morethanenoughtruth

This represents a dream entire, set down honestly and without augmentation or interpretation.  It amazes me to learn what passes through a nighttime brain quietly at peace in sleep.

* * *

The dream began as a large convocation of women.  There were seats enough for all, even one left for me.  I approached its hard emptiness with trepidation, not sure it could really be mine.  Several women beckoned, assuring me that it was for me and I was for it.  I felt much better.  A man urged me forward, pressing a round object into my hand.  I opened my fingers and gaped at a gold coin gleaming with a newly-minted shine.  It too was really for me, and I grasped it as if it meant absolutely everything.

No sooner had I taken my seat but the mass of women began to murmur among themselves.  The whispering assumed a life of its own, moving in waves throughout the assemblage.  It lulled and soothed me as I assumed it did everyone in the quiet crowd.  I breathed deeply, relaxed, and waited.  This must have been somewhere in Asia, for the women  were wrapped in loose flowing garments but they didn’t cover their faces and hair.  Interspersed among the nondescript patterned wraps, was an entire spectrum of pastel satins.  These were each decorated with complex patterns formed by stitched areas that enclosed subtle puffed strands of down, slightly elevated from the base surface of satin.  I appreciated the beauty and nuance of the designs.  They were non-representational though conceptual in the abstract, and they spoke to me, as they must have to any with eyes to see and admire them.  One by one, the satin attired women rose and progressed toward the exit doors.  One by one they passed through and out of sight.  They moved slowly, not looking back.  I watched and wondered what this meant to me, to each and to all of us.

The last woman moved toward the portal.  Unlike her sisters she sat, a graceful form riding a long square beam.  It appeared to be approximately 2” x 2” x 20 feet in length.  It was made of wood but responded to the woman’s weight as if demonstrating the rigidity of steel.  There was no bending, no sagging.  Two young males dressed only in loin wraps carried the beam bearing its load at each end.  The woman sat gracefully, one hip hitched over the beam, her ankles crossed modestly.  I tried to assess her age, but she had none, her bearing appearing ageless.  She sat, head up, shoulders back, each arm a graceful cascade flowing down to grasp the beam.  Her dress was a shimmer of white lace, the skirt drawn toward the ends of the beam so as to display the exquisite handiwork in unabashed splendor.  I looked at her face.  It was merely skull and translucent skin; a parchment overlay depicting all the expressions impressed on the face of a life completely lived.  This woman had fully inhabited the trail of her years.  She had lived each step in totality.  Even her raiment, once the same as her sisters, exquisite satin hieroglyphically textured, had been transformed into the living energy that moving relative to time universally creates.  Only essential structure remained, as lovely bones and the bare skeletal substrate of fabric, once satin, now preserved structurally as swaths of sentient lace.  The woman rode, proud and serene, and slowly passed from view to a place woven of her own desire and imagining.

I lifted my hand, a gesture of farewell and longing.