fruit and tea:

These days, my dreams have been more vivid; more frequent than usual. In the midst of a night now past, I woke from this:

I am walking along an expanse of beach. My feet are naked, my body draped in a gauzy dress, and my hair in loose waves. It is long, and it is ash-pale. Why is my skin wet; my hair? Is it that I have been slipping like an otter amidst blue-black layers of ocean or, rather, has there been rain? The sky is iridescent gray, like heather, and I notice streaks of water grazing my bare arms--rain. From the skeleton of a house (there are houses in the midst of this solitude; my solitude? I'd thought i was one thousand miles from anywhere...or at least a few planets away...), a woman, aged, traces one hand through the space between us--motioning me towards herself. For some reason that evades me, I find my feet obliging. Moments lace by, and I am there at the edge of her decrepit porch. I am soaked to the bone, and guarded. Yet...her lips curve in smile, and she beckons me nearer. As I draw closer towards her (why am I so unresistant to her will, this stranger?), the thousands of lines carved into her face seem to visibly give birth to fresh ones. Her eyes are green like moss and there is a cat twined against her willowy frame. As I fold myself into the reedy rocking chair next to her, the animal snakes from her warmth and onto the glacial chill of my body. The cat licks my dripping fingers--tasting the rain; the salt of my skin, and seems quickly greedy for more. Its tongue feels like the tiniest shards of stone against my skin; rough and raw, yet strangely soothing. It occurs to me in this hovering moment of time that no words have yet passed between myself and the presence a mere fingers' touch away. Yet somehow, the stillness lacks discomfort. I don't question this; it is a blessing. My eyes flick to the table, low to the ground between us. It is laid with an assortment of tea--two cups, already poured, exuding the breath of heat, and a scattering of fresh fruit--slices of sweet mango, a myriad of grapes, mandarin wedges, and blackberries glittering like gems. She gestures a thin hand--also etched with the markings of a hundred years--over the array, as if it is an offering (has she been expecting me? How could this be? A piece of me feels sick and another feels wonder. They twine.) I feel suddenly vulnerable; exposed. This transparency unnerves me, yet under it all glows a distinct sense of calm. We remain in this silence; the silence we have mutually created. The cat grows tired of the taste of my skin and slinks off into the dark. I reach tentatively for my tea. As my fingers move through the air, the woman draws a long, soft breath in and then I feel her hand, feather-light against my chest. From it, effortlessly (or so it seems), she draws my heart. It is startlingly small...fits like a newborn bird cupped inside her palm. It is cool, like ice, and visibly beating...it is terribly alive. I feel tears pool in my eyes, and my body tense. (What the hell has she just taken from me, and how has she taken it? Is she a witch...a criminal...a fallen goddess? I want to kill her; hurt her...anything it takes to get that shard of myself back.) But my body relaxes; releases as I realize the tenderness and the caution with which she is cradling it, now encircled in both hands. All ten fingers, though somehow, fleetingly, they look like thirty or forty. And before I know it, she is speaking...smooth, velvety words, and I am listening, enthralled and terrified. "This heart is blue...the blue of water and of cold-blooded fish and the sky at the edge of evening. I know this frightens you...how could it not...surely, it is rare. But rest assured, love, you will feel deeply, more deeply than you can even comprehend at this time. In this moment, I am teaching you more about love than you can ever ask or imagine."

____

And then it had vanished, like smoke or melting ice. I awakened to bars of faded sunlight slanting through my window, and the imprint of this dream tattooed on my memory. Haunted by dreams? Haunted by dreams. Though, I'm beginning to believe that haunting is not always a negative experience.

Here are a few other things to share...

***Meg, you've disarmed me with your words. Only gratitude, only adoration. You are a ruby-encrusted diamond in the rough. And let it be said that you are infinitely gracious for sharing Devendra with me...Lord knows he was yours first. Kisses flung across the miles in your direction.

***I had my body ripped and restored by a massage this morning. Liquidy music and dim lighting; cooling heat. I feel lighter.

***I discovered my quasi-dream yoga studio yesterday in a town meshed deep in the Kootenays. Twisted my body through a long-esque class, and since then my breath has come more evenly. Thank Jesus.

***During the last dwindling hours of my departure from Winnipeg, dear Hilary gifted me with Michael Ondaatje's breathtaker of a novel, "Anil's Ghost." I have devoured over half of it already, and am trying to slow myself down so that I can savour what remains of it. Here is my favourite string of words thus far....take and taste...

"At night, returning from work, Anil would slip out of her sandals and stand in the shallow water, her toes among the white petals, her arms folded as she undressed the day, removing layers of events and incidents so they would no longer be within her."

I would strongly reccommend this book to anyone and everyone, along with their respective friends, kin, lovers, and so on and so forth.

This is goodbye, at least for now.
Be.
RB.