Dreamer and Observer

Highlights of the week: noticing that it’s no longer completely dark when I walk to work; the blue glow on the horizon; the wind that seems to suck the breath out of my lungs; the swirl of snow that is by turns graceful and desolate. We’ve had a few blustery days, and I absolutely loved it. These are the times when I really feel that I’m here, way up north, somewhere in that mind-boggling spot near the very top of the globe.

Had a few very vivid dreams this week. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had vivid dreams. I’ve always taken dreams as both an escape from and an intensification of my current reality. I’ve never really thought of interpreting my dreams, but this week, I’ve learnt a few things about myself, or at least I’ve found out the directions I should strive toward. I need to take risks, live bravely, and protect the scared little girl inside of me, the one who feels as though the world could only do harm, and that she has no one to turn to for shelter. How do I regain that bright-eyed innocence, to a time when the beauty of the world was unadulterated, not tinged with hurt? I want to laugh long and hard without irony.

I’ve made a list of random things that make me smile and focus on the miniscule moment of the present: ice crystals under a dark fish-belly sky, the green-gold eyes of a kitten, the flow of words that issue forth unbidden, the tranquility within me when I play the piano, the poetry of Plath, Cummings, and Roethke.

Sometimes, I yearn to be able to go back to school, to sit through lectures that inspire me, to live in that world of ideas, to forget about everything without. However, there are times in my classroom here, when there is such an intense lull of concentration, that I say to myself, “This is what it’s like to be alive. This quiet, uneventful moment, when everything is as it should be.”

The sky is clearing, and it looks as though we’ll have a beautiful weekend. I need to burst out into the sunlight. People have noticed that I’m the most unobservant person when I’m out and about in town; they are right in that I never see who it is walking or driving around. I do, however, notice the bizarre cloud patterns in the sky, the shadows on the moon, the muffled sound of wheels on snow, the raven sitting atop a lamp-post.