Strange response to an eloquent and beautiful email…
…and next time, if you happen to find me in your dreams, don’t feel sheepish about leaping up and hugging me. Do it with all of you, and it will be returned gratefully, and in full.
I’ll try to reply to your beautiful email, but
Your comment on being a ‘symbol’ made me think. Yeah – it’s an odd life, ain’t it? Certainly one that neither of us chose, but what we have become in a strange way. Perhaps I am a symbol, perhaps an inspiration – then again, perhaps just someone exactly like them who has simply said “fuck it” and decided to follow their dreams at any cost.
What is there to lose?
When I recieve the messages that people occasionally send me, I must admit it is a bit embarrasing at first – I’m just me, nothing more, and not different from anyone else who dreams. I was and am that person, only now – now, I follow them.I love those messages – it makes me feel like I *am* doing something, and the only thing that perhaps makes me a bit different is that through my need to write, people can follow, relate, and see at least something of themselves in me – though, goddamnit, most of them are so much younger! I look forward to watching where they go… The messages I recieve bring me an amazing peace, and makes me realize that I’m finally doing what I want to do – which is help others realize that everything is simply waiting for them – all they need to do is believe that it’s there. It is.
I frequently feel somewhat arrogant in my goals to ‘change the world’, but when it comes down to it all I am doing is, finally, doing what I want to do – and it’s working. I do little with the intention of actually making a difference, nothing as profound as that – I just do what I like to do, I follow my dreams – actually, I chase them down with a vengance (I’m not getting any younger) and will them to happen – and hope to make people happy in the silly things I do.
For most of my life I was, and still frequently am with the beautiful people that I have been fortunate enough to work with, one of the people who looked at others and say “WOW! I wish I could do that!”
The first time I went to see Cirque du Soleil – it was in ”93, just after I moved to San Francisco and didn’t know anybody yet – I cried because of how incredibly beautiful it was. How much I wanted not to be only an observer, but a part of them. I wanted to give people the gift that the performers gave me that night, and that – that was love. Love for what they did, love for who they have come to be, love for every single person in the audience – including this guy I remember so very clearly, who desperately wiped the tears away so he didn’t miss one single thing.
The only thing that has changed since then – and by far, the most important thing, is a small yet very profound selection of words, which through a few very challenging years and a lot of growth, has simply changed to – “I’m going to do that!”
Yeah, there have been many times that I’ve been terrified – I mean hell – just this past Saturday I had a pretty decent and comical fire breathing show completely set up in my head, but when it came down to the time to do it – well, the performance before mine was so lovely, so un-comical, that I really didn;t want to alter the mood that they had brought, so I talked to a couple people that were going to be part of the act ( I was going to breathe fire through someone’s legs, among other things) and nixed it – and just rolled with what I had to work with. I don’t know if it worked out – I think it kinda did and people seemed to dig it, but I think the main point I’m trying to get across is that, well, I’ve learned to love the things that scare the fuck out of me. I search out the things that make me uncomfortable and try to realize that the only thing that was preventing me from doing what I wanted to do was me. I visualize what I want to have happen, truly believe that I deserve it – and invariably, it does.
I don’t know what your dream meant. I could of course give you what I feel, but this has run on too long already, somehow turned into something I want to post on my LJ page, and hell – I’m tired.
You aren’t an outsider – though i admit I frequently have dreams that make me feel the same way – but think about it – you felt alienated and ravishinly hungry in the scene of the exquisite wedding, where people dress only to impress others – but when you were pushed off and found the attic, full of people who seemed to delight in the costumes, who may or may not have been part of a performance, who played with life and all of its – and their – faces – your hunger subsided, you felt accepted.
This, my dear, is the new age. We know that there are many faces to life, we know that life is about fun, dreams, imagination, and creation. Life is beauty, life is laughter. Life is taking the inevitable pain that it brings and dressing it up in a way that suits us, and making fun of it. Life is walking through that pain in the most creative way we can, bringing it to others, teaching them. Life is here, now. We can do anything we want with it – and we have power beyond our wildest dreams to make that happen.
The trick is believing in the dreams.
Believe.
Thank you so much for your email. I got a bit off track, and hope that this isn’t too wacky of a response. You sparked something, and it became a reply, and a LJ post combined.
Such is life.
Life fucking rocks.
On 10/23/06, Theresa Pridemore <theresa.pridemore@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Ksea,
>
> Sometimes people loom large in life, a testament to something others have
> trouble reaching and are desperately seeking at the core of their soul. I
> have, from time to time, found myself to be that person to others, though my
> oddness is not quite at the level of presence even I would like it to be
> (though I have had my moments from time to time). But I have been fascinated
> to hear tales from more mundane individuals who had claimed to dream of me.
