My friend CJ yanked my chain today. She didn't mean to, it wasn't her fault, but still, it happened. She was talking about advertising. And as I've thought about why I felt as I did when reading her post it dawned on me what has happened to me over the years. It isn't such a great mystery, nothing hard at all to understand, just a matter of seeing what I'm looking at. I've forgotten how to want things, I made myself forget how to want things. I had to, really. So many people depended on me, I was the last line of hope, the last one to ask. I couldn't want things, if I spent what I had on what I wanted there would be nothing available when they needed things, and the guilt would destroy any pleasure in the possessing of what I'd merely wanted. Wanting and the guilt of self convicted greed have become so very tightly linked in me. I'm sure it is a large part of the depression monster I'm currently fueding with. There is no reason for me not to want things, not now, I've filled and fulfilled every responsibility the world ever asked of me. It's just that I think I've forgotten how to want.
I spoke of it when I spoke of the art of the dreamweaver I learned from Alex, how it is dreams shape desires and it is desires shape decisions. Those are true statements, that's pretty much how it works. But to dream of something is to want that thing, and when one has done what I've done the very headwaters of that process are compromised. Advertising is nothing more than commercialized dreamweavers, the powered looms and mills as it were trying to turn out in wholesale bulk something to emulate the delicate mindcraft practiced by the artisan dreamweavers such as Alex, they who can build you the dream you can't quite see for yourself without you ever seeing them at their work until the dream appears before your waking eyes.
But... sweet Alex is retired now, and her equal is not likely to be found. If I'm to relearn how to want, how to dream, I'm going to have to figure it out on my own. Perhaps, perhaps that challenge is my final test where the art of the dreamweaver is concerned. Perhaps even if my muse were still working all she'd do is smile for me, that wise woman smile we all recognized instantly, it wasn't so very common, and say something to the effect of "sweetheart, you must first dream for yourself before you can help another find their dream..." She might have said that in words, but more likely it would have simply ridden with that smile, she was so very good at saying things without words to keep the words from diluting her meaning.
Ah, to sleep, perchance to dream... but of what? Even in my sleep my dreams are not free of that forgetting, that self imposed chain whose links are forged of guilts for having a want when others do not have a need. I am not young anymore, old is not so very far away. What dreams can a man hold when he is almost old that might be something besides some sad effort to ignore the truth of his days?
I've thought to dream of fame, as a poet, as an inventor, I've entertained the thought of those dreams at odd times. It is time for a new poet to find favor with the masses, to speak of life and love in crafted words that leave the audience thinking the poet knows more than he really does. But what of that? It is still to feed others, and starve the self.
I know how to do several things the world truly needs, sometimes I think to dream of taking those into the marketplace, becoming truly rich. But what of that? All that is, all it can be is money. That kind of money is a burden in its' own right, all you can do is give it away or give the money the chance to corrupt you utterly, make you refuse to see that what has gathered around you are only those who need you, for one reason or another, and in your own despair take advantage of them for their needing. The world has enough of that already.
The former condition I saw on Alex, I could see that burden in her eyes, even then I understood it. The latter condition? I saw that in the eyes of a very wealthy man, T. Boone Pickens, I saw that on him in a news photo. The two burdens are much the same, really, they both carried a variation of it. So maybe to dream of fame and fortune, adoration and admiration is not such a wise thing, not really. If it happens be prepared to endure it, but it is not wise to make it a dream and seek it out. Horses aren't the only creatures who will run back into a burning barn.
If fame and fortune are set aside then what is left? To dream of love? Ah, but of course. To dream of love. A dream of love has some potential to motivate a life. That is of course forgetting it was love compelled the forgetting of how to want in the first place. If the dream is love shared at equilibrium there is no onus to be mastered, but a dream to love, or be loved, that is not betwen souls set equal then the same conundrum repeats: I feed them, or they feed me, but either way it is a one way flow and the chains tighten until the dream is cut in half and falls away.
But still, I would say it is safe to dream of sharing a love that exists in equilibrium. Of course, the key to that thought is an equilibrium between hearts, and that is something so delicate and so rare it is truly more a matter of dream and legend than some reality to be achieved by the will. Fate can arrange such a balance, but for a mortal to take that amibition? No. It is the dream that really cannot come true by any effort of the will. Where a dream of such love may be sustenance for the soul it cannot be the source of motivation for reality, to allow it to motivate reality is to doom the dream to remaining unfullfilled, and as a consequence endure watching the erosion of events take the dream of love away one tiny bit at a time. No. A dream of love can sustain a soul, but it cannot motivate a life. Not for long, not safely.
As I write I realize I've already written of this subject before, without realizing that was what I wrote. SQ deals with this on her voyage to India, when she comes to compare herself to a privateer who measures her wealth in the count of the times she intervened to protect a cargo of love and light from some predator who sought to destroy it. Hmmm... a thought, that one is. To dream of becoming a hero. But what of that? What is it to be a hero, if fame and fortune are excluded from the dream? What is left of the hero when those are taken away?
*chuckle* To dream of being a hero...
…see a wilderness of mirrors
and windmills scattered round,
and I the fool who tilts at them
on hard and stony ground…
but fools do have their allies
in sun and snow and wind,
need but shift the proper stone
the rain will enter in…and rain…
and rain, and rain will run
and wear the mountain down,
grind away fates heart of stone
to rich and fertile ground…
It is a deep question, one of the deepest, what a man should take for his dream when he gets the chance to choose. I've lived so very long where dreams, wants, were all but proscribed by the demands of my life. Perhaps I am doing what I usually do, looking right over the answer. Perhaps the best dream is of finding the dream that answers the want before the wanting is ever known or felt. Cut the crap, 'Nos. You're talking about a good woman, and you know it.
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