God Dreamed A Dream

Once in a great while, perhaps once in a lifetime, and even then only if one is very lucky, one (meaning you, me, that other guy, whats-his-name, the one with the Booker Prize on the fireplace mantle) may have a dream so deep, so inspirational, so once-in-a-lifetime, that it had to come straight from God's mind to one of ours. It's ephemeral, evaporating even as we think about it, but even if it were not, there are no words in base, human-uttered language to convey the complexity, the polish, the purity, the clarity of such a dream. It's almost a transference from God-mind to human-mind. It's like pouring a river of thought into a thimble. The human mind can't hold it. I had one of those dreams yesterday morning. I jumped out of bed and walked straight to the computer, but I could feel the dream fading as I walked. I wanted to jot down some high points of the dream so I wouldn't forget it entirely, but as I sat down at the keyboard, I knew it was hopeless. (Mental note: next time, immediately grab my cell phone and begin dictating whatever I can recall into my note taker.)

My point is not to share the unshareable but only to say: it's there. Like the dream of a bug, living his bug life, who one night, in a flash of bug insight, suddenly understands Calculus, or van Gogh's The Starry Night; the bug cannot share it, nor even retain the memory of what it experienced. At best, we humans might retain the memory of that memory.

Maybe I am a bug dreaming I'm a human. Like Zhuangzi, who wasn't sure if he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man, maybe I'll wake up and I'll be back in my bug's life. Then, what kind of dreams do bugs have? Do they have nightmares? Do they have feelings? And when God considers us humans, are we merely bugs to Him? That would explain a lot.

I'd like to write a blog post every day, but inspiration doesn't come on a schedule. When inspiration comes during the day, the shine is scrubbed off before I can put it into print. When inspiration comes at night, I feel the purity of it but it's a ghost darting through my consciousness, gone in a minute. 

The real artists are the ones who can retain more of that inspiration than I can retain. That is a gift I'd like to have. Maybe it's also a curse. Van Gogh was inspired; yet, he also cut off his left ear during a hallucination that he could not later recall. That's too much of a good thing. I should be satisfied with what I have.

That was yesterday. I wrote it down but never posted it to my blog, because I knew it was incomplete. Now, another night has passed and a new day has arrived. It is still dark, but I have been awake for a long time. I turn to one side, try to sleep, but sleep will not come. I turn to the other side, try to sleep. I have been awake for so long that I am sure that dawn must be near. Sometimes I get to sleep for some short while, then I wake again in the dark. Will this night never end? Finally, exhausted, I look at the clock on the dresser beside the bed. Its glowing digits tell me the time is 3:36AM. 

I get up. I can't continue to lie in bed and try to sleep when sleep will not come. But I have lived this life of insomnia for years. I sit at the computer and I tweak yesterday's writing, then I add this morning's postscript. But this blog post has nowhere to go. It will meet a dead end, as I knew it would all along. 

Now it is 4AM. I will put on my clothes and my shoes and go out for a walk. The temperature is 72°F on this June morning. I hear no rain falling, but it is on the way. I think to myself, "just do it." Just click the Publish button and walk away. Walk away to the outside world and breathe fresh air. Just do it.