Owly Night

Tonight has began owly and ends owly, but not just the same.  And when I dug around for a definition of owly, I found two different definitions to match each part of tonight.

One definition comes from the authority of the Oxford Dictionary.  It defines owly as someone who resembles the qualities of an owl, especially an owl’s unflappable calmness.

The other definition also appears in Oxford, but is more common as slang.  That is the irritable, cranky, and irrational man…or as likely…woman.

So strange that two very different human qualities can be expressed by one aloof animal.

I know the irritable and cranky animal all too well.  One that refuses contemplation and calmness.  It is much easier to be seen (usually seen marching away in some opposite direction in my experience) than it is to be heard.  The cranky, irritable owly doesn’t seem to have much to say.  Anger is the answer.

But…thank you sweet baby Jesus…there is the other owly.  Now I can’t say I have found many examples of this other owly in human form recently, but the calm soothing pleasure of owly calmness calls once again — airily, peacefully — from outside my window.  It is my Screech Owl and his … or perhaps as likely … her tremolo call that completes this night so nicely.

Unlike my human owly, this owl prefers to be heard rather than seen, and softly heard at that.  Just being present seems to be enough.  It is a calm presence, one sure of its place out there in the world.  Quietly marking its contentment with a soft call, evenly spaced in the night, the owl invites one to dream.

I see no reason why people cannot be the same.  The owl acts by its nature, people act by choice.  But perhaps people are too complex; perhaps they cannot choose the peace they seek.  In that way people are sad creatures, prone to mistakes and loss.  They are also wonderful creatures, however, with opportunities for great happiness and contentment.

So why is it then that we most often associate “owly” people with the more cranky connotations?

I’ll think about that as I let my owl call me to sleep.

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Quick Notes on a Dream [Draft]

I have been dreaming far too richly.  Dense, substantial dreams.  Thoughtful dreams that feel like I really am going to a different place in my experience.  The past maybe.

Do I look like a man upon whom time has taken a toll?   No, I think it is only a slight attack of time that has me.  Time and memory.  These comforting dreams of which I write, with their strange, gentle sadness, seem too close to me now.  That’s all.

And I think I am figuring it out.

These dreams stand out because they utterly lack frustration.  They are emptied of any worry.  And I dream that I am entirely present and seen.  The dreams make sense maybe because I want them to make sense.  The melancholy is a welcome refuge.  Calm.

That is quite unlike my real attachments, which feel distance and receding.  The more I try to recapture them, the further they abandon me.

I have been caught in a trap, caught in this almost surreal frustration which I cannot square with my experience.  I want to fix things and reason with irrationality.  But I can’t.  It isn’t my problem to correct.  The dreams, on the other hand, feel as if they answer that frustration.  Or at least they give me an opportunity to see an answer.

When something really matters, it is difficult to let a mistake go unanswered.  But often pushing to correct a mistake hides that mistake.  The pushing becomes the issue.  Stubbornness doesn’t help.  That won’t turn back the clock.  There is only going forward.

Perhaps two paths that have separated will meet again.  And perhaps while along that path the mistake will expose itself and be corrected.

Where there is time, there is hope.  And in time I might be seen and understood.  My dreams might catch up and meet me here again.  I am still here.

 

“Each of us had a dream the same night, and each dream had a meaning of its own.” — Genesis

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Troubling Dream?

What the Puck…

A dream I had last night makes me a bit uneasy.  It was a dream unlike any other I can remember.  And the fact that I seem to remember it so clearly also seems odd.  Usually I retain blurry fragments and impressions of dreams.  Not this time.

It is an odd dream because it is the type I think you might experience at the end of life.  And that’s why I am questioning if it should be a troubling dream.  Or maybe it is an odd dream because of how strangely the dream felt emotionally.

In this dream I had a perfect sense of satisfaction and peace.  In a word, I felt like I belonged somewhere and I didn’t want to leave. I experienced a very real emotional fullness that must otherwise be eluding me.  It was a good experience.  An eye-opener, perhaps, because it was all so easy and simple.

The dream occurred in a surreal world that compressed many parts of my life into one moment.  The setting was familiar mix of all that time I spent in school, by the way…I experienced this dream on a college campus even as things like work, home, and travel spun into the mix.  Many of the people and images in the dream were familiar, too.  Of course nothing was literally like my waking memories, but it felt like my psyche was simply dumping all of these pleasant symbols and moments of my past in a long narrative for me to experience.  (I wonder why?)

