Beyond Death and Life

As always, I awakened this morning between 3.00 a.m. and 4.00 a.m. but contrary to my usual habit, fell asleep again and had an extraordinary dream.  Did not awaken then unti almost 8.00 a.m.

I dreamt of Fleming.  As is almost always the case with respect to some one who has died, I was aware in the dream of the fact of his death but a woman who was a very close friend of his in the dream (but no one in the real world as far as I know), contacted me to tell me he was in a place in Florida and that she was going to visit him.  She asked if I wished to accompany her.  I couldn't believe he still was alive but that I hadn't known and I was consumed with guilt for not visiting him sooner.  I agreed, of course, to go with her.

She had a motorbike and I hate motorbikes but I climbed onto the machine behind her and off we went.  The place in Florida was a sort of nursing home that resembled to some extent those awful colonoscopy places, with rows of little long cubicles where patients lay dormant.  The nurse at the entrance was frisking every one and asking for driver licences and passports for some inexplicable reason.  I think this is a reference to the fact that one cannot buy pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) any longer without a valid licence which is absurd and which we discussed again yesterday when we needed some.

In any case,  I hung back, not knowing if I should let the woman go through alone but she turned round and encouraged me to enter.  She went first though and saw him and came out and said he had some sort of special photograph on the wall.  I must try to remember what that was...

She then said she was going to try to get him into another room.  I went rhrough and saw two old men at the end of the corridor, one on either side.  I did not recognise Fleming at first.  I then looked at the walls and saw photographs of him on one of the walls so I looked down and instantly knew him then.

I went to him and found that the upper half of his body was in a glass case, kind of like Snow White in the coffin of glass.  He suddenly had tentacles and many hands and he grabbed at me and at first I wanted to flee or at least move away, but instead I allowed it... and he became normal and the glass case disappeared.

I told him I loved him and missed him.  We spoke of the Puttikins and some of our shared interests.  I was conscious of overwhelming joy that he had not died and a sense of profound kinship.  It was as though I had found my family after losing them.   I promised to visit frequently.

When I came out, the woman asked if I had paid for another room for him.  I was surprised and said the topic had not come up at all.  She then said she had asked her father for money and had paid for another room for Fleming.  Not certain what this all means???

In essence though, the place was a kind of holding place for people who were on the edge of death.  Evidently, the rooms were steps either towards or away from the final death moment and she was moving him  gradually away from death by changing rooms.

The photograpshs on his wall showed him in his youth as wall as childhood.  I think there were photographs of me as well.

When I awakened, I was conscious of great joy as though Fleming actually had contacted me from beyond the grave.  I felt he was helping me to heal physically and indeed, my pain levels were far less than they have been for months.  I was actually able to walk a little without that terrible limp where I cannot even place my left foot on the ground.

I know that Fleming firmly believed in life after death.  He and Julia visited mediums and spiritualists... never knew precisely WHY in terms of whom they wished to contact unless, for Fleming's part, it was his mother, whom he had loved dearly.  The main reason for going, as far as I could make out, was to try to prove life after death existed.

Fleming died two Christmases ago.  Since then, there has been no hint of contact or his continuing existence until now.  I think of him daily.  I miss him quite badly.  The dream this morning really, for all its bizarre nature, FELT like contact.  I do have very vivid dreams, however, and who knows?  I'd love to be able to 'visit' Fleming again though and see if there is a way of moving him to a room that is closer to this life.  So very interesting... he would have LOVED this dream and would have discussed it with me with great enthusiasm.  God, I miss him!  He was as close to an intellectual and spiritual soulmate as one could have.

The first Easter in a new home... I transported a few of my plants from the old place, including two purple Hyacinths, some Snowdrops and the tiny purple flowers that resemble Snowdrops and are known apparently to those in Eastern Europe more than elsewhere.  They did not take the transition too well but one hopes that they will recover to bloom next Spring.

Meanwhile, having seen more evidence of Southwestern U.S. landscaping here than anything else, I was saddened by the reality that almost every other house in the neighbourhood had a vast array of daffodils but this house had none...

Or so I thought until I found a single daffodil blooming next to the Blue Spruce in front of the house!  How magical but how lonely!  I took a photograph of it.

More imposing is the glorious Weeping Cherry in the garden behind the house next to the hot tub.  I have a splendid view of it from my bedroom window and clipped a few sprigs to set in a vase as well.  It is an exquisite tree, redolent of Asian beauty. 

Erotica, Romance and Dreams

When I was a little girl, I was obsessed with Romance in the 19th Century sense of the word.  The idea that one had a soulmate somewhere, a man for whom one would be willing to die and without whom, life would be essentially meaningless... this was part and parcel of all that Romantic Idealism that my pursuit of classical literature in all its manifestations gave me.

Well, decades later, I have found that of course, it was an illusion but, like the best illusions, one that can take one either to ecstacy or plunge one into the abyss.  The trick, of course, is to remain in control of the illusion, to keep one's hands firmly on the reins at all times.  The soulmate is the mirror self, alas, and not another being.

Please do not mistake me for a cynic.  I still believe that one can love another and find a certain measure of happiness in a good domestic situation but because of my early Idealism and obsession with Romance with a capital R, I never looked for the right partner.  I looked for that quickening of the pulse, that dizzying infatuation and naturally, that is something that cannot endure.  The person on whom one fixes all this love or lust or whatever ultimately is nothing more than an ordinary person and usually an immensely flawed one.  The good ones don't have that dizzying effect, at least not at the outset.  It is the 'lame duck', the so-called hero who, like Athos, is almost poisoned by melancholy or tragedy or whatever that is able to elicit those faulty sensations... and ultimately, one finds that it WAS all illusion and one that was self-generated.

Is it any wonder then that some of the most heady moments in my life romantically speaking occurred in a virtual reality called Second Life?  Ironically, the people with whom I shared these moments  for the most part were real, dear friends I had known for years.  There, however, they were able to wear different skins, different names and to be whatever it was that I desired.  I owned castles.  I wore wings and made love beautifully and even exquisitely.  I watched the aurora borealis from the tinted windows of my bower and lay in the arms of a man who was everything desirable and utterly gorgeous physically.

Stories were written about me, songs sung and a mythology became fact for a brief time.  I was a woman, I was a vampire, I was a cat, I was a wolf... I was part cat and part woman or anything else that took my fancy.  The intensity of that world was something that had to be experienced firsthand to be understood.  I think that, like anything, the power is in oneself.  I have found it in my favourite childhood books as well and in Harvest Moon and Rune Factory.

The most profound and intense moments are in my dream world, but that is not within my control and when I awaken, recall is sporadic and incomplete.  Second Life, on the other hand, was a controlled vision.  Utterly marvelous.  I owe an eternal debt of gratitude to the creative minds who made the cities and palaces that were the settings for my waking dream life.

I have to say that these dear friends of mine, so different in real life, put me in mind of Leonard Cohen's wonderful song, 'I'm Your Man' when they met me in Second Life.  They were able to deal with me on a level that would have been impossible in reality... entirely without ego or pride.  They appeared to enjoy the various roles they played for and with me.

I know this is the age of telephone and computer sex, but that is not what Second Life was for me.  It was pure romance.  Yes, there were intense erotic moments but that is quite different from 'virtual sex'.

'I'm Your Man' really is the most incredible manifesto.  I do not know if any man could live up to those promises though.  Like so many things, it is poetry and not reality.