I've been in an off mood lately, riddled with messy soul-searching. The weather is back in winter mode and has been persistently brutal. My girlfriend has been out of town for a week and a half. I've been spending a lot of time reading and scribbling in notebooks to keep up with my classes, and when not doing that, looking for diversions. I stripped down my damaged Schwinn touring bike and started working on this tight Bianchi frame that Andy gave me. I disassembled and cleaned my fixie. I started learning to play harmonica.
I keep getting twinges of dissatisfaction. I don't have a stable community in the city, just a group of good friends who are all here on a temporary basis. I miss nature and open space.
Sunday afternoon I rode down to Lake Michigan. There is a nice concrete path that shears up to the water for the length of the city. The lake looked like someone had dumped in a giant scoop of ice cubes. The water could have been mistaken for land if not for the undulating surface. I sprinted along the path until I reached a spot were the water had kicked up a truck-sized pile of ice shards. Some one put up a yellow barricade, as if the 8 foot mound of fist-sized crystals wasn't daunting enough.
Whoever used to live in my room stuck glow-in-the-dark stars to the concrete ceiling above the bed. Unable to sleep, I've been meditating in the dark, lying on my back taking deep Zen breaths. Relax the body, then the mind. After 5 minutes of pairing my thoughts down to the rhythm of breath, I look up at the glowing stars and imagine I can see past them, up through the concrete, past the light pollution, and out into open space where the real stars hang. An endless array of cold diamonds, like the nights of my childhood in Northwestern Wisconsin.
Last night I dreamt I was at a party back home in Wisconsin. There was this beautiful young woman with long black hair. She had a warm smile and nobody at the party could take their eyes off of her. She kept whispering in my ear that we should meet up later and go dancing. That night, after the party, I walked out across a wide green field, lit only by starlight. It was cold and the silvery grass came up to my knees. On the top of a rise, I met the beautiful woman from the party. She smiled when she saw me, her long black hair shining in the night.
Like all dreams, it ended unpredictably when I woke up. It was the first dream I've had in four days and it refreshed me completely. The warmth of that woman’s smile stuck with me all morning. At the time I woke up, however, laying in my darkened room and staring at the glowing red alarm clock numbers, there was nothing that I wanted more than to be back in that field.
:: Ira
3:56 PM
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