crosscut

there's a storm to the southwest. the lightning is intermittent and diffuse, all over. it won't bring any rain to my house, but i can see it, a few hundred miles away.

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the air smells like winter - still a good few weeks off here, but the smell is creeping in nonetheless. the smell of woodfires and sharp air, cold breezes and evergreen. the long way is worth it, every time.

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i have this dream: recurring, and only as of late. it's a ranch house, low-slung, hugging the earth in that good, organic kind of way. there's a honeybee buzzing outside the window, just above the yucca - red yucca. i am watching it from the living room, but the window's all the way in the kitchen. my eyes are sharper in dream world than real life.

the funny thing about it is, though, everything else. the house is mine - i can tell - all the art is there and the books and the things i don't have but wish i did. and i am laughing about something, and i have to be a few years older because things don't look quite the same, and you're taking our photograph. yes - you and our - us and we - i am holding a toddler and i guess this child is mine, because there isn't another good explanation, right?

it smells like sweet potatoes and i get the sense it could be thanksgiving. late afternoon, all the windows are open. you're wearing a tie - we must have been somewhere, because i'm wearing one of my nice dresses, too. but not one i have in real life, so i don't know where it came from.

everything is suffuse with comfort and happiness, with rightness and ease. but i never see your face in the dream, only the camera, this honking dslr camera, what the hell. and every time, the same. for once i wish we were just regular people with iphones or point and shoots, because this dream is driving me crazy.

the sweet potatoes and the smell of sage and the white bedspread through the open door. the weirdest thing about it all is it's starting to feel like a memory, i keep wanting to impose someone's voice, someone's face on this ambiguous "you." that's the way the brain works i guess: we all want to see something where there isn't anything, make connections that don't exist.

kind of a depressing dream in a way, sorry about that, you can blame my subconscious.