one of those

details faded and fading - but I love this category...

i leave where a live - a little non-descript, floor-level apartment - very beige..and I go to my studio. my studio is much bigger than I remember (it had been a bit of while since I'd been there). Other people were there. They had brought their laundry machines that were all in a row in the center of the space, noisily working away. I realized it had become a bit of a commune, with people holding arts and crafts groups and playing sudoko together. Then whoever I was with, (__) reminded me to check out my space in the back. I'd forgotten (as this always happens) that I had this huge extra space. It was nice, big, with high walls, not too fancy to paint in. The walls had some weird protrusions to them where I thought I could put the bunkbeds (ohyeah, this all started with me buying two slated bunkbeds somewhere). I thought I could put them high up in the wall, perpendicular to one another 'in a friendly sort of way' (?). It seemed more okay then, to vaguely share my space, since I had this large, roomy space of my own in the back, to be part of a collective of sorts and try that kind of life for awhile.

I thought first I could just look through this one window, where there was a tree outside, and imagine a more lush life, but then I walked further and I couldn't believe what was there -- an enormous, big, beautiful room, with high, vaulted ceilings and a deep walnut, shiney hard-wooded floor with wide glass windows on one end. A stunning space in every way, more than big enough for me (especially since I had the large studio - and another off of that and then the communal room). This looked onto the grounds of a fine estate and I could see people milling and laughing there, sailing toy boats and cooking outside. I realized that this was already mine (as always happens in these dreams) all of it and everything in it. I was ready to move in and inhabit it but the landlord came in. I was afraid she was going to charge me thousands for this space I'd been paying for (empty) all along. I think, in the end, she felt sorry for me for some reason and was going to take it up with her husband. I think I woke not knowing what would happen. Or I forgot. (but not before I also discovered one extra addition - a kind-of frumpy, but also spacious loft where a famous artist had been 'summering'). (I thought about stealing a little ceramic figurine he had: a fox or a bird or something, painted like the American Flag).

I don't know what these dreams mean quite. But they recur again and again. There are always rooms and rooms I had forgotten were mine. Glorious, generous, lucky spaces. There is always some wall high enough and waiting for a giant, white canvas.

...Time to paint, eh?

I tripped as I was leaving and as I was up in the air I thought it might be a good time to sleep. I settled like a lazy leaf on some busy stairs and told them I was ready for them to come in. They were from the Ph.D. program. Many very young but nice and I knew that though I was still pretending I had all my life ahead of me, I would go to the meeting and my life would change. But first, I had to finish packing. We had just been gone for a weekend but there were sweaters and sweaters stacked in giant tilting piles like mattresses in the Princess and the Pea. And, yes, under there somewhere my grandmother's ring. I felt every surface. Climbed higher on the sweaters, feeling between them. I found instead a candle. I let the cats out again (two! again!) and avoided talking to ______ about 'us'. I walked out, knee-deep in the thin, horizontally layered sliding waves of the mountain lake, facing forward, just the candle in my hand.