Floating and Holes

Oh, this death talk. This rainy November morning brings it on. The piercing orange sunrise lining the horizon. All Souls Day, Di de los Muertos. This time of year makes me nostalgic and calm at once. When the trees shed their wares. Secrets are revealed. Leaves float to the street or creek. Through the air, then along the path. Until they twirl into a hole, hit a curb. Replay the dream.

I dreamed last night that a photographer shot photos of my family, but not me, and that is notable, but the  photo shoot happened in the most unique way. I looked at the printed pictures, and instead of 6″x4″ or 5″x3″ as we used to print them up before we all kept them on our phones and devices, were 12″ long triangles or circles or ovals. The images were taken from above and my siblings were lined up in the shape of the printed picture. Line up as a long triangle and looking at the photographer. Or they were in a circle, and the printed picture was circular, and so on. I looked through these beautiful snapshots, all shapes and sizes, and was glad and jealous . Why hadn’t I been there? Had I slept through the photo shoot? Did I know about it? I woke up feeling a bit lonely, and curious. Thought I should re-dream it. Put me in the shots, and in the resulting prints. I didn’t, though. I just listened to the wind come down the mountain. Going to be stormy today.

I am a lucid dreamer. Thus I dream with astute recall and the ability to recreate my dreams if I like. Literally wake and decide to dream them again, re-dream the way I’d prefer. Thus, I’ve been telling dream stories for years, since early childhood, to anyone who would listen. I explain what happened the first time, and then how things changed when I went back in and redesigned the plot, characters, or ending. I can’t do this all the time, but it is fun when I can. Lucid Dreamer.

It gives me the feeling of floating, actually. As if I was present, during the dream, and in it. Floating nearby, watching as a bystander, and ready to jump in if needs be. Catch the bad guy. Stop the head on collision. Replay the part with my mother in it, so I can see her, again and again.

Floating. The floating I do in my dreams is powerful and feels good. Of late, I have watched friends who are floating. And not powerfully or positively. Most of these floaters are grieving actually. Their bodies moving through the motions of their days, their lives. Even their Facebook posts or conversations, work days and weekly chores, are all accomplished as if all was pretty normal, but somehow it as if they are floating beside themselves. A double, a partner, an angel, a coach. Right there beside them all the time. Distracting them.

This floating self whisper provides instructions to the real self. ‘Time to pee, time to say ‘thank you,’ get the steak off the grill before it burns, message Anne Marie,’ etc. The look in their eyes is duplicitous. Cross eyed almost, and far away. Listening to their own head, and the voice of this floating coach. Without whose nudging they might stay in bed, not feed the dog, not go to work. Perhaps forever.

Seems as though friends are losing their young adult children simply too often. A pain no human should ever bear. I have seen too many such deaths to my closest of friends too often lately. I can only feel this grief vicariously. For as well as I feel it with them, for them, by them, there is no knowing, no going through the floating partner visage that encapsulates them in another world. One friend said he was ‘alive without living.’ The vacant in their eyes resembles the hole that has been dug out of their soul.

They are floating in dreams that are not lucid. There is no waking up and changing things around. No re-design. Only nightmare. Repeating and repeating and again.

Holes

We get holes in our lives
deep round voids
through which things fall.
Maybe moments, memories or
names, they disappear
into long smooth rips
never seen again
or spoken.

We get holes in our lives
pin dots, air vents
that cool us down
or slow us down
or put wind against our skin
a refreshing convenience
maybe or goose bumps
and shivers maybe
or shallow misfortunes

in which we trip.
Holes we fall through
in our dreams
when the path doesn’t recognize us
the pattern’s missing,
there’s no guide or routine
just a meandering ribbon
waving and we follow it
until we wake up
and can’t go back
we are smaller.

We sift ourselves
holding onto the seams
the rest floats down
a nameless stream and we will die less
than we are born
missing pieces full
of vacancies, weary threads
mended, tired afloat
nothing new to know
not a name, not a map
just the holes.