Co-Creation Co-Ordinates, 7/1/2020
Life on earth is so frightening. The pandemic is ravaging California and most of the south with 150,000 dead, and 4 million positive cases. We had a tremendous storm with thunder and lightning last night. I was very frightened by swollen glands in my throat, a sore neck, headache. Then rushes of tangible anxiety making me light-headed, unsteady on my feet, and downright diarrhea-ed. In the warmth of the outdoor shower I finally made some kind of peace with myself in case I did have the virus. I thought about you going before me, Nick. I thought about how beautifully and gracefully you left, and I told myself that if you could do it, then I could do it.
After three days of rain the lawn is ripe for mowing, and I have a full day of housework ahead of me. There is simply no time to get to anything important. It’s July and that means summer is just about over and I haven’t been to the ocean or the bay. But I want to put down here at least how the scent of the yellow lilies wafts through the bedroom window next to the bed.
Let’s make a book together, Nick. Since you are now as much my creation as I am yours - let’s create! Are you glinting off the attic window of the main house as I write this in the back cottage? It’s just a question. Are you the flash of light on glass between reflections of the Birch? Placing you somewhere, even if it is nowhere, makes me feel better. Besides, what did you save it all for if not for this? Why else would you keep such extensive records, if not to be found? I am finding you. And I am also ready to be found.
Here’s what I know today: I will structure our book as a gift and tell your story back to you. I will frame our lives, asking you along the way if I am telling it right, and putting down my stumbles as well as my revelations. I have the files you left in the attic, a fine record of both Nick’s and Jennifer’s lives. But I can’t make your gender change the big story, because you didn’t. The big story here is love and how it has ignited a search to go into uncharted territory. To go find whatever spark of you in whatever form you are in.
I’ve been preparing myself for more lucid dreams by setting up dream signs in the daytime. Anything that is even slightly suspicious during the day should trigger me to stop and ask whether I am dreaming or not. I look at our wedding rings on my finger and ask: “Is this a dream?” Putting on or taking off shoes - dream or not? Passing through a door - dream or not? Fireflies in the yard at dusk? That’s the one that takes the wind out of me because somewhere you and I are still sitting together in the yard watching their lights pulse on and off.
If I see Mr. Squirrel I stop and say: “Am I in your dream? Because you are definitely in mine!” I’m sure he knows by my smell that it’s me who puts pieces of muffins, seeds, cobs of corn, or bites of apple in the nook of the big branch of his tree. But he is very busy. He rushes on.
This morning I have decided I may not be as close to imminent death as I thought yesterday. I am out in the chair swing reading your mother’s pack of letters from 1962. The giant white Hydrangea heads were so lashed with water and wind, they are drooping onto the shingles of the shed. I look up and grey baby birds from the evergreen tree are sitting, one in each of your smelly garden shoes beside the cottage door. The birds are extra curious because they are brand new. They perch boldly close to me on the back of a chair, fly up and cast monumental shadows down from the roof, and dash into the Hydrangea tree under which you buried Taz the cat. Suddenly I see how it’s all made. The whole thing about this life on Earth, Nick.
This stage, this yard, this daytime frequency is what I call reality. But this place is only a dream for you now, a refrain that your consciousness is pulled back to habitually. If you are charting a course to my specific coordinates, as I am charting a course to yours, we may be entering this field as ideas, or other beings, or just faint flavors. How do we recognize each other when we don’t necessarily know what we are looking for? It may be as perplexing and murky for you to find me as it is for me to find you.
It’s not just the frequency of Earth you have to recognize, but my specific living and dreaming of it. My needle in the haystack of billions of dreams. On the other hand, the nighttime dream frequency might be a simpler meet point. It is more fluid and maleable, so it might be easier to find each other, especially if we set it up beforehand as a place of creation and possibility. Like hide and seek, I will find pieces of you that you have tucked away, just as you will find traces of me.
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