my husband, my baby, and my two little brothers, I kept finding them again. They were selling seedlings of the tree which I spent many, many recesses walking on the roots of- yes, in real life that's what we did. We walked on the roots of a tree and talked. That tree was our favorite piece of playground equipment and the second favorite one was the cement top of the septic tank where we played jacks.
This dream celebration had food and drinks and antiques for sale. There was to be an exploration of the river by moonlight.
Children were playing in the branches of a different tree and I laid on my back and took a picture of their dangling legs and the leaves and the sky from below them. They were so happy in that tree.
I told people about Aunt Flonnie, who had been our bus driver and our cafeteria cook. I remembered working in that kitchen, sweeping out that bus. I remembered Aunt Flonnie's generous bosom, her generous soul, her black Cherokee hair, her strong, strong arms.

All of this has left me dream-drained and exhausted as if my memories had been pulled from me with delicate force and now I am as woozy as I would be after a surgery.

I am going to stay here, in Lloyd, in my own house and yard and porch with my cats and my chickens and listen to the chanting of the crickets as the heat builds and hang out my clothes and simply let myself drift back in time and at the same time, be here now, and I don't know whether to laugh or to cry but as Joni Mitchell said, sometime's it's the same thing.

16 comments:

  1. What a beautiful old school. Mine didn't look that nice -- much more institutional! But I have similar fond memories.

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    1. Mine was really beautiful. And honestly, I have some amazingly horrible and painful memories from those days in that school too but time has let me see them through colored glass, as it were.

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  2. Ah dreams -- they can be so real, realer than life sometimes. Give yourself lots of space to move out of it slowly, as it works its way through you, as you gradually move back to here and now. The past is so far away, and yet it can be with us in a second, as real as it ever was. I think I won't die from this comment. Becky

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    1. Becky! You did it! I am so proud of you! And thank you.

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  3. Such beautiful reflections mixed with fear of losing the people you love. Yes, be gentle with yourself today. Sending love.

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    1. I was SO gentle with myself today. Trust me. Of course now I feel guilty but whatever.

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  4. my dreams have been many and vivid too but leave me almost the second I wake, just leaving me the feeling of a busy dream night. and yes, sometimes I have wondered which life is real, the waking one or the dream one. maybe both. maybe in the dream life we dream of the awake life. it's been hard to pry me out of the house for weeks now.

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    1. We who live where the sun is brutal have our hibernation season in the summer. I truly believe that. We will come out again when the temperature drops and the humidity does too and every trip outside does not leave us panting and feeling as if we have the vapors.

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  5. I too find that places where I spent time as a child (my elementary school, my parents' house) are often settings for dreams.

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    1. Yes. But it's funny. I NEVER dream about Jr. High or high school. Ever. What's up with that?

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  6. You talk about walking on the roots and talking, reminding me that we, too, had such a tree in our elementary school playground, and we walked those enormous spreading roots endlessly, and played marbles in their dirt oases. How nostalgic such dreams can make us, the sweetness that was, that is forever past. Rest up, today, my love, and contemplate the sweetness that still is.

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    1. We are sisters, somehow, you and me. We played marbles too, but mostly in the dirt roads of Roseland where few cars ever passed. I have a little jar of marbles I've found in this yard, every one a jewel of someone's childhood. I wonder if those former children dream of this house?
      And honey, I sure did rest and am going to bed early too.

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  7. I'm a firm believer in not "adulting" when one simply cannot. At this stage of the game, have we not earned the right to be whatever we feel like being? Do kids still play jacks I wonder? Used to be my favorite thing in the world! I fancied myself the world champion. XXOO

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    1. I doubt kids play jacks anymore. That game was so addicting. I loved it too and always wanted to get better. I actually have a set. Now- can I sit on the floor and play the way I used to?
      I seriously do not think so.

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  8. I dream a lot. I work swing shift so sometimes I have to take sleeping pills to sleep. I don't remember the dreams when I take them, but when I don't take them I do. Been a lot of weird ones too. I have to ask...I know you live in FL....are you talking Roseland by Sebastian? I am from Vero Beach, transplanted to Springfield GA.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.