I dream of JulieAnne

25/11/2014: 12 hours (and one tea) later...
IMAGE: tommykane

This is a dream I had about a person who is very special to me. Unlike so many of my other entires, I will not attempt to explain the meaning of this dream. It may speak for itself; in fact I actually hope that for the individuals reading it does indeed say something. It is not a particularly complex dream; in fact I would say that it is refreshingly simple as far as my dreams go. It touched me deeply and this is why I now take the time to write it up.

In my experience: some things in life are just too precious and delicate to survive intellectual deconstruction, and the interactions with the ones around us are probably a very good example of this. So whoever you are, I hope that you enjoy this entry simply for what it is, and what it has to say from your eyes.

The dream started rather abruptly, with myself sitting on a circular raft or wooden board, floating in the middle of the ocean. The water was warm; and it would gently rise and fall but overall was calm and pleasant. Thought I could not see the bottom; I intuited that the entire ocean was no more than waist deep. It stretched on endlessly; and the horizon was bordered at all sides by a range of beautiful mountains emerging out of the water itself. Sitting there in front of me, straddling another floating wooden circle, was the person mentioned in the title of this entry.

JulieAnne and I were talking about life, ourselves and general random nonsense. The words themselves were not the focus, and only with effort could I sense they were there at all. I am not even sure it had any language attached; it was just an expression of emotion and human connection and the syllables were nothing more than subtle diagnostic beeps that indicated both organisms were functioning as normal. We talked and talked; but what we said did not matter. We were just there, as ourselves and that was all that existence was.

I turned my attention to the wondrous mountains that surrounded us. They seemed to just emerge out of the backdrop like icebergs, and though distant, towered over us from the impossible horizon. I imagined one collapsing: the tidal wave it would produce would surely reach us; with the water so shallow. It would wash us away. It could kill us. An intense anxiety ran through me and I became transfixed with the idea that we had to leave this place.

"Aaaaa  aaaa aaaaaa?" JulieAnne asked. It had no meaning, but it told me to come back to reality. I rejoined the conversation and the familiar relaxation and calm came over me. we continued talking. Before long my attention creeped back to the mountains, and once again I worried about what might happen if they started to crumble and fall into the surrounding ocean. And once again, I came back to the calming conversation and forgot all about it. After a time; I decided that the collapse was inevitable and we should really leave at some point. I told her this, and we agreed to swim back to the shore.

We paddled back on our boards slowly, arms and legs hanging over the sides, and continued our conversation, savouring it for every last second. As we headed back our dialogue had started to resemble language once more. It still bore that calming feeling; that representation of the interpersonal connection we both shared, but as the linguistic meaning came more and more into focus, the emotional magic of the exchange drifted ever into the background. We began talking about what we would do once we were back on shore. She had to work, and did not look forward to it. I had to work too; but not till much later. I did not dread it as much as her. We were now almost at the shore line, and people were standing around a wooden landing that was level with the rising and falling waterline.

Back on shore, there was a distance between us, and we both looked out into the ocean; realising we would rather be back out there, floating in peace. The collapsing mountains now seemed like a distant and empty concern, and I am not even sure we even believed it was going to happen any more. We talked about our stresses and our everyday lives, she had patients to treat and I had to sort out what I was doing with my elaborate plans. We parted ways, and I went about the rest of the dream. That anxiety of the mountains collapsing never quite left me: in fact it ghosted me for the remainder of this dream in a very subtle form, and I woke up feeling it too. It had nothing to do with impending doom, I think it was just the feeling of drifting away from another being, and it was the feeling of being alone.

๑

I hoped you enjoyed reading this. Some dreams are best left to intuition, and for once neuroscience has nothing it can tell me that I did not already know. And while that is becoming a rarer and rarer thing for me these days; it is something I continue to search for. Sometimes there is more to be said without an answer than with one.