Rejoining the Human Race

Today is probably the first day that I haven't felt compelled to blog. This could a sign of healing or just a today phenomenon (as well as a sign that I need to focus more on my fiction). Perhaps with travel on the horizon (I'm flying to Vegas on Monday), I'm just looking forward to adventures that need to be recorded.

Before, I've had this suspicion that I've been missing out - now, it's a certainty but a hopeful one. The gerbil wheels in my head don't spin so frantically during the day as I try to place more trust in gut feelings. And when I do let those wheels run, it's at night as I'm drifting off to sleep, and there are far fewer squeaks and less of an impression of traveling in futile circles. I had forgotten that closure that can come with the end of each day. These drowsy but lucid thoughts take flight and soar along the updrafts of my dreams.

I had a dream a few days ago involving the St. Louis silver arch, except we weren't in St. Louis -the arch was much taller than in real life, and it also had this crosspiece, about sidewalk-width with a supporting wall on one side but open-air except for a thin banister on the other side. There were dozens if not hundreds of people all around my age at various points along the crosspiece. Some were hunched against the back wall, others were somewhat in the middle of the walkway, and still others were closer to the edge. I had my legs stretched out so that just my heels dangled over the edge. We were at least 100 stories up and I could see a broad avenue below and a bay beyond. Falling off the crosspiece meant game-over; you might have time for a scream and one, maybe two, final thoughts before splatting on the wider walkway below. Even if you somehow got a running start and made it to the bay beyond, the impact on the water would surely kill you.

Anyway, some of the other people near the ledge let their entire legs dangle carelessly over. I knew that if I were to summon the nerve to move closer to the ledge that I would find still more people hanging from it by their fingertips. And I if I joined them, then I would see still more people scaling down either leg of the arch, somehow finding handholds. And if I were to join these people climbing down the legs, then eventually, I'd see all the people down below walking. And if I were somehow able to make it all the way down, then I could squint over the bay and see still more people sailing across the waters to God knows where.

So perhaps all our lives are about rejoining the human race.

I know that I've been missing out, but before, I may have been looking in the wrong places, still huddled against the back wall of a silver arch's crosspiece, only looking at shadows and not at the impossible heights and expanse behind me. And the vertigo summoned by memories of this dream may just be the first thin layer of endless promise.