"This Ache In My Heart"

October 6, 2009

8:23am

I am writing about this dream from the balcony of my room at the Peacock Hotel. Mel, my British roommate is fast asleep in her twin bed under the protection of her mosquito net. Below me, on the ground, Shiva – the Peacock Handy Man-cum-room attendant-cum-houseman-cum-gardener-cum laundry man is using a hoe to turn the earth off a plot of land. I think from what I can assess from my random glances downward… that they are making a garden for the entrance. Bijoy, the owner’s son periodically comes in to have a look and supervise. There is a new male in the mix. Perhaps a daily hire? A very scrawny young lad who helps with turning the earth then takes the red soil and all its mixed ingredients, puts it in a rubber basket (perhaps made out of tire?), hoists it over his head and takes it outside the gates of the Peacock and dumps this earth on the other side of the gates. Why this destination for the soil I am not sure. But there is a multitude of trips and both Shiva and the unknown young man seem to perform this duty with a resolve and surrender that is noticeable to me but also unremarkable. Although remark on it I do and in quite a bit of detail! LOL! Oh, and one last thing… all of this is being done barefoot. As many things in India, are done… barefoot.

The soundtrack & speed of this dream is best exemplified in the song "I Asked For Love" by Lisa Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy.

I woke up this morning from the most intense & surreal dream. I don’t know what city I was in but the FEELING was of… New York.

I’m inside the top floor of a converted building that is now a loft. At an art opening. There are many people there, all of whom I feel as “familiar” but none that I recognize. There is one man there, he’s an actor. As in a known actor. I can’t place him now but if I saw a photo of him I would know… and actually … just in writing this…NO! He is NOT an actor; he is the event photographer Patrick McMullen. Someone who is fairly animated and approachable and has a way of recording through the chaos and making it always looking beautiful, desirable even. He shoots a lot of parties in NYC and backstage at Fashion Week… he is there. And… oddly enough… he is some kind of “guardian” to me. He is wearing his trademark black blazer, a little too big but not big enough to look sloppy. He never comes into the group of people that has gathered to listen to the curator speak about what we are about to see. Instead he is leaning against a corner part of a wall that leads down a corridor and out the loft space. I cannot make out the skyline of the backdrop that is framed perfectly with the industrial windows that loft conversions have. The ones with a multitude of square panes and periodically, one of them opens.

It is dusk. There is no glow of a sunset however. Instead… the sky is a flat blue-grey tint. I too am hovering near the back of this pack of art connoisseurs. The feeling of me in this dream is of a knowing that I am here only because I felt to come for some other reason. The location of this loft is geographically contextual for what I know to be a significant occurrence that I am meant to be a part of. Yet I also have no idea what this occurrence is or what exactly I am waiting for. Yet wait I do. I seem to be aware of everyone and no one at once. The most prominent person is Patrick… which in writing this in my conscious state makes me laugh a little. Perhaps it is because Fashion Week is on and that is where I usually am this time of year, doing the circuit between New York & Paris. And that is the only realm in which I know Patrick.

So… the dream… I can’t recall any art on the walls; it’s not why I am there… during the curators’ soliloquy I feel the “coming” of something… and it’s not in the room. The ether is bringing something to me and this is the place I must be to receive my gift.

Slowly I see the sky is changing color. It is taking on a more steely blue color. I turn around and look at Patrick who gives me a knowing nod to proceed and cause a little chaos because it is time… I realize this is not the time to be caught up in “world audience issues” and adhere to societies ideas of what is proper and improper. I have this feeling within that I KNOW that in order to meet my destiny a few feathers must be ruffled along the way. Perhaps that is why I have been placed amongst this group of perfectly pained strangers. All of who adhere to rules set out before them by everyone else. Is that what we do in life? We live the lives others want us to live and not the life we ourselves want to live? We walk down one corridor only to realize half way that the path we are on is not the one we want. More frightening is to turn around and change and reset or compass, so we walk, hopelessly down someone else’s path…

