Last night I had one of those dreams that involved dream places (and in some cases, places that were conflated from real places and other dream places). As the decades go by, and I occasionally revisit those dreamscapes (and dream situations), it has become harder to separate which were real memories and which were only fabricated in my sleeping mind.
Oh, sure, some are obvious. There are places I definitely know without doubt are dream locales, which, for whatever reasons, my dreaming consciousness chooses to see or use again. But in my waking memory, I have snatches of scenes, vivid and seemingly real, of places I have walked or driven through. But for which I cannot for the life of me recall where I would go to find them on the surface of the earth. Trails through the woods, hilltops, certain city streets and scenes, the interiors of certain houses or other buildings. I can see the details, but have no clue what directions I would take, nor from what starting point I would leave, in order to arrive there.
There is a bit of poignancy in remembering these unattainable islands, knowing that things happened there, real or imagined, of such import as to have imprinted them so clearly in my mind. And yet also knowing that I will, in all likelihood, never actually cast my eyes again upon these strange localities.
“There are places I’ll remember
All my life…”
The twisting question is, whether I remember Reality or something Other Than. The butterfly dreaming.
© 2017 Chuck Puckett