Do you often revisit the same dream landscapes? To a point that you feel that they have become a real neighborhood in your life, not just one in your mind? I do.
There are train stations, vaguely New Yorkish, where I have memorized that I need to go up a certain staircase if I hope to make my connection on time (make of that what you will) and mysterious houses, vaguely Victorian, that recall my childhood homes more than the actual structures ever could.
All this to say that I am not someone who is, at any given moment, one hundred percent certain if I am dreaming or awake. It isn’t practical, but it is a part of who I am, certainly in the present circumstances.
For they are hazy and there is a lot that I can’t quite share with you in order to respect the privacy of this particular transition. Parsimony is required. So I am not lying nor hiding, just doing what I can, when I can. It has been nearly an entire year of unfolding, waiting and seeing while clasping the reins of action nonetheless.
I know where I am without knowing at all. The surroundings that I recognize so well and yet that are not mine for the taking confirm that, mirror a bit mocking if I take it so. At best, I observe and enjoy. And I am aiming for the best, no matter where that path will take me.
In an hour, I will leave for a real not dreamed train station for a trip of short distance. There will be a 45 minute wait in which I will watch the passerby and wonder if they ever feel the same about their lives or if they are tucked up tight in the swathes of certainty.
The sun is bright. I feel it on the tops of my hands as I type in a way that reminds me that I am wide awake. Right in this very particular moment, I don’t need to look to the past or ahead. Can I just hold it like an inbreath, this croisement between dreaming and reality? This sweet gift of now?
Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.
Thank you so much for reading along with me during what is admittedly a quiet time.
But there is still much beauty to be found…and revisited.
I am grateful for that, always.
Heather!?!????….Now, what the hell is all this about?…I thought expatriates-with-blogs were supposed to make me feel dissatisfied with being me-here rather than you-there.
In any case (and quite sincerely)?…..you do seem to be deeply in "Four Quartets" land. that's a not bad place to be in, of course; I've been there several times, myself, over the years.
Do take time to read the following…..:
“…So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time…”
“Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate – but there is no competition –
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business…”
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea….”
—-T.S. Eliot. From “The Four Quartets”
fondly,
Uncle David
Beautiful pictures Heather! Simply lovely – makes one want to go traveling – with you setting the photographic itinerary! Xoxo from Northern California
Your photos are amazing. You should do calendars or something.
I've also had the is-it-real-or-a-dream thing. I dreamt many times of a dark, dank place, feeling good there despite the fact that I could see almost nothing. And there was another place, usually in the same dream, that was all glass and filled with sun. Then I went back to Africa a decade after having lived there. And I realized the dark place was a little seed shop with no windows (and no lights–just the sun from the front door). And the sunny room was at a hotel. They were real. It made me wonder which other dreamscapes were just lost memories.
Your pictures are, as ever, sublime.
And I have some sympathy for the feeling of being here-not here-there-not there. As Ram Dass said, we're all just walking each other home.
Such strong writing, Heather! It made me feel as though I was in a dream myself as you flit through the story, not quite landing anywhere firmly. Anyone who feels they have their hands on the reins of certainty is in for a rude surprise, as life is anything but that. And while I appreciated the warm sun in most of your photographs, I loved the last one the best for its overcast sky and the sheen of water on the cobblestones.
The attitude of gratitude is so empowering…
these images and your words mingle together so brilliantly today Heather.
XO
you can. enjoy the journey.
Beautiful photos and I know what you mean a bit about those places that were yours and then weren't and then are again but not…
I'm sure as the girl on the train you'll make better stories than The Girl on the Train 🙂
This is ripe for Jungian analysis as he mentions these areas we revisit! I have dreamscape 'hoods too. I have certain houses that I see and they obviously mean something but it could just be me doing imaginary decorating…I think train stations meant more to Freud if I am not mistaken.
lovely photos and meditative prose. My all your journeys lead to serene and happy destinations