Without hesitation I run through the crowd of people, past the curator and to the window. I jostle people and knock champagne glasses in my path and stop not for an apology or any niceties. I am drawn to the window and transfixed much like the child is drawn to the landing of the UFO in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS movie. I seem to know that whatever is coming is coming especially for me. Behind me the rest of the crowd has rushed around as well and is looking out the window. My eyes are transfixed on the sky waiting for something precious. I see off in the distance before anyone else… THE LARGEST, MOST BEAUTIFUL CLUSTER OF A FLORAL BOUQUET! Turned upside down, hundreds of larger than life Peonies wrapped in clear paper with green leaves, wrapped in the most beautiful dusty blue ribbon floating through the nearly night sky. The petals are so perfectly a barely there pink. Once my eyes connect with this sight I KNOW… “This is for me!” Not satisfied to view it from inside I turn around and rush to leave the loft! Patrick gives me yet another knowing nod to carry on and as I rush past him he reaches in his pocket to give me a few petals and seeds. I recognize Patrick as “the Messenger”. I take the petals and seeds in my hands, never questioning their significance but noticing they are not peony petals or peony seeds. I run out the door and to the roof of the building.

Although “just a dream” I cannot get over how intensely beautiful this bouquet is. The sheer size of it and its floaty nature. Just gliding through the sky. It is moving both slowly and quickly. I take in every detail. Mesmerized. Half hypnotized and half awake. As the bouquet approaches the roof of the building, it stops and begins its upside down descent…

Just as it is about to connect with “reality” (the building) it magically turns right side up and now I am in a different room. One that is empty except for recessed lighting behind a large empty bar that has behind it the largest glass vase I have ever seen and within it a multitude of smaller glass vases carefully arranged within it. The room is empty. The floating bouquet enters the room like a wedding crasher and is dropped into each of the vases. It seems to have lost its ethereal nature and is more gross and solid now. The water in the vases splashes out and some of the leaves and petals break and fall out of to the sides in a slow motion, John Woo (Heat) movie type of way.

By the time the Peonies have self arranged itself in the vases the cavalcade of art lovers comes rushing in. They are convinced THIS IS THE ART SHOW! The curator, a young woman in her late 20s in head to toe artsy black pencil skirt, fitted black scoop necked tank top with slender arms and a bosom every man (and woman) in the room imagines bare… is both bewildered and panicked at being upstaged by the Peony Parade and my erratic behavior… I catch the card that dislodges from the bouquet. It comes straight towards me, as does a bridal bouquet tossed by the bride to the best friend who she wishes to be “next in line”. Except there is no jostling, jockeying or elbowing to get this card. It appears too subtle and uninteresting to everyone else. Inside the card, is the MESSAGE. I read it and immediately know I must make my way to find the sender. The sender is The Englishman. He looks like a man from the turn of the century. Tall and lanky as he is in this lifetime but wearing a pocket watch, a vest, a suspenders, a vest, crisp white long-sleeve cotton collared shirt, a top hat and a dramatic curled up moustache. As soon as I read the card I can hear the ticking of his pocket watch and can see him periodically look at it to gauge the passing of time. I don’t know his location. All I can see is blue sky and peppered clouds behind him. Passing as sky and clouds do with the passing of time.

As soon as I leave the building and enter the streets below I am no longer in current day but in early 1920’s Manhattan. The streets are a flurry of activity. Frantic with authorities trying to control the mayhem of the cities inhabitants having witnessed the fall to earth of this beautiful gargantuan bouquet of peonies and me, moving like a shadow hunter. Aware there is a pressure of time.  I seem outside of all the mayhem. It is as though the titanic is sinking and everyone is scurrying to get off or to higher ground and I am listening to a symphony that only I can hear and trying to find the conductor of this beauty. I make my way to the South Street Seaport where people seem to be so afraid of what has happened that they want to leave the island. It is chaos all around and within it I have only one goal, to find the man with the black & white suit and the ticking pocket watch.

