I Know This Place

Cindy J Kaiser

It is a filtered and fluttering light.  Gray and golden.  Soft and unassuming.  My unfocused eyes strain, struggling to understand where I am.  My brain rushes from the dream and all it’s details, kicking into gear.  Revving up.  Where am I?  My fingertips push and probe befuddled eyes, encouraging them to do their job.  I know this place.  Smiling, yes I know this place. I am home.  My body relaxes brushing against the stretched out cat.  Stretched out where Cathy used to sleep, enough time ago that I don’t expect her but not enough time ago as to be memory.  A stack of unread books blocks my view of time.  Blinds gently lift allowing entrance to a breeze that has found its way.  Yes, I know this place. 

Our home.  One of the ours that still remains.  Our home.  Our trip.  Our friends.  Our is still around, making an appearance for shared processions and experiences and people. Our lingers still.  We is further away, sliding to the back of the room.  Rushing forward when I am distracted or tired or lost, then quickly and with some embarrassment and confusion, retreating when the error is realized. Us too has drifted away.  While I don’t think in these pronouns anymore, they have not yet been replaced with the still timid and immature my, me and I.  Currently without pronouns.  Pronouns temporarily out of order.  Please check back.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  I am between pronouns.  I am between worlds.  That one and this one.  There, where she finds herself and here where I am situated.  Do I have a foot in both places or am I casting about in neither?  I am not sure.

Have you seen that TV show Awake?  The one where the detective is living in two worlds – one in which his wife is alive and his son is dead and the other where his son is alive and his wife is dead.  All brought about by a car accident.  But not to worry he is seeing a therapist in both lives and each shrink is certain the other is a dream.  A manifestation.  The detective is comfortable in both, not overly concerned with which is real and which is a dream as he uses clues from both places to solve otherwise unsolvable crimes.  He grieves in neither place, knowing that very soon he will again be with the one who is missing.  What is it to be awake?  Fully awake? Words that come to be mind –alert, engaged, sensitized, observant, stimulated, and I suppose conscious.  Eyes wide open.  But my eyes are wide open in my dreams.  I move in that reality not questioning scenes that transition from floating in pulsing waters to flying through the evening sky.  It is as normal as walking down the street or driving a car.  I don’t question the small owl in the corner or the appearance of the dead.  I welcome the ability to open locked doors and spin absent the laws of gravity.  Which is the awake?  Why are we so certain that the dream is the manifestation, and this other reality?  This other the awake.  

Perhaps they are both real.  Like the detective story.  One here the other there.  Dreams giving us glimpses of where we are headed when we leave this earthly place.  Clues as to what to expect when bodies are shed and the laws of science and civilization no longer have any bearing.  When temporal earthly existence becomes the distant memory of the womb and what once was the dream becomes our fully awake.

Yes, I know this place.