Fall                                                              Harvest Moon

Dreams.  Since the operation, frequent dreams have come my way.  Peculiar, in the way of dreams.  Like standing in the center of a boulevard in a hot, small town, somewhere exotic–the Yucatan, Ecuador, Panama–chastising myself for not taking the shuttle back to the retreat center in the jungle.  Then, I’m in the lobby of the retreat center.  “What?  How did I get here?”  “Sir, you walked in only moments ago.”  “Yes, but how.  Did.  I. Get. Here.”  No answers.  A very puzzled me.

After that there were airline tickets, an airport, a plane to somewhere.

Another, set in a city, somewhere with multiple apartment buildings across from a park with a low concrete wall.  I went in an apartment, up to the flat of an older man.  “We are both quite intelligent, my wife and I,”  he said.  “We make our livings with our minds.”

When I noticed footlong, segmented reptiles crawling along the floor, he said, “Gila monsters.  That’s g-geela, not heel-a.  We find them amusing.”  They crawled all over.

In the same apartment building I found myself calculating selling our current house and buying a large condo.  This place was nice with wood interiors, a large common room and other owners who seemed a lot like us.

More than the content of the dreams though, is their pleasant, exploratory nature, a nature so inviting that I find going to sleep rivalling waking life as an interesting experience.  My dreaming life and my waking life have some inter-bleed.  This is an extraordinary and new experience for me.  You may have experienced it before, but I haven’t.

It’s as if I have two different realities, one somewhat predictable, the other changeable and magical, but both very real.  Real meaning in this case believeable.

(Odilon Redon, The Barque)

These are not hallucinations, I don’t have new ones while I’m awake, rather the images and feeling tones of the dreams offer an alternate place, an alternate realm in which I also exist.