Dreams Are How We Haunt Ourselves.

Dog Ear: Oct. 7, 2024

10/7: In my fear, I forgot I was capable of scaring someone & oh, yeah, I probably play like I know, like I know what kind of traps I set, what kind of homes I make & all I say is, Oh baby, my voice sounds different in my head. I mean it the way I heard it when my body was even smaller - the kind of free that small can be, unnoticed w/ small shadows. I mean it the way it sounded in the movie, when I said someone else’s lines and walked off set, unfinished. It seems I’ve always been just too deep inside myself, echoing down my own halls, locking myself in every bathroom. Beyond the door, I sing secluded and deluded. The whole world leans in to listen, saying, What are they doing in there? My secret river w/ the open window, open curtains, open sky. 

I always felt there was something sick about that, the way I grew into every space I was in, for better, for worse, for parties and funerals and wastes of time. My web stretched in the corner of the doorway, the one you walked through on your way in, the silk of me. Must I apologize again?

My heart has been beating harder lately. I think it wants to be seen. The surrounding stillness is getting to me, and the sugar. The stillness and the sugar daring my heart to wheeze when pushed too far. Excuse me, sorry, I was carved out of a powerful womb and my heroes have been squashed like bugs. This lace pattern of pain is compulsive this time of year, is second nature, is a shroud, is a funeral for what will never be, like tradition. In dreams, I go there. I live w/in what I have released, and it is sad to wake up w/ that intangible loss, unrealized yet unarguable. Dreams are how we haunt ourselves. 

I release it all again, the Futures we dare call possible. Today in October, I dare. I dare compassion to come out of its corner for I am not afraid of being scary anymore. I do not fear myself anymore. I live bullseye to bullseye, broken thing to broken thing. I crash against sharp edges & lick them smooth, enough to break free, enough to move.

I went to Portsmouth and visited artists in love this month. Their tiny apartment, covered in art, overflowing and alive. Their whole lives on the wall, their lives in one small city since the 70's, primary colors though colorblind, competing desks and artful mess. Collecting photographs and masks, shells and googly eyes and heart shaped rocks. A life dedicated to color and meditation, to worshipping and decorating life. Something to live for - the inevitable change

My power is there, in the exceptional love I believed in as a child, in the exceptional, idealistic love I believe in now. I have tenderness for it all, today, as all tiny things must. I write this thinking of your eyes. 

I think I thought I’d have it all eventually, the way children and dreamers do. That every heart that landed inside mine would make its own home there, that all over the world I would go, carrying us all and going it alone, through full and fragrant cities. Always missed & never missing. I thought my colors brighter, bolder, bleeding through. I thought of you, thought you felt me when I thought of you. In fact, I still do. I dream of doors, of masks, of eternity. Shifting landscapes and secrets and corners all tight, my shoulders against your thighs & the way the stage is always lit. There is touching and there is hostility. There is the blue jay outside my window.

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I am awake now to the words I couldn’t say before though my hands move right through them. Generations of fear rooted in and bloomed into anger. My feet firmly in the dirt and a shit-eating grin, two guns out & I’m saying, You don’t talk to her like that. Growing older means alchemizing, means bending in the wind and making room for it all. The anger & surrender, layered transparencies losing detail & the sharp focus of Now. I grow crooked w/ you, around you, despite & through you. Little mirrors fallen in the dirt, I see you. You see what you want to see, don’t you? 

Growing older means changing colors & believing in what you always knew was true. It is, it’s all true. I am scary but I am a safe place for loving, even when our language is gone. I too, am scared of what I don’t know. I don’t show up where I’m not invited. The vampire at your window scratching the glass like the empty hands of trees, saying, Tell me what I mean to you - be specific, be explicit, be alive or nothing at all. I’m ashamed to admit how often I lose my own meaning, how tiny things often do. How I wrestle w/ eternity.

You find me. I will be living quietly & leaving pieces behind. I will reflect the sun just right. I will show up in your dreams. If I am looking in your eyes, I have already forgiven you. If you can hear me, you are free

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A page I dog-eared from my Nightmares & Morning Pages series ~ thank you for reading ~

G