Journal, 2017, Marchish

We miss the turn to the taco place, talking about dreams.
Earlier, after the meeting, I’d asked the guys if their dreams were ever… weird.  
“I mean, like, narrative dreams, but ones that have nothing to do with you or your life.  Sometimes I have these dreams that are like bizarre movies about other people, I can’t figure them out.”
Lane nodded.  “Sometimes I’m outside my body, watching.  But I’m always me.”
I fiddled with my shoe.  “Last night I dreamt I was a man.  With these two kids, and we were standing in this dark waterway, and somebody shot one of them.  And then, while I was trying to save him, the shooter stole the other kid.”
“You know, in Freud and all those guys, everything in your dreams is a symbol.  Even if they don’t obviously have to do with your life.”
Down on my knees in that dark water, weeping.
My love and my art.
Chase two birds and both will fly.  Is this true?

“Isnt it amazing,” Lane says in the car, “how those early psychiatrists first came to analyze dreams, to understand all the symbols? I guess there's certain things that are true across all cultures.  But discovering that- being the one to put it all together- wow.”
Andrew pulls up next to us at the stoplight.  He's on the motorcycle, all in white, wearing sunglasses against the wind and his long hair flying wild.  My husband looks as happy as a bird with a french fry.
“This place is nine minutes away, my ass!” he says.  
I reach out to pat Andrew’s head through the window. “Ssh, ssh.  All right then, fuck the tacos.”
So we go back to Lane & V’s, and the boys make us chicken-fried rice.  It’s been weeks since we’ve all been together.  It feels wonderful.  
V settles back into the sofa with a sigh.  “My family!” she says, smiling around at us.  My best friend, radiant in pink pajamas- wadding up and throwing little balls of paper for the cat to chase.  Andrew falling asleep on the sofa between us, Lane tipping back in his chair, telling stories.  Family.  Yes.

My parents had been in town for a few days that week.  
Showing them around Charleston, all the thousand little things I’d known for years they would love if they could only see them.  
And having them with us, seeing them love it all-  
I can’t catch the right words for this.  
There was a moment in one of the gardens, my mom smiling up at the trees, that I hope I’ll remember all my life.  
Saying goodbye to them outside our house, I started bawling.  
33 year old woman bawling like a kid, barefoot in the street.  I’d felt it coming on, how hard it was going to be.  To not know when we’d all see each other again- and may not ever here, ever again, in this place where they’d been so happy.  
How lucky to have such love in one’s life, that saying goodbye should be so hard.   
And how fucking painful.  
I remember the first time I came across Buddhist thinking.  My horror at the idea that one should renounce all intensity of feeling, as everything is but a dream.  So that you don’t cloud your mind with the pain -or the wonder, either- since it is all for naught.

Truth is Not a Toy.  That was a great headline in the NYT this weekend.   
Those Buddhist truths-

I know I let myself feel everything too much.  That this is a choice.  
But I don’t want to change.  I like cherrypicking from wisdom texts, and living my life by them- for a while- but at bottom, let’s be honest, I don’t ever have any intention of withdrawing from the edge, of trying to protect myself from the pain of feeling everything, of experiencing everything.  Even though I know it’s all meaningless, really...

Making one’s own meaning.  I wonder.  Does that make a toy of the truth?