'And there are other earths and skies than these'

[flemmings]

It's pleasant, waking up from dreams, for the reason Li Bai adduces up there in the subject line. For all the mindful 'be where you are' Buddhist teachings, one must admit that where one is has a certain dull sameness to it. Same house, same job, same city, same me. A dream is a trip to elsewhere, a view outside of one's narrow reality. So I relish my last night's trip to Tokyo, which wasn't of course anything like the real one, and even though it did turn into a bathroom frustration dream, as dream!Tokyo is wont to do. This time, at least, all the toilets weren't smooth upholstered chairs, as has happened before; but Mizuno-san, the concierge at the dorm, had removed all the toilet seats in the building, leaving only the cold porcelain bowls.

We have the first snow of this winter today, a scant week before New Year's, so the world is a different place. I am trying to reconcile myself to the loss of convenience and the knee pain that goes with boots, don't ask me why; especially since my knees have already been paining me in ordinary shoes.

They ask why I live in the green mountains
I smile and don't reply; my heart's at ease.
Peach blossoms flow downstream, leaving no trace-
And there are other earths and skies than these.
-trans Vikram Seth

Comments

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Fiction can do it too, and frequently does. Movies as well, though I rarely find one that shows me a reality I want to be in. But the appeal of dreams for me is that it's a personal private reality, just as 'reality' is. I created it and only I see it, but it has charming twists that 'reality' lacks and that waking me could never have thought of.

[incandescens]

Yes, part of the reason I want dreams is the input from something/somewhere else, something outside me. And fiction, too. I need to get outside my own limits.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

How often have I mourned that my dreaming mind is more wildly creative than my waking one. This may be true of most people, in fact-- strange juxtapositions that are in fact organic, exhilarating leaps of association, and in my case, ordinary people of a depth and emotional complexity that I can't even envision in real life, where people seem much more typecast.

[avalonjones.livejournal.com]

The dream world is almost invariably preferable to the real one, unless it's one of those earthquake nightmares I keep having.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Err well yes, nightmares aside, I mean.