> I was a super hero. Someone fantastic with some regal bearing. They recalled
> the tale of dreaming to me and I wondered what I had been up to in my sleep.
> Sometimes it made me wonder if I was truly living up to my potential while
> awake. I admit, I always loved the tales. I still hear them every once in a
> blue moon.
>
> Now that I am older, I see even more in the dream realm than I had before.
> My life in dreaming is indeed larger than it is here. Sometimes I dream
> things that are to come. Usually they are fairly mundane, pointless
> occurrences, but they always strike a chord in me, that of life being larger
> than it seems day by day. Sometimes they are of some significance. And
> sometimes the dream realm is its own world, where alliances are forged,
> where politics play out, even if of the more fantastic, inexplicable sort
> upon waking.
>
> I don’t really know you. I follow your journal as an outsider, having only
> met you… well, now I guess, it is twice. I see that you get this sort of
> odd attention quite often. The person who sees a kindred soul in you, or,
> more often, the person who finds a symbol in you. I find it interesting to
> detect that you also see in yourself something of a symbol, which most
> people aren’t honest enough with themselves to observe in their own nature.
> From time to time, it seems, you play a role of one sort of another which
> serves as a gateway for others into their own symbol self.
>
> Because I at least have some sense of you as a person also fascinated by the
> fantastic, the mystery and inexplicable, the borders and hazy journeys of
> both sleeping and waking life, I thought you would be interested, as I have
> been in the past, in your appearance in a dream I had last night.
>
> I honestly do not recall much, and only remembered this dream when I read
> your latest journal entry. Some of the pictures you had posted reminded me
> of my dream. It was likely that I blended a bit of what I was
to see into my
> dream, as I often do.
>
> I don’t understand this dream, though I do know that, at its core, it was
> about being the outsider.
>
> There was a huge, elaborate wedding, as a duchess might have had in the
> early 1900s. I knew someone there, but I had not been invited. Still, I
> managed to dress in a sort of frilly white gown for the event, secretly
> wishing to be a member at this grand event. Somehow I found myself at the
> reception, standing in front of a huge feast. I realized I was starving. I
> began to indulge in the food.
>
> But someone quickly realized I wasn’t supposed to be there. They gave me a
> bit of a reprimand then escorted me to the periphery. I had never been so
> hungry in my life, suddenly. The retribution had increased my appetite.
> Everything looked much more beautiful and delicious than it had before. The
> ladies in white, the men in their tuxes. The glorious spread of food and
> dessert. I stood on a grand, spiral staircase, overlooking the festivities,
> high up and alone. I could only leave. The sight of the event made me more
> ill by the moment.
>
> I retreated to a large, sprawling attic. There were costumes spread about.
> Ladies and men putting on their makeup and performance attire. I did not
> know where they were going to perform, or if indeed they truly were planning
> on a performance. I had a sense that they lived their lives in costume, that
> this was the face with which they were most comfortable. I felt alone and
> friendless in this place as the other, though there was a stronger kinship
> with the people here than down below, and none of them asked me to leave.
>
> I was sitting in mourning over my hunger and loneliness, and you came to say
> hello. I recognized you immediately and leapt to hug you. I soon felt
> sheepish about the action and apologized if I had overstepped the bounds of
> polite company… We did not truly know one another, after all, but were
> merely acquaintances through journals. You brushed it off and showed me
> around a bit before leaving on other errands that I cannot recall. I know
> that we explored a few broken-down places where odd and interesting people
> lived. We chatted amiably as friends and I think I realized that I had
> pegged myself too quickly as the artist who had too easily settled for the
> mundane life. There was more to me and what I was doing with my life than I
> had myself given credit for.
>
> I was also not as hungry as before to be a part of the earlier procession,
> but felt sated by the exploration of the mysteries in life.
>
> I wish I could remember more of my dream, but I cannot. Last night was an
> odd assortment of dreams all around, though it does not surprise me too
> much, fall has a profound effect on me. I dreamt of many old friends from
> school and even of Bowie, which hasn’t happened in a long while.
>
> I hope you won’t read my confession as uncomfortably out of place. I just
> like to share these sorts of odd things with people where I think it will be
> welcome, because it is my way of giving sway to the other side of myself,
> acknowledging the greater magic of living. I need those sorts of alliances
> in my life, to strengthen this thread of the fantastic in my daily
> existence. It is the world I wish to make for myself. One where the odd
> people in the attic hold each other up and keep each other away from the
> hungers of the grand ball of the superficial which others so easily
> entertain themselves within below. Where people explore the essence of
> living, and allow magic to creep into daily life.
>
> While you were not truly there, I still must thank you for the pleasant
> visit. Drop by anytime. Next time I will make tea and crumpets.
>
> Best,
>
> XXXXXXX
>
—
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