Chasing people around backyards after dark

I had this dream before leaving the East Coast, cozied-up in my childhood bedroom, of former days of romp and play, of sweet melodrama and usual angst, but they had been supplanted into my adult life. I was twentysomething running around like a teen. There was a scene of bleachers at a rock concert in the gymnasium of my school, all dark and cool, and empty in the corner by the stage, and at the tippy-top it was extra hot and dank. Familiar, but not. Because in the dream, awkward teen encounters were played out by my twenty-something self. Well, that's about the time I knew I had to go. Or that the next two months were going to be long and tedious. And did I mention long??

But the other portion of that dream was outside, in the the cool dark night of summer, somewhere safe and familiar but not necessarily home (because where is home anymore?). I was running through grasses, tall in some lots, taller still in some others, and hiding on decks of homes for fun. I was chasing people around backyards after dark (people I knew, people I know and love still now). It wasn't awkward, dank, or age-inappropriate, but rather sweet, refreshing, and so comfortable. In my dream I liked feeling the grass hit my face as I ran and the excitement of finding someone I knew unexpectedly arriving at my spot at the very same time...like we both thought of it together, but separately. An alignment of thoughts.

I wrote it down, the dream, just as the title of this post describes... saving it in my sketchbook, awaiting its purpose, meaning, calling.

Segue: I'm tuning in.
Not to the radio. To little signs in my life. Things that show up more than once: on the same day, in the same week, in the same context...( I know one of you is cringing right now. grin and bear it eh?). Like this: I have read two consecutive books in the last month or so that came at just the right time, and even moreso in the right way. In fact one helped me leave my pessimism in the air over the Midwest somewhere. I arrived here on the West Coast, free of metaphorical baggage and wearing my biggest grin. But looking for a new book. I tried to fit into the current trend, to hear the words of others telling me I should read this or that. I even bought a "this" and a "that". But this or that were not calling me. I knew what was, but I just didn't know it. Luckily it came to me on my birthday. It fits perfectly.

And now I know more about the feeling of chasing people around backyards after dark.

NPR commentator Romanian-born Andrei Codrescu writes of his learning to drive in America: "Here was a chance for me to transform myself once more, to begin again...I love being born again, and I practice it. It's my passion...my specialty"

I know, just as a forced-stay in New York was becoming my detriment, so too was staying in my childhood dream, affixed in this limbo-ic place between being an adult and being a child. Coming West was my chance for reformation. Or perhaps linguistically better to say continual-formation. Hometown was stagnant. And what's more, if I had committed a forced-stay in Alaska this winter I wouldn't have bottomed out at my old home, thereby wouldn't have seen and known Berkeley or Oakland, thereby wouldn't have been ready to endure the outdoors the way I need to be ready in Alaska, and potentially wouldn't have received the incoming call to go to Peru. (I'm planning a volunteer-build trip with my number one hippie brother in early June. The urge is all-consuming). In the three weeks I have been here I have mentally checked in. To pacifism. To conservation. To helping, beyond classroom walls. To my own headspace. To nature and exploration. To the notion of embracing a life henceforth where I can go chasing people around backyards after dark. And the metaphysical means to achieve it. What joy.

Here's to transforming oneself again..to practicing the act of being reborn. Again. And again.