The nature of dreaming

 

When I was a child, a very bizarre child, I read poetry. When other kids were preoccupied with cars, celebrities, the latest trend or fashion, I was worried about Gustavo Adolfo Becquer and Pablo Neruda.

Reviewing those verses and finding beauty in the words, how they were constructed and the experience that ran through those syllables, like thick nectar that stuck to me and kept me awake at night. Writing something beautiful and listening to rhythms and sounds clip clopping against the roof of my mouth became an obsession. I had no life outside of my head, I was not allowed to have friends or go anywhere, so I constructed an inside world beyond my imagination.

I travelled to Machu Picchu with Neruda, and watched Condors glide along the snow capped cordillera. I was enthralled by Gustavo Adolfo Becquers’ verses of love and fervent passion, I longed for someone (anyone) to show me that they cared that much about me. So misdirected was my self esteem and self worth, so squashed was I that some dead dude was more important than the here and now. I clung to anything for survival. But I am not saying this to be pitied. It has resulted in a depth of passion for poetry and literature and music that continues to accompany me every day of my life. I have probably created neuronal pathways that others don’t possess.

I am simply invigorated by words that sound like thunder while they speak of thunder. I am moved to tears by words that exude hunger and passion and lust; I am drained of tears when deep unconditional love is proclaimed and spent, simply spent emotionally. I am convinced that I feel much more deeply than other humans. Accused as I have been of being “intense”. That’s ok. I like my intensity. It will keep me alive until the actual day I die, rather than wither in old age and bitterness. I’d rather be dead, for sure.

I love descriptions, turning images and feelings and networks of senses into words. To express the unbelievable rush of nature, or the fugue state we briefly experience before we find out our crush is only human and incapable of communication. The delight of ice on our tongue, or the height of an orgasm. The rush of knowledge and the gratitude of teaching another human.

Helping someone out of love, the absolute tide of love I feel when my children say they love me. How to express the layers of emotion. Not only the love, but the regret for my lost childhood, the pride of breaking cycles, the overwhelming joy of being in their presence, and the knowledge that I am important.

The calm of love never-ending that has no conditions, no payment. Not transactional, or guilty, or bad.

How do you encompass all of your feelings and memories and reasons into one image. How do I tell of those whales and what it meant to be gazed at, so briefly. Like I was touched by every era and time period. Like I was going back and forward in time. It was a memory and an experience and a dream that was real and fleeting, and yet cold, and wet, and dark, and light, and invigorating, all at once. Like a flash of alluring music, like a taste of the heaviest whisper. Like a touch from a song that hung in the air and embraced me in a blanket of cosy freedom.

How do I explain that I could almost hear their song, I could almost see their desires and their journey. I needed to follow and be in that moment. How can I recall and be present at the same time? That is how time travel is possible. By reviewing and playing in our neuronal paths. Eagles flying alongside swimming whales, and kisses falling into the deep ocean beneath me. Lost in the darkness of eras of wasted days.

Culled by experience and age. Tainted by years and digested by nature. I can’t hold these things all at once. I am unbalanced by the clashes and the dichotomies of sound, image and emotion. The memories of beauty and dread and violence and sin. The height of passion and the depth of despair competing to elevate and depress at the same moment in time.

Paradoxes that bind me to this world and stir a hurricane within me, a whirlpool that shall be extinguished while persisting to the end. Futile, and yet so worthwhile. Pursued by few, and yet guarded by centuries of thought and wonder. Arise and create. Forgive, accuse, pardon, aid, compete, revise, refrain, regret, attune, portray and light a roaring fortress of explosive life. Words are like peppery chillies in the deepest pathways of my brain.

Poking and setting alight my senses. Awakening dormant lies, as well as revealing truths laid bare by the day. To be repaid in life would cleave the stones of madness in my mind, would restore the statues of Anubis I carved late at night. Would redeem the demons and guard my dreams.