February 13th, 2008

There are few enough hours in which to be one’s self each day, if you are caught up in the web of the modern working world. There’s a person I try to be for my co-workers and patients each day, and another which is my “best” private self, reserved for my friends, and beneath that layer there’s someone yet again, I suppose. Picture me with an onion’s head. It’s skins all the way down, Lad…

Claudia’s expressed interest in my dreams.  I knew this was coming. Claudia is my therapist. My dreams are seldom vivid, and not terribly memorable. Last night there were strawberries to harvest at the house down in Georgia. Ann would be delighted! They were large and juicy, and probably erotic on some level, if we were to delve. The ground was perfect for them, sandy and moist. On the other hand, they were covered with fleas. Has Ann ever told you how much she LOATHES fleas? (Sorry about the fleas, Ann…)

If we peel away the layer of self that produces flea-infested strawberries, who are we beneath that, I wonder? I imagine a clarity of self which is empty of pain and desire; instead it’s full of light and knowing, but a kind of knowledge that knows nothing of self. I imagine a spacious place where self is absorbed into being, seamlessly. It’s the zen dream.

I can intellectualize it, and describe it, but in that trap will likely never experience it, except, perhaps, if in my next dream, I carefully brush away the fleas on that fruit, and bite into it, and discover that I am not an onion. Instead, I am the strawberry.
🙂