Dreamed some dreams

“A DREAM NOT INTERPRETED IS LIKE A LETTER NOT READ.”
— The Talmud

Last was a night of serial dreams, each building on the tangled mysteries of the one before. There was big sky, and journeying. There was an impossibly tiny stream and a dusty, broad road that earns the title of a trespass, as it forced a run alongside it. Yes, I said force. If that gives you pause, you may be unaware of the personality traits of waterways, that some welcome the paths that trace their every liquid curve, becoming roads. Some are flattered by such close attention, and others want no companion, no ardent fan to copy their every fork and dip and turn.

I know my boots kicked up dust along said trespassing wanderway, and judging by my sore soles on awakening, I walked miles and miles. One dream had me singing to the glinting snake of a river, cajoling and encouraging it to flow bigger, stronger, to make itself known against the green grasses that stretched away on either side.

The next dream, much more detailed, had me tiny as the river, a miniature woman in clothing that was elfin, or medieval, or some odd mixture of the two. The mini me was weaving blades of grass that were long and wide and heavy to my tiny hands. I remember the aches in the little dream hands mirrored the particular complaints that have settled in my hands in recent wide-awake life. I remember asking my dream self if perhaps this was the real life, and the other one—with its hours of daylight and driving and washing tea mugs— was, in fact, a dream. Ever industrious on some level, elfishly clothed me was weaving a wee canoe from the grasses. I think both dream me and awake me must’ve laughed at that. Miniscule woman, she of the teeny tiny shoes and the pointed hat, constructs transport from a weave and weft of grasses. She makes outsized plan to embark on an epic journey down dust speck river. As soon as she finishes her grass boat she hops in, tosses her plans into the breeze and allows herself to be flowed, because even little Who* sized people know Truth when they see it; we don’t push the river, we don’t freeze the wind.

There were other dreams surrounding these two. I know because I awoke with a mystery of dirt on one elbow, and some scent of lavender in my nose, and my first quick glance out the window caught a tendril of green, a curling thing, hanging from the just-dawn sky. Second glance showed no such thing, but that is The Way of it, after all. We only see what we are ready to take in, and even then it hangs around only as long as we Believe.

–Melinda Coppola

*Dr. Suess wrote a marvelous tale about Horton the Elephant and his startling realization that he was the only thing standing between the destruction of an entire colony of speck-sized people and the continuation of their peaceful way of life.  https://www.teachingchildrenphilosophy.org/BookModule/HortonHearsAWho