(no subject)
I have this reoccurring dream. I didn't have it for some time, but lately it's found it's way back to me.
In the dream, I live in a house, space sparse and walls feeling closer all the time. The structure and standing of the house has sometimes changed, but still, the house remains unmistakable. No matter how different the walls may sometimes look, what they enclose is always the same and thus the house has never changed. When i was younger and would have this dream, I'd lived in the house my whole life. As I've gotten older, my patterns of habitation and migration, marked by a year to year lease cycle, must have crept into my subconscious. Thus, I've lived there for almost a year. Maybe two or three.
One day, anxious and pacing, I notice a nook to the left of the front door that I have never seen before. From there I notice an attic and latter, or a stairway heading below to floors I never knew existed. Downstairs the ceilings are high, and the rooms are enormous, the amounts of space exorbitant in each(which seem to lead only to more and more rooms with equally exorbitant amounts of space). From there, doors lead into hallways, some flat and some leading further down, eventually making mazes that instead of forming circles and squares, seem only to create more and more space.
Worlds inside of worlds within these expanses of space, and within each world so much worthy of wonder. Vestiges of things who lives have gone, but essence lives on. Books, binding worn, pages stained, tightly pressed with petals between-- secrets waiting on each page, waiting to be lifted from their graves. Photographs, black and white, stained tea color with time, each extracting something transcendent, resplendent, so unique to the small fraction of time that they encapsulate. Each a time and place which will never again be inhabited, yet whose essence remains as present as ever (it;s presence never began, and never will end, only weaves in and out, resurfaces, reconfigures, disperses into new lungs, binds the breath of everything that is, has passed, or will come to pass);
There are things sketched and painted, gifts sewn and stitched, things made by hand, initials scratched into wood by young and wide-eyed loves. There are letters, handwritten, words upon words upon words and words. Stories stretching endlessly between lovers and loved ones, weaving their way through one another's lives.Stories formed from the same as all others, only their rhythym and placement having changed. Stories who've spilled themselves all throughout the room, evaporating, soaking through my lungs and skin, and taking root within. Even something so functional as the furniture, antiquated as it may be, the care in carving still so apparent. The deposits left by former occupants still suspended like a fog.
In the attic, a record sits on the turntable, like it's been waiting for ages. Flowers are dried out and strewn from the ceiling. A warmth rises from the radiator below. The space stretches farther than I could have ever imagined. The record is covered in dust, and when I release the needle it crackles like the hum of a fire. When the music begins, it burns like the flame itself. Rising like spirits, scattering from the heat. An old, old song. An old, simple song. One I've never heard, but always felt, just beneath my skin, always known it like the breath in my lungs. The songs that made homes inside my bones, singing like they've finally been set free.
Downstairs, there's a door leading in a direction i've neglected. In the attic, there is a window in the same direction. Just outside of each, there's an early morning stillness. Still well before sunrise, the slightest light leaking into the sky. A sea of stars, falling and fading into a boundless expanse of salt and water. A sea of tombs for the lights of last nights sky. Their brilliance burns from deep below the water. The waves are hushed, and the sand grows still and soft. I notice the wind. Soundless in itself, invisible and without weight. But somehow it continues to fill my ears with sound, create sights that scatter across the sky, help the sea to rise and pour across the shore. Right now it's soft, it's presence subtle. Still, it is always there, always everywhere, the world as it's vessel.
As I make my way onto the shore, I realize that none of this is new to me. I've known about it all along. The rooms, the shore, all of it. It just became buried, somewhere in the clutter, somewhere inside of me, somewhere long ago. I've been seperated since.
I also remember something else: Soon I'll have to leave. I'd decided to move weeks before, not knowing what I was leaving. They then decided to destroy the house and everything in it. How could I have forgotten? My bags are packed inside, and the trucks will be here soon to begin the deconstruction.
I lay on the beach, neath a newly forming frost and a gust cold enough to harden the stars as they fall. No matter how hard I try I just can't keep myself from slipping into sleep.
And then, I wake:
A bed and four walls.
Salt still on my skin, but no sign of the sea.
