Monday, September 14, 2009

Love & lucid dreaming

A lucid dream is a dream in which the sleeper is aware that he or she is dreaming. I find this a very interesting phenomenon. I've never been able to pull one off for more that an instant before waking up, but there are supposedly techniques you can use to prolong your dream while you are aware you are dreaming. But what if you are in a lucid dream and you feel like you will never wake up - what if you are trapped in a lucid dream?

A lucid dream is the best metaphor I can think of for what I've experienced over the past couple of years. I fell in love with someone with whom I intuited would probably not return my feelings, in spite of getting along well and having many things in common and having a happy facility for creating beauty together. This last part especially caused me to develop a feeling - a beautiful dream - of what it would be like to have a romantic relationship with the man. And the dream is so beautiful that even when I was ex-communicated by the one I loved - I can't seem to fully wake up from the dream. I know it's a dream - and yet I keep dreaming. I do occasionally get glimmers of hope for the attainment of full consciousness - sometimes I hear the alarm clock in the distance, sometimes I feel my cat hitting me in the face, sometimes I can smell the coffee, but I just can't quite attain full consciousness.

And while the struggle continues I pour the dream into art - poetry, fiction, plays, even music. Because I find it diverting and therapuetic, but also because it would be good if something besides anguish could come from this freakish grey netherworld. And perhaps I may even one day realize with my full emotions as well as my brain, that in fact it did turn out for the best - the art I derived from the experience was far more worthwhile, much more real, than any sure-to-be-fleeting happiness I might have had from an actual relationship with such a person. And so the process continues.