L'aura del Campo

Awakening

L'aura del campo

LATE AUTUMN: 1 Masa'il (12 December) 37º.

'é a lua, é a lua, na quintana dos mortos'
♣ Federico García Lorca ♣

A dreary day, but mild for December, so no complaints! Finished tutoring for the semester. Nick has his exam tomorrow. The book they read is well written, intriguing, at time very entertaining. It also has some hidden wisdom:

<<Yo soñé que soñaba. Y despertaba del segundo sueño, del sueño soñado, y decía: "Ah, fue un sueño", y creía estar despierto. Quizá la vida sea eso, un sueño metido dentro de otro. Quizá la vida sea el tercer sueño concéntrico del que uno despierta cuando se muere.>> Camilo Canegato, en Rosaura a las diez

"I dreamed that I was dreaming. And I was waking from the second dream, of the dream I dreamt and was saying: "Ah, it was a dream", and I thought I was awake. Perhaps life is like this, one dream placed within another. Perhaps life is the third concentric dream from which we wake up when we die."

I find this has deep personal meaning as I have awakened from dreams only to realize I was still dreaming. I remember as a child being frightened because I couldn't wake up. It has happened since, but rarely.

The last four years have been devastating for me. Trauma is not the event but how the body responds. In some ways I've been lost in a dream. It's why it is so important for me to notice what is real around me (the things I can see, hear, touch, smell ...) Someday, I may send a friend this letter (fixed up and edited of course. Note: I've done editing since I first posted it here. Mostly to correct rhythm. The essence is the same.):

A letter to a friend:

'awakening'

The day is misty and the moisture wraps me in warm blankets begging me to sleep, but I feel as if I've just awakened from a nap. I'm groggy, but I still suspect that I've been sleeping these three years past, maybe more, perhaps a lifetime (yours at least).

It's time to let go the dreams I wove to protect me from reality. The cost of living dreams has been a loss of living life and I need to live sometime before I die. I hope in waking you will still be there and care enough to call me friend. But the fog must end and I must wake.

Yesterday the afternoon gleamed across this glacial hill, the chill of winter's day subsumed by sunshine. In the calm I sauntered to a house that I had been invited to and found the writers I had always sought gathered upon square pillows strewn across hard floor. Here tales were told and verses shared. I shared. I spoke because I could, because I should've long ago. My voice was welcome there among the choir. Too bad I never knew this growing up. Perhaps I've grown a bit at last.

Aghast, enough to realize, that I had dreamed you as a butterfly and then encased your fragile wings in ice, inscribed your beauty in sweet words, killed what could have been a friendship all this time. If I had only let you fly, I could've written of your flight.

And I realized that I had lived my life through dreams, unwilling to accept the coldness of reality. With clarity now know, that there have been a few who would have loved me if only I had let them; that in spite of everything, there are always those who never value what rare gifts I have to share. I should've learned to care, more for some and less about the others.

Now what of you ... to let go of dreams means waking to the soul you really are: father, brother, son, but not my kin. Yet, only cells that live beneath my skin lie closer to my life vein. So what to do ... pretend that in my dreams I wove a story that somehow played out in the real world, perchance had changed it, nudged it, just a tad.

So sad this waking, this welcoming of cloudy skies that part to let in sunshine. The moisture brings back smells that I've forgotten and the memories that travel with them. I hope your day smells good and the memories you weave today you'll cherish during moonlit dreams and the daylight of your life.

Next time I hear your laughter I'll be present. I'll even ask the questions that I've not been willing to have answered with a 'no'. I'll know it's only you doing what you do best, 'being you', and not some figment of a nightmare trying to disturb my dream. It'll seem to everyone that all is just the same. But we'll know that while I slept, that something changed.

I've dreamt you as a lifelong friend beyond the reckoning of fears. Three years have passed and I awake and there you are as I imagined you. You speak and laugh and I laugh with you. [163.470]

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 Kare Enga