A curse still coursing through my veins, but no recollection of the song that set it free.
In the dream, I live in a house, space sparse and walls feeling closer all the time. The structure and standing of the house has sometimes changed, but still, the house remains unmistakable. No matter how different the walls may sometimes look, what they enclose is always the same and thus the house has never changed. When i was younger and would have this dream, I'd lived in the house my whole life. As I've gotten older, my patterns of habitation and migration, marked by a year to year lease cycle, must have crept into my subconscious. Thus, I've lived there for almost a year. Maybe two or three.
One day, anxious and pacing, I notice a nook to the left of the front door that I have never seen before. From there I notice an attic and latter, or a stairway heading below to floors I never knew existed. Downstairs the ceilings are high, and the rooms are enormous, the amounts of space exorbitant in each(which seem to lead only to more and more rooms with equally exorbitant amounts of space). From there, doors lead into hallways, some flat and some leading further down, eventually making mazes that instead of forming circles and squares, seem only to create more and more space.
Worlds inside of worlds within these expanses of space, and within each world so much worthy of wonder. Vestiges of things who lives have gone, but essence lives on. Books, binding worn, pages stained, tightly pressed with petals between-- secrets waiting on each page, waiting to be lifted from their graves. Photographs, black and white, stained tea color with time, each extracting something transcendent, resplendent, so unique to the small fraction of time that they encapsulate. Each a time and place which will never again be inhabited, yet whose essence remains as present as ever (it;s presence never began, and never will end, only weaves in and out, resurfaces, reconfigures, disperses into new lungs, binds the breath of everything that is, has passed, or will come to pass);
There are things sketched and painted, gifts sewn and stitched, things made by hand, initials scratched into wood by young and wide-eyed loves. There are letters, handwritten, words upon words upon words and words. Stories stretching endlessly between lovers and loved ones, weaving their way through one another's lives.Stories formed from the same as all others, only their rhythym and placement having changed. Stories who've spilled themselves all throughout the room, evaporating, soaking through my lungs and skin, and taking root within. Even something so functional as the furniture, antiquated as it may be, the care in carving still so apparent. The deposits left by former occupants still suspended like a fog.
In the attic, a record sits on the turntable, like it's been waiting for ages. Flowers are dried out and strewn from the ceiling. A warmth rises from the radiator below. The space stretches farther than I could have ever imagined. The record is covered in dust, and when I release the needle it crackles like the hum of a fire. When the music begins, it burns like the flame itself. Rising like spirits, scattering from the heat. An old, old song. An old, simple song. One I've never heard, but always felt, just beneath my skin, always known it like the breath in my lungs. The songs that made homes inside my bones, singing like they've finally been set free.
Downstairs, there's a door leading in a direction i've neglected. In the attic, there is a window in the same direction. Just outside of each, there's an early morning stillness. Still well before sunrise, the slightest light leaking into the sky. A sea of stars, falling and fading into a boundless expanse of salt and water. A sea of tombs for the lights of last nights sky. Their brilliance burns from deep below the water. The waves are hushed, and the sand grows still and soft. I notice the wind. Soundless in itself, invisible and without weight. But somehow it continues to fill my ears with sound, create sights that scatter across the sky, help the sea to rise and pour across the shore. Right now it's soft, it's presence subtle. Still, it is always there, always everywhere, the world as it's vessel.
As I make my way onto the shore, I realize that none of this is new to me. I've known about it all along. The rooms, the shore, all of it. It just became buried, somewhere in the clutter, somewhere inside of me, somewhere long ago. I've been seperated since.
I also remember something else: Soon I'll have to leave. I'd decided to move weeks before, not knowing what I was leaving. They then decided to destroy the house and everything in it. How could I have forgotten? My bags are packed inside, and the trucks will be here soon to begin the deconstruction.
I lay on the beach, neath a newly forming frost and a gust cold enough to harden the stars as they fall. No matter how hard I try I just can't keep myself from slipping into sleep.
And then, I wake:
A bed and four walls.
Salt still on my skin, but no sign of the sea.
A curse still coursing through my veins, but no recollection of the song that set it free.