Illusion Of Mortality

On a personal note, my grandmother, after a terribly long struggle with clear-cell cancer (forgive me, but I forget the actual name of it) passed away yesterday. While, of course, I am sad at her passing, I cannot help but be relieved that she is no longer suffering, for she had basically wasted away to nothing in the end. If I am unable to get to everyone this week, I do apologise in advance, for dealing with the funeral plus having to go out of town later in the week will make it busier than normal. I suppose, in that, it is good.

While the events of the preceding day helped urge this post onward, I had been thinking about this for other reasons, especially with the reminders of mortality in my home, art and photographs mostly, but a pervasive sense of such things seem to creep around this place. Maybe even around me. I often wonder if the illusion is our mortality and what awaits is the real journey, not that this is insightful at all, since so many before me (and I am sure after as well) have their views on afterlives. My thought is the wonder if it is all the extension of the same life... no before, no after, just differing fragments of the same soul, and perhaps we are just not evolved enough or perceptive enough yet to discern or handle the actual reality. I think that some might be able to perceive a little of it, some of us (like me) can perhaps imagine it, or at least explain an imagining, and some are so connected they seek to get to that reality as quick as possible.

I think that mortality is comforting in a way, too. We know that whatever we have experienced here will end, at least in the way we conceive it. And for some that is simply the way it is and always will be. For some, they must have the darkness of hell or the wonder of heaven. Others are simply reborn, sleep, or fade into dust. Others move on and take the next step, maybe even a necessary step to a higher consciousness. So much in this universe is unexplained and unexplored. It would be a shame to waste the knowledge, the material on an illusion of finality. Now, this does not mean I am excited or looking forward to my transitional stage, for I know the heartache that would be left behind, but I am comfortable with the inevitable. I may not be able to understand all aspects of the journeys I have undertaken beyond anything but fragments of dreams of worlds forgotten, but I still have time (as we understand it) perhaps to seek to understand, as I have always tried to do, or have done :)

C.

Cycles Of Dreams And Other Apocalyptic Ramblings

This could or could not be my last post for a little bit, only because of the vagaries of hotels and whether they have wireless internet or not. Still, I am leaving for Orlando and Megacon tomorrow night, and will be on the road until Wednesday, and dealing the convention the rest of the weekend, so my blog contact might be more minimal than usual. I will do what I can, of course :)

I wanted to get something in before I left for Megacon, and I felt I simply needed to write, especially after some of my early morning dreams and strangely ethereal day (if that is the proper word for it). I sort of felt in a haze, maybe it was the damp weather, maybe shaking the effects of a continual waking dream, never knowing if I was awake or asleep. Worse, the subject matter was not exactly standard: allowing the end of the world, or an end to the world happen because I could, or at least that is how it seemed. Every time I fell back into the mists of this abbreviated slumber, I felt like important questions were posed, ones that I had to answer to avoid whatever fate I created. I knew I should have cared, but maybe a part of me realized the dream, or maybe it was more a metaphor than anything else, as dreams of such things often are.

What troubled me most was the loss of connection I felt... my loss of connection to the universe as a whole, the loss of understanding I have at times reached, and as many times rejected. Still, I could always feel the connection, lingering in the background, the echo to my soul reverberating across the void of time, space and life. I did not have it in the dream, severed beyond all repair. For the last few years at least, I had this fail safe. Last night (or more apt, this morning), I did not. It is that time of year I must admit, though. I feel the regression all too much at times, the memories welling in the dark of the subconscious. I see them again in the void of dreams, and perhaps they were waiting, the metaphor of the world I was ending. Of course, I could be a little paranoid, and just be reading into more than the simplest of things: a dream and nothing more.
I hate the feeling, though, and I had to let some of it go in words, or what I do understand, am connected with, could be hampered. Indeed, the release of the words to the page (er, screen) has eased the burden somewhat, restored some of that connection... or perhaps it is just placebo for a psychohypochondriac :)

But you will be happy to know that most of my friends were spared when I obliterated the world in my version of the apocalypse... I suppose that would include some blog friends too :)

Well, I should get some sleep... I will try not to wipe out the planet, or galaxy, or universe in my dreams.

C.

Empty Dreams of Empty Nights

As long as I was on the subject of insomnia, lying awake waiting for the wolf of the middle of the night to nip at my heels, I thought I would add another piece about lying awake and thinking of all the wrongs in my life and the what might have beens. Still, writing this has helped me understand that I can use those what might have beens to help understand what is and what may yet be.

'Emptiness'

'Hope is a waking dream.' --- Aristotle

I lie awake wanting the image to come back to me,
yet knowing it will not.
If I could reach to you again,
perhaps we might both forgive,
yet I know you will not.

I linger in the restless night hoping for resolution,
but knowing it will not come.
If you could understand what I feel
then we might both let go,
yet I know I have not.

I lie awake, but your image fades
as I knew it would.
If I could just sleep,
perhaps we shall both meet again,
yet I know we will not.

C.

Fitful and Waking Dreams

I might have mentioned certain insights into my dreams at one point or another and the simple fact I dream a lot, not daydream, though I will zone out now and then, even while doing something like blogging. I mentally multi-task a lot, and my dreams reflect that type of activity, meaning my mind has trouble slowing down, or shutting down so I can get some real sleep. The following are a couple of 'dream' related poems that touch on the good, and sometimes ill, of dreams (I also have two more related poems, but not quite, more dealing with empty hope, and I will address them another time).

Strangely, the first poem was not really a result of a dream but a hangover turned concussion. I had way too much to drink many moons ago and wound up passing out briefly on a friend's driveway. When I staggered inside and finally passed out, it turned out to be more from the bump on the head... turns out the concussion cured the hangover. Still, I woke up refreshed enough to write the first poem, which again illustrates to me the weirdness of inspiration. The second poem had something to do with me whining about love and the forms love takes in dreams... pretty traditional inspiration by comparison.

'Fitful Dreaming'

'Some see the world for what it is, and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not.' - Robert F. Kennedy paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw

It is the fate of the fitful dreamer to forever question
For good or ill, they ponder;
Restless in slumber, tireless in vision,
But lost to tomorrow,
Sometimes forgetting today.

The fitful dreamer knows the lessons of the past;
The joys and pains they recall.
Hoping for the best, expecting the worst,
Trapped in the cycle
That is the burden of today.

What, then, is the place of the fitful dreamer?
Wanting for long ago and far away
Lingering in the ebb and flow of time,
Yearning for futures gone,
Confined to the tragedy of today.

It is the fate of the fitful dreamer to forever question,
For they can see tomorrow
When many cannot even fathom today.

'Waking Dreams'

'Tis too late for me to know,
What an end lies within my sight.
Your image continues its haunting;
You are my burden within the night.

'Tis too late for me to hope,
Movements and forms beyond tomorrow.
Lost in a cacophony of thoughts,
Becoming then an instrument of my sorrow.

'Tis too late for me to love,
For you are but a dream.
No amount of longing makes you real,
Even if real is what you seem.

C.