dromen

Dreams. My favourite dreams are those that so stick with you, that so implant themselves in your memory and your soul that your waking life is altered the next day; the very day to which you wake is changed. Feelings, sensations, emotions are strange and beautiful things. They can be disturbing and surprising and delightful all at once. Dreams engage your emotio-faculties, sometimes even your physical body. Sometimes I wonder where all the creativity comes from. Today I woke and wanted to return to my dream-world. I couldn't (work was in the way), but all of this morning, dressing, eating, driving, sitting at my computer, I've felt the ripple effects of my beautiful dreams. Just now they're slipping a bit further out of the reach of my conscious, but I can still evoke the memory, and with the memory, the feelings that accompany it; and however diminished the feelings might be, they are still tangible.
How to relate feeling? I wish I could share the warm silken waves in my heart directly, but that's where art comes in. And so, to demonstrate a semblance of sensation, here are some song lyrics and excerpts from literature.

"Did I know you? Did I know you even then, before the clocks kept time, before the world was made..."
~U2, "Wild Honey"
(Hmmm...I've decided that U2 is one of the best bands of all time. I've loved so many of their songs for so long and only recently realized they are all by the same artists. Oi. A little slow on the uptake. "Bloody Sunday" and "Wild Honey" are my favourite songs right now.)

"Turn your eyes away from me, for they have overcome me." ~Song of Solomon (The Bible) ---most beautiful poetry of all infinity, all eternity.

"...Tristan held up his arms to the Princess as she came out over the side [of the ship], and caught and carried her up through the shallows, so that when he set her down on the white wave-patterned sand, not even the soles of her shoes were wet. Now this was the first time that ever they had touched each other, save for the times when the Princess had tended Tristan's wounds, and that was a different kind of touching; and as he set her down, their hands came together as though they did not want it to be so quickly over. And standing hand in hand, they looked at each other, and for the first time Tristan saw that the Princess's eyes were deeply blue, the colour of wild wood-columbines; and she saw that his were as grey as the restless water out beyond the headland. And they were so close that each saw their own reflection standing in the other one's eyes; and in that moment it was as though something of Iseult entered into Tristan and something of Tristan into Iseult, that could never be called back again for as long as they lived. But they pulled their hands apart before anyone...had noticed anything at all."
...."'Shall I tell you the true reason that I did not kill you when I found the splinter lacking from your sword blade?'
'I am thinking," said Tristan, 'that it is best you do not tell me.'
'It was because I loved you,' Said the Princess. 'I was not knowing it then. I was not knowing why it was like a sword turning in my heart when you stood before my father and claimed me for the King of Cornwall when I had thought to hear you claim me for yourself. I was not knowing until you lifted me in your arms to carry me ashore in this place. Tristan, whoever takes me for his wife, whether you will or no, and God help me, whether I will or no, you are my Lord as long as I live.'
And Tristan bent his head into his hands and groaned.
'Do you love me?' said Iseult.
And Tristan felt as though his heart were tearing in two within him. 'Iseult, I am King Marc's man!'
'But do you love me?'
'And I owe him all my loyalty.'
'This man-talk of loyalty means little to me,' she said. 'Love matters more. Do you love me?'
And Tristan said, 'I love you. Though it is like to be the death of both of us, I love you, Iseult.'
~Rosemary Sutcliff, Tristan and Iseult (an adaptation of the Arthurian legend)

"And if i don't make it, know that, I've loved you all along, just like sunny days that we all ignore..."
~Our Lady Peace, "4am"

(The tunes to the musical quotes stir the waters of the soul in the same fashion, perhaps to a greater extent. Loreena McKennitt's rendition of "Prospero's Speech" does the same. I think it's the sorrow-tinged joy that gets me every time.)

Pleasant dreams to you, wanderer...