Living Life on the Edge

"Living life in such a precariously artistic way so as to make it difficult to negotiate, to navigate, to find your way through it." This is the summary review of last night's dream.

I was with Jan and Jake, and it was the creation and sharing with me of their art pieces that caused me to border on life in such an unbalanced, unfamiliar way so as to feel the need to escape the light headless of confusion and dismay.

In the discussion, presentation, and experiencing of their art; life unfolded in ways usual as well magical; but also disturbing at the intense need to understand and interpret in new ways.

Don't get me wrong, its not that the art was not beautiful, it was ... just perplexing in my need to understand life at a deeper, never before visited or even imagined level!

I apologized, partly explained, and escaped promising soon to return.

For me, it included all of the art of nature and the path on which it led in my attempt to get home. It was negotiating my way through natural land formations, fallen trees, rivulet carved passageways still wet with evidence of the river, jumping over streams, foraging forests, climbing ledges not knowing if I would arrive still on the path. All the time my home there above me on the horizon.

Advance was possible but could I backtrack if necessary. In other words, on and forward only. The nature of experiencing nature in this way was finding the path being so arduous that one wondered if one would ever arrive.

Now awake, only visions without words on this side of my awake brain hold sway while the details of the exquisite twists and turns, layered beauty and truth, the unexpected use and juxtaposition of materials in Jan and Jake's art, slowly dissipate.

Only the memory of nature's beauty, the smell and feel of the air of my journey, and the physical strength it took to navigate my art, lingers as I write this for description but the details diminish.

So knowing that if I was to capture any small piece of the wonder, I popped out of bed and am writing this at 5:30 am.

I return to bed, knowing that I will quickly return to sleep, but wonder if I will ever return to the exalted experience of this night's dream.

As my dreams returned I was rehearsing for a supernumerary part in an opera. When the diva raised her hand, I brought her the nut shaker and rehearsed shaking a few nuts into a soup spoon to hand to her. When she raised her glass, I rehearsed returning to her with a pitcher of lemonade with which to fill it.

I was aware on waking that the exaltation had not returned but rather the mundane!