The Death and Rebirth of Dream

This was from before that nasty accidental erase a long time ago, and for some reason it never got put back up. Here it is.

The Death and Rebirth of Dream

 

                I’m incredibly tired as I sit, my elbows resting on my knees attempting to steady my shaking hands. I hold between my fingers my last remaining copy of the most influential book I’ve ever read. This book; this thin, one-hundred page guide to the belief system that imbued the centre of my opinions and morals, quaking in the rapid movements of my emotion wracked hands. Tears soil the cover, the paper binding saturated with the grief of the most amazing day of my life, the ink running and the picture of the sage sitting beneath the moon now soaked with a rain of sadness two thousand and six hundred years after his death.
                I’m tired, and hungry, and in pain. My eyes sting more than I’d ever though they could. I haven’t cried in years, let alone like this. The lights of the room flood the fung shway of the room, but my soul feels like it should be pitch black in here. That alone describes everything I learned from this book; The Tao Te Ching. A soul of darkness, swathed in light, the body the only thing separating them, living out the opposites as a whole and existing in the place where they meet.
                Light and Dark, Ting and Yang, Integrity and dark-female Enigma. These things are all I know from the teaching, and they are nothing at all. I know so much within me, and my mind comprehends nothing at all. Nothing about this day makes any sense at all, but I see the truth so clearly.
                My day started out so cheery. I woke up and bathed, shaved, and ate. I spoke with three people trying to make plans, and declined all invites without explanation, my plans and hopes for the day ringing in my head, begging me to tell the world, my heart knowing that if anyone knew I would betray myself. I finished my preparations and headed out the door, down the road, across town, and up the stairs.
                I tried to knock, my hand came up and I close my fingers and turned my palm in, my wrist rocking slowly back. I closed my eyes and took a breathe, the grin on my face could have a jackal to shame. I pulled back to knock and opened my eyes, nearly falling over the balcony as her arms came around my neck and her weight was thrown completely against me. I felt her waist against mine, warmer than the summer sun bearing down on my face, her arms around my neck holding tighter than my hand held the rail of the balcony.
                Her arms slacked slightly as her grip lessened and she allowed her body to become resigned and relaxed against mine. She nuzzled her nose against my neck and I rested my cheek against her head. It took me that long to realize that my hands had come to rest on her hips. I didn’t know if the door was open or not, I hadn’t bothered letting my eyes open. The darkness felt more welcoming and beautiful than the light could ever perceive.
                Eventually the long, assuring embrace ended, my breathing and heart rate finally declining to a normal pace. On hindsight I realize that when she is near me, normal isn’t very slow at all. She led me inside and poured me a cup of coffee, wordlessly setting the sugar and cream between our cups and glancing up to steal a gaze in my eyes and grant me a smile in return for mine. Love is such a quarreled and fettered currency.
                We drank without a word, her hand draping over mine and her fingers weaving their way with such surreptitious ease between mine. Her gaze continuously wandered upwards from the coffee at which she stared, her full brown hazel eyes round and bright as a doe’s as they slowly rose to rest on mine, her head still tilted down and her overly happy smile reaching her ears from this angle. She never looked so beautiful, and I never felt so pathetic. I’ve never cared less about being pathetic.
                With the coffee finished, we headed to the couch to lay comfortably alone while one of favorite older movies played in the foreground of our eyes and the background of our minds. Our hands never left one another’s, from one cinematic failure to the next, nothing existed except the air of contented excitement and the linger of satisfied anxiety. Before I noticed I opened my eyes from an hour’s blink and the pitch of the room was as dark as the new moon-blessed sky outside.
                I leaned over and kissed her temple gently, resting my lips on her cool skin long enough to hear the pleasant sound of her slow, sleep-embraced breathing. My head fell lightly to reast against the arm of the chair above her head, my hand still in her’s, her beauty in my eye, and her heart in my mind.
                I laid until my eyes rested and awoke only to the somber tone of her voice, whispering gently in my ear as her body lay pressed against mine. The first words I’d heard all week from her, “You have to go.”
                I shifted and stirred and attempted to writhe off the couce, clumsily failing as her smile and eyes gripped me. She placed a single light kiss on my lips and stood, her hand and arm outstretched to offer me help to leave.
                I lazily stood and allowed her to lead me out by my hand, yawning and blinking until the door that so soundlessly opened hours before creaked open in ominous, impatience, imploring me to make my exit.
                She turned with a smile that I recognized as fake, her eyes falling slowly to the floor as the sun sets over a river, beautiful and memorable, but closing off the day with a fire of nostalgia. Her smile faded and I could see in the lines of light highlighting her features that her face was relaxing to an earnest, serious pose. As her head lifted and I look at her visage masked by darkness, I wished I was blind.
                The penetrating look in her eye cut me to my soul, a pain so deep that I felt as if I had murdered her soul and left this husk of a shell here to absorb the pain of the blows to come. I saw the glint of light off her cheek and lifted my hand to wipe the tear, but her hand was quicker and she caught my arm, forcing me to let her wear her mask of pain and tears.
                She kissed my wrist and stepped behind me, I kissed her lips and tasted the salt of sadness before stepping back through the doorway and watching the most cripplingly beautiful pain I knew fade away into the enveloping darkness. I walked down the stairs and to my car, across town, down the street, through the door and onto my bed.
                I stared at nothing until my vision blurred. A stream of tears flooded the cracked desert my parched lips had become, and here I sit.
                Which is better; Everything said and nothing known, or everything known and nothing said. Both hurt, both end in tears. It’s all I want, the only thing perfect for me, yet its what I’ll never have and the only thing that would never work. The Taoist perfection of the situation is so gorgeous I could kill myself.
                Looking up from the running picture that somehow became a water painting the tears stop. I have what I need, I am content. I ask no more, time will pass, and we must all taste the tears with the kisses. She is no one else’s, and even if she isn’t mine, I love her.
                My elbows bend for the first time in an hour to bring the book to view, opening the cover with exasperated fingers, the verses scream to me, I know them by heart, and they are always new. Closing my eyes, I meditate, and light dawns on the darkness of my thoughts.

 

 

End