10 Instances of a Recurring Dream
A poem for Unstable Illusions, and something for the new year
Today for the first time I will read a poem I wrote out loud to an audience. It’s this poem, and it is based on a dream I had as a young child about a disintegrating stagecoach stop we sometimes visited on wanderings through long stretches of empty desert. To me, it was a house, and I didn’t understand that the conversations about my aunt living there were in jest. The chimney was real. I think there were once yellow gauzy curtains snagging on splintery window frames. I couldn’t tell you where it was or why, just that when I dreamed of it, the structure was tiny and we carried around for unknown reasons.
We roasted marshmallows in the fireplace on Christmas Eve, in that old house out in the desert, the one beyond an overgrown dirt road. We sang most of the songs we knew, saving some for next time but there was no next time because wind erased our tracks and when we found the house again, the walls had disappeared.
We roasted marshmallows in the fireplace on Christmas Eve, ignoring the TV’s monotone noise in a house that didn’t have running water. We left a string of lights plugged in too long and they scorched pretty crescents under the eaves. We thought we were lucky the house didn’t burn down that night but it did in the spring. Lightning.
We roasted marshmallows in the fireplace. That’s what I wish to remember about it. I want to remember us there together, laughing, giving up on keeping our fingers clean. Instead I remember a wall crumbled down to its last couple of feet, the embossed outline of a foundation pressing under my shoe, and a fireplace standing naked, proud blue sky stretched wide across its back.
We roasted marshmallows in the fireplace and burned the house down. Burned it right down to the ground. Burned it until there was nothing left except rock and mortar and stubborn hunks of glass. And brittle bed springs that snapped without resistance between my fingers.
We roasted marshmallows in the fireplace, in the room with yellow paint and small windows. I dripped melted sugar on the wood floor and my sock kept sticking to that spot even after I spit-cleaned it with a finger. I’d show you where but the floor is gone. The yellow is gone, too, because there was no one around to keep the door closed, to keep the wind out, to keep away teeth that chewed and pried and digested everything except stone.
We roasted marshmallows in the fireplace after making popcorn on the stove, using the burner next to the skillet where we kept the house we found in the desert, the house we brought back with us, the one with walls that turned from yellow to pink in the middle of the cast iron. I waved at the other me through the windows when I saw her through white cafe curtains with big red polka dots.
We roasted marshmallows in the fireplace with hot sun blazing in a bleached sky because we forgot matches and there was no wood left to burn in the house that had already burned. We held sticky clumps on ends of unbent coat hangers in the shadows of the fireplace where flies wouldn’t fly. I got a sunburn and sticky hair, and I couldn’t wash up until I finished stirring everyone’s popcorn on the stove at home.
We roasted marshmallows in the fireplace and a plan was made: she would live here, my aunt, with her green headband. She would move to this house we found in the desert, the one no one was taking care of, and she’d adopt it, raise it as her own. I liked the idea as long as we didn’t have to share a birthday, me and the house. I would have liked it even more if my aunt had showed me how to keep a headband in place all day.
We roasted marshmallows in the fireplace. My aunt was wearing slim green pants that ended above her ankles and a white, red-belted halter top that tied at the side of her waist. Her hair was short, divided over a green headband, and she smiled because we were doing it, we were keeping the little house warm. We had to keep it warm, to keep it from burning like the popcorn from last week. It did, though. No one kept watch through the night. Our clothes smelled like burned house for weeks.
We roasted marshmallows in the fireplace, outside, under the stars, while the house in the cast iron pan got hotter and hotter until the roof was on fire, until the walls were on fire, until the only part that was not on fire was the boxy chimney. I wanted to carry the pan across the kitchen’s white vinyl floor, through a little mudroom to the backyard but my fingers stuck to themselves and refused to budge.
Over on Instagram, I’m drawing from commenters on this post to give away a 3 Insights - Artist Intuition package that includes a tarot reading and a piece of original art created just for you. All you need to do is share a fun resolution. Mine? Make some fancy desserts. Might just be two, might be a dozen.
When I was 41, my husband intro-ed me to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy“. The premise of the book is “The answer is 42” and the main character searches for the QUESTION!
I won’t do a spoiler alert - it also was a series on PBS if it’s still available.
MY question was simple but consuming: what had I wanted to do but either felt I couldn’t or just never got around to. Time was flying by, I thought .
TO SHARE MY NEW YEAR IDEA, I must first share some of the ”risks” I included:
I compiled a list of 42 thoughts and randomly chipped away at them. Many were small but several were - at the time - unthinkably large and maybe unattainable. But with a lot of will I found the ways.
* I learned to swim 🏊♀️ (well, go the length of the UW pool without holding on to the edge).
* My husband had motivated me by offering a vacation of my choosing based on beautiful water. Lots of people suggested Mexico, but for the same price I found a charter to Tahiti(Morea) - the water of Gauguin - pure joy AND the saltiness kept me afloat!… BONUS travel agent unbeknownst to me scheduled us on a “charter” - turned out to be on AIR FRANCE first class to fill empty seats!
* As a child,I recurringly dreamt of that feeling an “antelope” probably has taking large leaps over vast nothingness. I added skiing to my list and the 1st day thought THIS is the feeling I dreamt of BUT the long skis were tricky and created small disasters. Years later I tried again but on short trick skis with great success…the sound of the ski shwoosh now watching the Olympics still brings back that amazing childhood feeling…
* There was the 4-day long-weekend route I mapped out to explore many places in NYC I had heard about. Alone. And loved it so much that I came back for a week
* to see plays (12 in all) which gave me insight on how one could comment on them. These included 1 Broadway play, several off-Broadway plays and with delight some off-off Broadway plays (these up 3 fights of stairs sitting on orange crates in an emptied out LR/DR…being 3 feet from the action including the top actor who was their mentor and worked hard. NOT to upstage them!…
* I returned a 3rd time, the week before xmas to see store windows and holiday cheer - flying back xmas eve to be with my dear husband. The flight ✈️ home was full of cheer and goodwill - the stewardess passing out individually wrapped small gifts to the passengers - pause now, please, to think about that!!!
* I started going on long bicycle rides - flatness being key to each route my husband helped find which made it possible to go 20 miles many times…
* I decided I would know I was well off if I could have flowers in the house almost year round - so I planted foolproof Spring bulbs, summertime rose bushes, and green onions for the winter. STEMS of flowers at the very least…
* My husband encouraged me to add bring part of a group show…
plus the many very small experiences filling up the effort of 42.
So you can see the wildest dream had some basis in possibility even while living “on a dime”… the lack of funds required a balance tipping majorly to initiative.
SO YOU MIGHT WELL ASK -Whaaat is the plan for 2024? I *would* do more of the same but really I want to find the smallest of small experiences and savor them in search their “largeness”.
(20)24 feels like the reverse complement to the importance of finding the question for the answer 42.
So I am starting a list today of QUESTIONS [24] to explore in the coming year:
*What does a Pandan waffle taste like?
[spoiler alert - I started with that one this morning - and found the answer at
*What is the perfect color(s) of my year/month/week/day?
*How long do dried rose petal leaves keep their original fragrance?
*What defines the core of “favorite” for me?…
*Make a collage once a week that expresses something about where I am at - may just conceptually. Then at the end of 2024 see what that storyline turned out to be…
This then is how it goes - making conversations with myself; maybe finding new depths through outer experiences.
Honestly, I’ve sloughed off the last 10 years, just living with myself on my personal laurels of previous years.
But ..24 triggered the excitement of opportunities that 42 had done…
I am looking forward to what surfaces…
What a fascinating mirrored symmetry!