Monday, September 1, 2008

While Sleeping Dogs Lie

So, I'm hopping around in my flea-like existence, contemplating only the mat of the dog hair before me, singing the song of some memory of a swim or a drowning (I'm not sure which),when Seda asks me if my memory is bittersweet and I tell her no... it's just a dream.

A good one? she wonders.

No. Not good or bad. Just a dream I had once, and the water was not cold and not hot in my memory now because whatever it was at the time, there was disagreement when the swim was over and the dog and I had a different idea of the temperature.

Oh, she says. That kind of dream.

Yeah, I tell her, and it's like this: if I can't know that an experience in my most full and alive moments in this realm is ever actually shared, then what, in fact, has been my experience at all? If it is only my own -- and lonely, lonely that drip, drip sound could be! particularly in retrospect, the full view of its singular solidarity unto itself -- then what difference is there between waking and sleeping?

There is no excitement there, I tell her. No longing or urgency or wondering. Just a smattering of light whose infinite shadow I once stepped on in one plane or another. The memory only prompts an awareness of the ethereal nature of my very flea-like existence. It points, in it's recovery, to some grander, effortless jump to which my tiny legs do not wholly belong.

All in a dream, while sleeping dogs lie.

4 comments:

Seda said...

It's all a dream, anyway, the whole schmear - I guess. Seems like there oughta be some kind of shared experience from time to time, though.

I shared some with you. :-)In a tub, for instance, with the jets going wild...

Kristin Krebs Collier said...

Goodness me, that's true... but lest your last line strike the general audience as too saucy, let's fill in the part about the fact that I was in the transition phase of giving birth to Sam when the jets went off sending us both into peals of laughter....

Thank you for the many years of laughing, dearest friend.

Anonymous said...

Yes, my imagination jumped on that one, but the birth story is more funny. So Sam was born in a hot tub. Hm. That explains him.

I'm not sure it's a dream though. Sky thinks it is. In my dreams I get to breathe under water. No breathing underwater here in the real world!

But the lack of shared experience thing is definitely a weirdness.

You know, girls, for several years I ran a lucid dreaming institute in CA. I guess a good way to test if you're dreaming is to try to breathe underwater. Dreaming while aware that you're dreaming is a totally groovy experience.

Well, dream or not, I guess we should try to remember to breathe.

hmmmmm--I can smell the chlorine...

hugs
me

Seda said...

I loved the look on the nurses' faces when we came out. I don't think they were used to women in transition screaming with laughter...