Landscape

There's a place I visit in my dreams. The details vary, as is the way with dreams, but it's always the same place. There's a mountainous coastline, hot, verdant, a little dusty. A tricky clamber along uncertain cliffside paths. The sun is always shining and the sea is a rich, heartbreaking blue. There are places where the going is tough, places where I have to scrabble across narrow ledges above crashing waves, or leap over gaps, and there's a crisp sense of fear, but I know where I'm going and what I'm doing; I know I'm not going to fall.

When first I awake, I'm convinced this is a real place. Even now, I'm not totally sure it isn't. Notwithstanding the dreamtime variations -- and they can be extravagant, sometimes locating this dreamscape on the Mediterranean, sometimes on the Coral Sea, in a remote wilderness or adjacent to a thriving, fantastical metropolis -- there are things about this environment that feel so clear I can't be sure I'm not remembering somewhere I spent time long ago. Certainly there were periods in my childhood when we lived for weeks on Adriatic beaches that could only be reached by climbing down the cliff on a knotted rope after walking across endless scrubby hilltops; those surely figure in there, somewhere.

It isn't heaven, this place, but it's somewhere full of wonder, somewhere I can imagine living. A place of solitude and togetherness, away from it all.

Anyway: I was there again, last night -- but with a difference.

I was in a nearby town, with some time to kill. There was a path up the hillside and I knew the way, but I had to meet someone in an hour or so, someone important, who knows why? A lover, a business associate, an official; it doesn't matter. I knew the way, I could see the whole route, the rocks and the underbrush and the trees, the crashing waves and vertiginous ledges and jumps. The path led up the hill from the town, under some kind of bridge and then away, and I knew I wanted to walk that path but it would take the rest of the day; I knew I wanted to walk that path, but I had to meet someone, so I didn't. There it was, beckoning, and I felt the sun on my back and the hot breeze on my face and turned away to wait.

And when I woke up, it was with an inexpressible sadness. I knew I'd betrayed myself somehow. And I knew it was a recurring pattern in the story of my life.
Posted by matt at March 18, 2004 12:59 AM