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~ A Dream of Summerland ~ |
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I dreamed of the most amazing place last night, and all through it, I had this tiny, almost imperceptible feeling that I knew something more than I was supposed to about it. In the dream, there were other people there with me, but they were like ghosts; my eyes just didn’t see them, slipped over them as if they were unimportant. I could feel their presence, their individuality as separate people, all physically near me, but somehow distant, as clearly as you can see the personality of someone across the aisle of a bus. You’re perfectly capable of reaching out and touching them, of looking at them; but you don’t. These people with me were like that. They were strangers, and though I knew they were there, they did not matter, because they were all there for the same reason I was. Although, I did not know why I was there until I woke up from the dream.
It had felt like a strange tour I was taking with those distant others. I felt acutely alone in the group, as if what I was seeing was expressly for me; and I knew it was like this for each of them, despite that we were all being kept together. We were like special guests that know somewhere in the back of their minds that they absolutely do not belong there, yet thirst for more and more fantastic things to see. Though the feeling that it was for a tangible, practical purpose came at the very end, all through it there was still a sense of being given a very special glimpse of some unseen fantastic... place.
There is just no other word for it. There is no other way to encompass it with words. It was just a place. There was nothing that made it feel connected to anywhere else in the universe, but it felt like the rest of the world was there, somewhere; separated from this phantasmal place by a thin veil. You only knew that the ‘real world’ existed beyond that veil because you’d never been anywhere else. You needed it to be real, and so it was.
It was you that made the ‘real world’ real; it was you that made it exist, separately, beyond this magnificent place. And while you wrestled quietly with logic—that this was unlike anything else you’d ever seen and therefore could not possibly be real—there was something about this place that made you absolutely sure it was. Something in the very air seemed to tear logic to pieces in front of your eyes. It forced you to realize that if the ‘real world’ could be real—and you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt that you weren’t in it—then there was no reason that this place couldn’t be real too. And it persisted, this feeling, through every strange amazing thing you saw: Yes, this is real. It has always been real. And when I woke up it was there, at the front of my mind as I remembered misty flashes of everything that place had shown me: It was all real. Without a doubt, it was real.
There was nothing so strange that it couldn’t have been found on earth, but it was the place as a whole that convinced you. From beginning to end, the start just as obscure and blurred as the finish, you walked through the place like a solid ghost, looking at everything with silent wonder, soaking in the timelessness of the place without the slightest thought. You simply knew that this was no place for thought and reason, this place was for seeing, that was why you were there; to see, and be quietly amazed and reassured.
I remember there was a special room before anything else; like a lobby in a very old museum, and the walls were lined with stalls of flowers. Tiny little flowers, of all colors and shapes; the bluebells kept beside the buttercups and the tiny daisies beside the yellow snapdragons, and the pinks beside the purples and the oranges and the blues and the whites. I must have spent an hour wandering back and forth in front of them, passing the same bunches in awe again and again. There were thousands of them, all different, all equal in some way or another. I’ve never seen so many tiny flowers in my life; and all of them were perfect. They were laid out to choose from in a sweeping display that covered three walls, all grouped randomly by color and petal-shape, and bound up into medallions. I remember I turned mine over and over, trying to see how the tiny white snapdragons were tied together so that they managed to hold the shape of firm little discs in the palm of your hand. Each person held one, throughout the whole dream, like passes that signaled we were just visiting. Now that I think back on it, I’m sure that’s just what they were for.
I held mine very gently, feeling the velvety petals in my palm, and the springy give of each of the white snapdragons in the medallion as I ran my fingers over the surface. It was so pretty and so soft, that I wish I could still be holding it, that little disc of flowers. But that place was for seeing, not thinking, and I didn’t think of that. I just curled the silky little thing into my palm, and turned away from the big bright span of little flowers, to face a flight of old wooden stairs that were behind me.
The wood was as dark as chocolate, and the banister was worn smooth and shiny under my left hand as I walked up the stairs. All I remember then was the soft press of the petals in my right palm, the glassy smoothness of the dark wood railing under my left, and the soundless, bare wood solidly underfoot. Those stairs were as wide as a ballroom gallery, and they felt timelessly old, but not one of the steps creaked. At the top, it seemed that the others were already there and waiting to see more; I hadn’t noticed them at all on the stairs. It had only been me there.
As if I knew where we were supposed to be going, I crossed the landing into a long antique hall. It was dark and still and wide, and everywhere was very quiet. As soon as we’d begun moving again, I forgot all about the others, and they forgot all about me as they seemed to fade away into the long hall. They weren’t important; they were just there. I knew they were there, in some way, because there was no feeling of being alone in that long wide dim hallway; but I was there only to see, as were they, and I wanted to see everything there was to see in that place. Almost as if I needed to see it.
There were dark red hangings on the paneled old walls, and big blurred paintings that couldn’t be seen in the dark, save for the dull gleam of their gilt frames. You could tell if you looked at them, even if you couldn’t see anything but smudges in the dark, that they were something wonderful and well-made with a masterful hand, and I smiled a little when I felt how marvelous they were, eventhough I couldn’t see them at all. I wanted to run my hands over their canvases, to feel the ridges and textures the paints had left there, preserved for all time in the shape of something no one would ever see.
And perhaps I might have done that had I gotten the chance.
