Dream: "If you can imagine to dream, you can imagine to write..."

I had a dream last night. My friend says that it sounds a lot like Inception and if I ever watch it, I'll feel like one of the victims. It was like my brain was trying to give me a peptalk, like my brain does want to write.

I was in this room with this person (in the room she was a girl, but later on it was a guy, and then a girl again, so I just say "they" usually) and they wanted me to climb this bookshelf. I tried several times, but all of the books were perched on only half an inch (the shelf was only half an inch wide) so when I would try to grab, several books were in danger of falling off. I told the person that I couldn't get up it and they said it was okay, we'd find another way to get in there. I didn't know where "there" was, but I went with it.

Then I was outside at a gas station and walked up to the person (now a guy) who was filling his motorcycle with gas. He finished and went in to pay, telling me to get on the bike. I did and then he got on behind me, wanting me to drive. I was nervous because I'd only briefly driven once before, but onward we went. The paved street turned into a dirt path and went into the woods. I really didn't know how to navigate now, debating between big rocks like a Maine hiking trail or a narrow dirt path, ended up going with the path. The guy kept saying, "See? This is a dream, if you can imagine to dream, you can imagine to write." We kept going and the path kept getting harder, so I was going slower and slower. Finally we reached a drop-off, and luckily I could stop in time because we were going slow enough. He said, "Okay, we have to get in there."

We got off of the bike and slowly slid down the cliff and he said again, "If you can imagine to dream, you can imagine to write," and we landed in this little doctor's office type room. One after another these doctors kept coming in talking about how they were going insane and the person (now the girl) would lean over and say again and again, "See? This is a dream, if you can imagine to dream, you can imagine to write."

"Beach Ride"

“Let’s ride to the beach!” I said, one foot touching the ground and the other poised on my bike pedal ready to take off.

“Which one?” Dad asked.

“We haven’t gone to Headlands for a little while,” Mom said. 

And off we went. Usually it wouldn’t be safe to have a conversation in the middle of a street, but ours was different. The strip of pavement serviced only two houses, first our neighbor’s yellow sided one and then ours with darkly stained wood, before dead-ending into the woods. The water line was aimed up in the air after our driveway creating a fountain which would coat the branches of a nearby pine tree in ice come winter. 

We turned right, onto Jordan, passing the old baseball fields. They hadn’t been used for baseball for about twenty years. Now they were the grassy meadow home of a herd of approximately forty deer. As we rounded the curve–proclaimed by black arrows on reflective yellow signs–the field turned into an old pine tree farm. The precise rows occasionally sullied by one of the sixty foot giants crashing down to their grave. 

The pine trees gave way to the wet marshland that surrounds our little island of sorts, tall reeds reaching up and bushy cattails swaying in the breeze. Most people didn’t think of Headlands as an island, but there were two ways to get to it and both required you go over a bridge. It just wasn’t as obvious because of the surrounding marsh which just looks like four foot high grass. Every few years some stupid high schoolers will catch the marsh on fire. The fire spreads with incredible speed through the dry tops of the reeds, sending up huge clouds of black smoke. But then it just grows back.

We slowed our bikes to turn right again. Headlands Road used to go all the way along the shoreline with grand houses overlooking Lake Erie, but then the houses on one side started falling into the lake and soon several sections of the road followed, leaving only a fragmented remnant of itself. I started testing my brakes, just to be sure they wouldn’t fail me. We were about to go down the hill and I didn’t like losing control of my bike and crashing, which had already happened a few times. 

Right next to the road was the sledding hill which would become littered with children in winter but was currently serving as the hangout of several pairs of Canadian geese and their growing goslings. My parents flew past me, peddling on the downhill, racing to the entrance. I glided at my more leisurely pace, swooping around the curve and onto the bridge over Shipman’s Pond. A couple of boys sat on the edge fishing and a man and his wife paddled further out in kayaks. 

Rounding the second curve, the beach entrance came into view. The highway literally dead-ended into the beach entrance so I was careful to check for absent-minded drivers flying past the stop sign. Swerving past a family of ducks waddling from one stream to another, I finally caught back up with my parents. We wound our way through the parking lot, being careful to avoid the sandy patches before stopping for our final reward–the rocky pier stretched out and was finally crowned by the white lighthouse with red roof. The sunset spread across the sky, reflecting in the unusually calm water. A hush fell on the beachgoers as the flaming ball dipped to it’s final farewell.

Tree Thoughts

I've been thinking lately. About trees, careers, dreams, growth.

We have different stages of life. That is good, but stagnating is bad. It's the people who seem frozen in one stage that concern me. I have a friend who has had several different careers. Every six to eight years he would switch to something fairly different. From engineering to sales to being a triathlon race director to being a lifeguard to being a paramedic to being an account manager. That is the kind of life I want to live.  That is the kind of life that it seems you would look back on and feel the least amount of regret.

I love climbing trees, but there is one here at school that just is leagues above the rest. It is my absolute favorite one to climb anywhere. From the outside it is a perfect "tree" shape, a rounded out triangle. From the inside it is a maze of intertangled branches forming almost a spiral staircase. As soon as you know which branches to duck under and which ones to climb over, you start to see all the possibilities. There are branches that are perfect for looping you arm around and taking naps, or standing, reading, sitting, lying down, and the list goes on. The leaves are all on the outside, creating a green dome around you and the branches cradling you sway as the wind rustles through them, sending down a swirl of little green helicopter seed pods. These create a carpet at the base of the tree, a perfect nursery shaded from the sun's fierce glow where inch high seedlings begin to unfurl.

I want to write. But (as you may notice from looking at the blog archive dates on the side) as soon as the semester’s class let out and I stopped getting assignments to write, my mind has been functioning as a black hole, sucking away any idea fragments that slide past and funneling them into far away oblivion. That’s not good. It really doesn’t bode well for my dreams of writing. Why can’t I just be inspired enough to write on my own? I also feel that I can’t write anything good on purpose (even when I can get words onto paper). If there is anything good, it’s a complete accident. I’m walking into a major that will definitely stretch me and teach me a bunch of things that I need to learn and that’s great, but also very daunting.

I have this problem. I think it comes with being an extreme dreamer. I’ve also heard that it is related to my personality (INFP creating the acronym I Never Find Perfection... hmmm...). Whatever the case, I can be extremely passionate about something, latch on to it and pursue it completely, but then once I’ve started getting into it, I get discouraged and lose interest in it, finding continuing on that track to be nearly impossible. Tie that with being incredibly future minded and you get a mess. I really want to major in English–I promise. Really. But right now I’m taking a bible class, moping about not having any writing ideas, drawing out completely useless floorplans, and trying to sort through future plans. I’d like to get my MFA in creative writing (haven’t taken any classes as an English major yet) but I’d also like to get my Master’s of Divinity and become a chaplain at a children’s hospital. That could be my steady job so I could write, too. But my day job was going to be being a college prof. Why did I want to do that again? And why a chaplain? Right now I’m about the last one of my friends that I would go to for advice or counsel or comfort, etc. (Yeah that makes sense, doesn’t it? I detach myself from myself and wonder among my friends and decide to sit down and have a conversation with myself... no, just kidding.) Or I could move to England. Or do all of it, piece by piece. But what first? Oh whatever. Conclusions are elusive and currently irrelevant. Why can’t I just focus? Like on finishing writing the paper that’s due next week? ...

Looking up at the dome of the leafy cathedral