“Summer skies and lullabies
Nights we couldn’t say goodbye
And of all of the things that we knew
Not a dream survived.”
-Jim Croce
There’s a certain moment to avoid right before you fall asleep, or before you wake up…you know the one I mean? Where you have one foot planted firmly in reality and the other rests tentatively in the realm of dreams and you can’t quite remember what it is you’ve lost. It’s a split second where everything and nothing exists all at once, where magic and science, math and fantasy, yesterday and tomorrow all live and mingle in the same space. It’s only there in that place that men and gods, human and faerie, mortal and ghost can see one another.
…and all you can do with it is think about something that used to be, and isn’t anymore.
Some people spend their whole lives trying to find a way back there. They see it once, they touch their toe in that ocean of possibility, and it consumes them. They live in that sadness in the hope that they can break through to the magic they sense all around it.
But the sadness cages the magic; it’s not a path through.
There is always a bridge between a moment of joy and this moment. This is hard to remember. It’s much easier to remember, to think about pain. It’s much easier to believe that pain is the default.
But that’s not your mind speaking; that’s just the pain. Or the half-memory of pain that makes you feel like you’ve escaped it, but all you’re looking for is the remaining hurt.
Hiraeth. There’s always a way back to that place; but it’s not a place you need to be.
Let yourself out. It will be okay.
____
