i see things

before any one of the apparent 2 people who read this calls the men in white coats on me again, i don't mean i see ufos, greys, jabberwockys, leprechauns, the ghost of christmas past, or scenes of crimes that have yet to occur. i do not see things that are not there, at least not in the manner of which most would immediately think. what i mean to say is that i frequently live in that daydreamed world where we all live from time to time, thinking about how i might like to do this, or how the world would be better if we could only do that. i think the major difference for me - at least as i understand it to have frustrated some people surrounding me - is that while the vast majority of people out there will come back from a woolgathering session and think to themselves 'that was a lovely little dream', i will possibly never fully return to the world and see it the way that it was before i dreamed it to be something new. i dream dreams and to me they are something to act upon as though they are facts, until it becomes clear that in doing so i am tilting at yet another windmill. i don't mean to say i am deluded, merely that i can see no reason to let a dream die simply because it was a dream.

and so i will wander off in what must to someone not living in my head to be some aimless direction with no forethought or plan or even any idea of where i might end up. and while i can understand that might be the way it looks, i rest assured that i have every idea of where i may end up, and that where i actually end up is likely to be far better than what i dreamed in the first place.

the funny thing so few people really seem to grasp is that just as there is no need to let that dream die, there is no need to hold it so tightly that it is smothered to death by the dreamer. no dream has ever been brought into reality without reality exacting some toll on the form of the dream. for some this is frustrating to the point of seeming futility. i know that feeling. i lived there once myself. it is a perfectionism born of the ego, the desire to have what one wants become real with no change whatsoever, the belief that one's dream belongs to him alone and should be his own perfect creation. i lived there. i know that way. it is the way of the fool. it is the way of death for the vision.

no, reality s powerful and fickle and must be allowed to act its force, and the dream will live. it will perhaps not look the same as when it was dreamed, but if one can stand apart from the dream as if it were a child to be reared - love it, comfort it and foster it and guide it, all while allowing it to grow in the way it desires for itself - it will more often than not grow into a shining and beautiful thing larger and more wonderful than one person ever could have dreamed alone.

i think of it in terms of a work of art, the medium in which i work and in which i learned the lesson. there will come an inspiration and an image, a picture of an idea that the painter wishes to put out into the world. there are limitations, though. the canvas is rough and has flaws. the paints will have colors they cannot reproduce. the brush will fail to capture the subtlety of a smallest line of form. the light in the gallery will never be just right to convey the luminosity of the imagined subject. the artist could fight these things - prepare the canvas to a glassy-smooth surface with gesso and sanding, select a different medium to avoid the paints' limitations of color - or give into them, work with them, allow them to shape the form in their own way. in not fighting the medium, the medium does not fight back but rather cooperates, and together the artist and medium produce something final that, though different from the imagined image, is it's own wonderful creation.

these things - for me they must be felt richly and treated as though they are already what they will become. your dreams are real. the just haven't happened to you yet. but they are already happening all the time.