The dream was like one of those “my life flashed before my eyes” experiences.  I awoke disappointed that it was over.

Then I started to wonder…Why that dream now?  Maybe I should stay in bed today.  Or should I expect big things?

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My Love for You is Ruining Me

I often dream that I am alone, back in a place where I lived years ago and far away from me now.   I don’t know how I get there or why I’m there, but I am back and I a stranger full of memories.

In a typical dream I am nervously, uneasily walking by myself.  My legs are weak.  I feel anxious, almost panicked, too.  My ears hum and buzz and I really cannot hear anything clearly.  My eyes rapidly seek everything, but find nothing.

I don’t know which way to go until I find myself wandering into my neighborhood.  I lived there once, but don’t live there anymore.  I recognize no one and no one looks at me.  But at least now I know where I am and it frightens me not to belong.

As I walk deeper into my dream, I see many more people, happy and active people, like I was when I lived there.  But I don’t have a place there anymore.  Everything has changed.  I look around as if I should walk right into where I had been and be home again, but I can’t.  No place is mine.  It is a sad dream.

I have thought about what these dreams mean and I have an idea.  It is an idea best described by a torn relationship that I am sad to see go away.  It is about a couple I knew for their easy, happy love for each other.  And now it is all but entirely lost.  There isn’t much to do.  It isn’t my business.  And like my sad dreams I see it unfold in a slow and confused way, distant and lost.

Stress has taken her away from the relationship.  Some fairly heavy experience has hit her and she isn’t good with that.  She feels the weight of the world coming down, pressure from all sides closing in upon her.  Work and success overwhelm her.  Even old lovers demand her time.  She says she is no longer available.

What can he do, he asks?  Too much stress, she tells him.  She needs space to escape and get away, she says.  So he offers the space and escape they once had together.  It makes sense to him.  But she says no.  The more he tries to go back to where they started, the more she pushes it all away.  He pursues her, tries to reassure her, but there is no space for him.

When I look at this relationship I see myself moving through my dream.  My lonely dreams bring me to places of my past because I am unknown and unseen — I am unattached — in a place that was mine.  I have lost something now and my dreams send me back to these distance places to experience that loss.  What else could explain the feeling of loss and emptiness when one dreams of home?  I experience my loss as a place that no longer has room for me.  I dream these dreams precisely because I don’t feel that I belong.  That makes sense, doesn’t it?

What is a broken relationship if it isn’t a feeling of not belonging?  It is a connection that once existed and doesn’t anymore.  It is lost.

So I think I understand my lonely dreams, the feeling of sadness they convey.  These are dreams of lost love, one of having no place with another person or memory or feeling.  Lost wandering is sad, it’s bad…it sucks.  And in my sleep my dreams work it out for me, bringing me back to a home that is no longer mine, and let’s me walk it off.

If dreams stem from reality, you never really awaken from a dream.  The truth behind a dream is always there.  In this sense dreams are very real.

So I wonder if my friend’s partner might not feel the way I feel as I wander through my lonely dreams.  Perhaps she feels like there is no place to go, no way to escape, and thus she has no place for him.  But my friends are not dreaming.  On the contrary, they are very much alive, although perhaps not entirely aware of the lonely mistakes they make.

My friends, losing a relationship they started and shared, can reclaim the truth.  They can close the distance that has come to separate them and still live a happier dream.  I believe that.  They still touch and hold each other, still see deeply through living eyes a life with a soul that longed for the other.  This at least isn’t a dream, but it will become one. One day each will awaken with a memory hanging to a dream.  Whether it becomes a sad dream or a beautiful one is none of my business.  But I believe we wander seeking happiness and I hope my friends seek happiness, too.

A New Approach to My Blog, If Not My Life…

How long will it last?  And what will you talk about?

Talk about that carrot stub, the piece you didn’t finish and planned to toss into the shrubs the next morning for the rabbits and the squirrels.  Talk about that.

Tell people how disappointed you were to discover two mice chomping on it when you woke up in the middle of the night and went into the kitchen for a glass of water.  You thought, Damn mice!  All because they were eating a stub of a carrot you saved for squirrels and rabbits that they might not find anyway.

And where did those mice come from?  Never saw those before, did you?  No.  Maybe they were not really there.  It was late.  Maybe nothing chomped or nibbled or stole from your saved carrot stub.  You can still talk about it.  Talk about it in the morning, when you get up, after you see first off if you remember the mice and the carrot stub.  Often you forget these things.  And they go away.