8-21-04

Woke up on the couch to my favorite black & white film, Nights of Cabiria, recalling a dream that was stuck to my memory. It was strangely vivid, and an odd concoction of the days thoughts and conversations. It was warm and comfortable, easy and natural….as though all too real…yet I was fully aware in the moment that it was just a dream.
But…the setting…
A tree-lined hillside in Spain, overlooking a vast ocean, on a patio built of huge, aged stones. It was an extension of a kitchen with wide open doors where long white linen curtains hung, regularly kidnapped by the billowing breezes and falling gently in random perfection. There’s a Tuscan air to the place, yet more colorful, more gypsy-like, wind chimes chime, whirly birds spin with the push a cool gust. A weather vane with a quirky animal on top teeters and turns. The sky is too perfect.
…I find that I referenced this place in my dream because of a conversation earlier in the day with Brendan about a subjective and ideal heaven. My opinion being that if I believed in heaven, I wouldn’t mind ending up in a place such as I described. But then again, I felt that because I am so indecisive and have fallen in love with so many of the places I’ve seen so far in this world, that my ideal heaven would be the ability to be a part of all the places that I adore. This place, however, was no disappointment. It was a luxury, if only for a brief moment.
So….
I am there, at my picnic table that seats thirty, with its weathered cobalt blue paint, and I’m serving pasta salad (that in real life I just made days ago). My closest friends and family abound…smiling, laughing, eating watermelon and pasta and berries, and Lhasa is playing on an old radio that buzzes a lovely buzz. Her voice calls out in haunting song, and I swoon with delight as she sings a favorite tune…
El Pajaro
Mírenme, a la vida vuelvo ya...
La la la ...
Pajarillo, tú me despertaste
Enséñame a vivir.
En un abismo yo te esperé.
Con el abismo yo me enamoré.
Pájaro, me despertaste.
Pájaro, no sé porqué.
Joy is there, with her two beautiful sons, and once again they can be a family. She bears no scars of her tragic death, only the smile that I always knew so well. I felt as though I would cry, but there was no sadness. She was happy, and all I could be was happy for her.
Then the music stops, and there is a strange, yet comfortable silence. No one is bothered. Then slowly, a murmur builds, then chatter, and then the roar of conversation and laughter once again. All the while a cloud of hazy reminder hovers, whispering in my ear that it is all just a dream. But I ignore.
I turned around for some reason, in a full circle, and suddenly the world was black and white. And at the end of the picnic table, at a spot where I noticed quite intensely that the paint was especially chipped away by the weather and years, sat Luke and his best friend Jen. They were singing a Peter Murphy tune (another remnant of a conversation past). The song I recognized, but couldn’t remember the name, but has the catchy chorus that goes “You know the way, it throws about, It takes you in, And Spits you out….”, and so on. Jen was ethereal in a way, strange since I’ve never even met her. But she had this distant, magical quality. They kept on singing a great Peter Murphy, and I just watched. I watched like I catch myself doing all too often…gazing in intensity, quiet and unassuming, trying to take it all in. And it seemed obvious that I would catch his eyes, and they would lock me in to a stare, and I caught myself drowning in them as I always do. The world around me black and white….his eyes the only thing in color.
And in an instant, without warning, my surroundings are replaced. On my Cliffside, beside an infinite stretch of sea, so blue I was temped to leap from my rock and join the fish below. But I stayed, and sat under the only tree on the hill, in the cool shade, watching the crystal swells roll in and out. In the next moment, a goat wandered up, with its throat cut and blood running down its white neck (this was no less a manifestation of the screenplay I had read earlier that day about such a goat, with its throat cut). It wasn’t dead, or even dying, but I wanted to help it and I couldn’t. It sat in my lap, and I held it close. But just as soon as I had it in my arms, it was not a goat, but Kira. No cut throat. Looking at me with her soft eyes. And of course in her playful way, she got up, and ran off to meet with Coty. I was at ease with my dogs there, by my side, protecting me as always. I knew they were happy too.
I was in a place that could not let me feel anything but ease. I was content.
…There was more to the dream, but the last I remember was the dogs playing on the hillside, the tree at my back and the sun on my face.

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