Beauty

I swam off into sleep and awoke inside a large room. The ceiling was at least 50 feet high and sepia-toned clouds on old wallpaper were high above me.

The expanse of the room was impressive and I knew it was a dream so I got up and marveled at what the human mind can conjure as it sleeps.

Yes, I was awake inside the dream, yet still somewhat it's captive (it is rare to be able to make things happen once inside...but I have done that).

I walked around and it changed. The high ceilings became a dark industrial charcoal which came down about ten feet. The last forty feet became a warm reddish color interspersed with large windows revealing a dark cool blue moonlight. Then I saw the most dazzling array of candles around the room in clustered bunches of 3 or 5 or 7. Stunning really.

I wanted to capture it's beauty and maybe interview a few people along the way. There were others, but they had their own agendas. My agenda was purely aesthetic and simple.

I was dressed in a dark black suit, a white Oxford button-down and good shoes. I walked down the room and turned right past a few other rooms. Each had the same ambiance. There were also some dark black bamboo dividers which were just perfect. The same candles burned in those other rooms with a rich orange glow.

I found a pad of art paper in the kitchen and asked for a few pencils. When I got back to the room I tried to draw it. It was futile.

I am just not that good.

So all I have are my words (this is often the mix in my art). The room is 140 feet long and 60 feet deep. The floors are richly-aged hardwood and there are thick padded sofas and the same bamboo divider for two major areas. I am a bit in awe and try and draw.

No go.

She walks in. I call her "The Betrayer". She is not a looker, she is a seducer. I am leaning back on an ottoman of some sort, trying to draw when she flops down next to me. I have not seen her in 3 years. The candles are burning and the room smells wonderful. It is the most beautiful room I have ever seen.

But it is not my room. I start to believe it is hers. I do not trust her. I do not hate her, I just do not trust her.

She makes a play and I disregard. "I have to draw" but then my drawing sucks. She leaves.

I do not miss her.

I stand up. "You know you are dreaming" I say to myself. "Yes, I know. It's still a good dream. Look at this room. Imagine having candles like that in a regular house," I say to myself.

Recently someone accused me of possessing a split personality. That is ignorant or silly. We all have different streams of consciousness. We all have a song humming away in our head while we work out a line of thought. We also pick our thumbs at the same time. This is not rocket science, it is just the human brain that dreamed up rocket science, the Jupiter Symphony and dreams deep into the night about beautiful rooms that do not exist in time and space.

The human brain is often a gift and a curse. I know mine is. But I had the most beautiful dream last night, and then a funny one after it that made me laugh when I woke up. Then I remembered that I said some pretty stupid stuff last night to my former girlfriend.

Then I wanted to go back to that expansive room and just lay back and take it in, then sleep for a long while as I walked around inside that room and enjoyed all its eloquence and taste.

But it does not work that way.

The room is a momentary gift, a vision of what might be. I place of great beauty, expanse and warmth where we have some real sense of what we want and what we do not want.

Then we wake and have to live.

Next?