Instead, something woke me up, not completely, but enough to put a hopeless wrinkle in my dream, so that when I seeped back into it, I was somewhere else entirely. I knew I was still in the same place, but the hall was gone, the dark was gone, the paintings and the hangings and the old panels of wood; all of it was gone. The silky medallion of white snapdragons was still cupped in my right fist, but I hardly noticed because of what had replaced the huge dark hall.
There was gentle sunlight filtering down everywhere, lighting up the moss and grass that covered the ground in a thick carpet. It cast a dreamy green-gold light over everything, and though I didn’t think to look up, I knew somehow as I looked over the little rolling waves of green-covered ground, that I was still inside that timeless building with the big dark halls. The space was like a small park, with the glowing green seeming to settle on everything in sight; the narrow graceful treetrunks scattered in stands everywhere, the shine of light on water from somewhere off to one side, and misting the mossy edges of a sandy dirt path that wandered off ahead and then bent back on itself in a wavy circle all around the place.
I was alone with my invisible guide this time, but there were people here. They were peaceful silhouettes in the sunlight off the rippling water, or wandering almost invisibly along the path. I caught a glimpse of someone who must have been in a wheelchair being pushed serenely through the trees, nothing more than light shadows with bowed heads. There was an almost overwhelming feeling of peace, in the very air and sunlight, though I was sure there would be no sun if I looked. Oddly, knowing that didn’t change the feeling at all, it was still all around me like thick perfume in the air, and a hint of something that told me everyone here was very old and very happy.
I turned away from the rest of the place, and looked to my right.
It was then that I was acutely aware I’d seen this place before; not the whole place, the courtyard with the gleaming water and graceful trees and gentle sunlight, not all that. It was this one corner of the place that I was sure beyond all reason, and I still am sure, that I’d seen it before.
It was just a little curve in the big stone bricks that made up the building, all coated in a bright green layer of moss as thick as the stuff on the ground, so that everything looked like it was draped smoothly in grassy velvet. There was a big oblong stone in the middle of it, big enough that you couldn’t throw yourself across the top of it and reach the other side, and left enough distance between the mossy sunlit wall that you could spread out your arms and just tickle the tips of your fingers across the surface of the moss on either side. The carpet of green looked like it was trying to engulf the rock in the center, and there was only a light gray crown of bare stone on top that wasn’t covered by the moss, which had blended the sides of the rock into the ground like a small hill washed in a patch of sunlight. All over the place there were tender little sprouts of things pushing up out of the moss, topped with tiny pink and yellow specks of flowers, even smaller than the white snapdragons in the medallion. And there was a niche in the side of the rock, at the edge of the soft creeping moss and the smooth flat crown of the rock, that I recognized instantly.
The last time I had seen it, there had been a small white statue of Mary resting in it, and my grandmother in her wheelchair had been dozing in front.
That had been years ago, when I was little and she was dying of a brain tumor. I was too little to understand, but she had been sent in to the hospital again only the day before. My parents hadn’t told me yet, but it was the last time she would ever go into the hospital again.
I was playing outside, waiting for something interesting to happen as kids often do, and I must have fallen asleep in the warm grass on the opposite side of the shed from the house. I woke up to a blond girl a little older than me chasing a little spark of gold light around my head, and when I sat up, I was sitting in the same thick moss looking at the same glowing green niche with the hill of rock in the center. I saw that my grandmother’s chair was sitting beside the rock, and she was nodded off with her back to me, so that all I could see was her neatly curled fluff of blond hair over the top of the chair. As quietly as I could, I came up beside her and put my hand on the arm of her chair, and we sat that way for a while; her sleeping more peacefully than I had ever seen before, and I just watched the way the light touched her hair and the almost-smile on her face. The glossy ceramic statue in the niche was in front of us, and I felt tired as I looked at it, at the sunlight playing off its glassy curved shawl, and frozen folds, and the vague mask of the feminine face. I nodded off on the moss beside my grandmother’s wheelchair in the sunlight, wondering about the little white statue and the soft moss, and happy that my grandmother was back and looked like she was all better.
When I woke up again, it was to the sound of my mom calling for lunch, telling me to hurry and pick up my toys. I complained and dragged my feet, as kids will, and forgot completely that I’d ever fallen asleep on the other side of the shed and saw my grandmother sleeping in that place. I never realized that I’d woken up on the opposite side of the shed from the one that I’d fallen asleep on, and I never remembered that sunny green place again; until I found myself there, expecting to see my grandmother still dozing in the gentle sunshine in front of that niche.
And in my dream, I threw myself against the side of that rock and cried because I missed her. In my dream, I stared into that niche again and again, as if the little statue would appear and I would snatch it up and take it home with me when I woke up. In my dream, I looked all around me, at everything, finally trying to think about where I was.
Then I felt the little flower medallion in my hand. It was crumbling when I held it up; the tiny white heads of the snapdragons were falling off and slipping through my fingers, until I was left with a handful of perfect white snapdragon petals and a scattering of dry twined stems. I knew my visit to this timeless place was over.
And then I woke up.
But when I woke up, I felt the dream lingering, in the way that important dreams do, and I knew that something about it was real. And it gave me a feeling of calm reassurance, thinking that maybe I’d been given a glimpse of what was to come, that those people I never saw were just like me because they were afraid...
....and that they remember the feel of the tiny flowers in their medallion just as clearly as I do.
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 Mitsukeru Furidomu · Sat Nov 03, 2007 @ 08:58am · 0 Comments |
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