I keep looking around me through the panic stricken and confused faces. Through the cries of little children being pulled to an unknown destination by mothers who don’t know what they are running away from or where they are running to … it is then that I look up. There is the conductor, The Englishman. Riding a bicycle, peddling and floating through the air on one of those bikes with a very large front wheel and the tiniest of back wheels. He looks down at me and waves. I look up at him and smile recognizing the twinkle in his soft blue eyes, the familiar lines that crease his face. The minute our eyes have connected we know who the other is. Our connection is so strong the pathway of our shared glance emits energy so powerful that all the chaos below stops for a few minutes and EVERYONE looks up. Rather than be able to see the cycling Englishman who has peddled his floating bicycle across the Atlantic to see to it that his gift of the Peony Parade is delivered safely to the recipient of his choice, as a passive pursuer of his destiny, the cities inhabitants are full of fear and their fear needs someone to blame. The focus of all their fear is the man peddling in the sky. All the concentrated glares pull the cycling Englishman to the earth. I watch him crash into the water and become separated from his bicycle. His 1920’s suit balloons from the immersion in the water. He is struggling to stay afloat. On his side he appears to be sinking. I am running to reach him. Trying to yell over the panicked and confused city populates to The Englishman. To turn on his back so he will float and that will give me time to jump in and rescue him. But he is now in a world he is not familiar with. A world not based in his ideal, but in reality. As I try to find the best place to jump into the water to make my way to him there are so many people trying to physically stop me. I struggle and wrestle out of everyone’s oppressive grip. I jump in to a part of the river where there is a levy and a heavy metal gate. I feel as though I’m in a tanker made of steel. The colors I see of the walls around me are red and burnt orange and rust. The water is not fluid and water like at all, but looks and feels like mercury. I am swimming towards this one fast closing opening to reach the now sinking Englishman and just as I get to the opening I see him float by. My own right arm is outstretched towards him in danger of decapitation when just then; the gates close in front of me. His eyes were open and resigned. He had made his choice and here I was still struggling to reach him. Is that what we do in life, struggle to reach the unreachable? The height of the gates was so high.  Once closed I cannot see above it. I swim to the side where there are hundreds of people waiting along a dock. I struggle to climb up to gain a vantage point where I can see him again so that I may jump back in at just the right place and pull him to safety. But all I see is his black and white suit floating above the water. In the left chest pocket is the glistening gold of the chain of his pocket watch. I jump in and swim to this floating hollow coffin and grab the entire bloated outfit in my right hand and take the pocket watch out of the upper left breast pocket which would be placed above his heart and clasp it in my left hand. I swim back to the docks and sit with the soaked remnants, open the pocket watch to see the time so I may record the time of his sinking. But there is no time; there is only a message within the watch whose hands stand still at 11:11. On the inside flipped open lid is an engraved sentence that reads: My Love, It is not our time.

I take what is left of the Englishman and walk through the streets. Singing with the skill of a Soprano… over and over again “this ache in my heart”… passersby look at me with sadness, guilt and remorse. It is as if they know only AFTERWARD that what they feared was nothing to fear at all. What they feared was PURE LOVE. The fear was present in all of them because of their lack of familiarity with it. Looking in the eyes of each of them as they looked within me, walking with what seemed like lead for legs, we both know that I recognized love too soon, and they recognized love too late. And because of it, The Englishman sank.

I awake and it’s 8:05 am.

I sit up in my bed. Look around. Mel is asleep with the eye mask I gifted her with over her eyes. I am sitting up confused and emotional under the protective mesh of my mosquito net. There are the usual voices and sounds that make their appearance into our room. That of human activity outside, the birds, the lizards, the bugs… working their lungs and expressing their beings both little and large…

I look around, take in my reality, and burst into tears. They are tears so full that my vision is blurred. I have within me a smorgasbord of emotions upon awakening. Knowing that my dream is about My Love and the love we share that cannot be… because “It’s not our time.”

And only later upon recording my dream, do I recall I was given the petals & seeds of a different flower altogether. So with all my love for one, I trust the process for another…