Dreaming

Astrobarry posted my new weekly horoscope today. It is very interesting. This week for me is supposed to be all about dreaming. I am to truly imagine the life I dream of, even if it's a million miles from the life I'm in and currently settling for. And I am not to listen to any internal voices of reason, at all. I can evaluate and make plans next week. This week is just for the dream. He says:

Let's just assume it's all within your grasp… and before you start to say otherwise, leave it at that. Now, spend your week basking in its glow of promise. If you let it sink in and allow yourself to enjoy the feeling, you might just get used to it — and, in the process, ready yourself to find a way (any way at all!) to make it really happen.

Now, you folks know better than anyone how much my focus for the last two years has been on just surviving. The fact that I get up in the morning, still eat, have gainful employment, all these things are miracles that were quite touch and go there for a while. So the mental attitude Astrobazza recommends is feeling a bit foreign. My dream, or whatever it is I would choose to dream of, is not at all clear to me. When my life and spirit kept running even though it had gone off the side of the cliff, and hung in air with no foundation, my old dreams when too. Novelist? How about feed ourself breakfast. Rich girl in a big house? I love my little house, I realise and embrace that there's not one thing wrong with it.

But yet, of course I am unhappy. There's still a hole in my life where intimacy should be. This is still a cold, hard, alien city, despite its wonders and variety and entertainments.

But what if I could dream? Complete free-wheeling unfettered creative dream. What would it be? My poor little brain is struggling already with the homework assignment, and I only read the horoscope two hours ago.

"Maybe I want to travel."

- "No, you don't have any money or time to travel, and you have to go to the US twice next year, what are you thinking of travel for?"

"Maybe I want to hang out in bars and drink again, like I did in grad school, like I did when I was 24."

- "Don't be unseemly, you're too old to cavort like that in public, and besides, who would you go with? All the old people you know are spiritually tired, or consitutionally too focussed on living healthily, or just generally fragile, and stop after one glass of wine."

"Maybe just a string of lovers, rather than a husband?"

- "Have some respect for yourself, dear. A husband is what everyone needs. You need the whole shebang, the whole kaboodle, and anyone who fails on even one husbandly criterion is someone you won't be with - it will be a relationship failure."

Who is this person in my head throwing a damp cloth over all my ideas? I'm glad I have the instruction to shut her up, for a whole week too! It's like an old trunk, covered in dust and cobwebs, rusty hinges creaking open. This dreaming. What will I imagine, if I let my self "assume it's all within my grasp"? Assume. Without proof or tests or an action plan. I know how to do that, though, I'm a philosopher. What do you suppose I'll want to do with my life, by the time this week of dreaming is done?