Cosmic Intersections

In the days before she died, my grandmother saw angels. No rush of wings, heavenly chorus or robed Botticini messengers . Just an old man sitting in the corner, head bowed, hat in hand. And a woman in white reflected in the mirror; watching, smiling. The faintest tinkling of bells and low whispers from familiar and long missed voices. She said they were there, and I believed her.

And I tell you this story now because in the last few days, I’ve seen her loitering at the edges of my dreams. The first time, she was standing on the ledge of deep blue pool holding a small child and I tried to swim closer to see which of the many children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces and cousins it could be. But the water current flowed both ways, as it can in the physics of dreams, and I couldn’t get close enough to know for sure. It looked like my son when he was just a baby and I awoke flush with emotion, missing both my grandmother and the child that was my son’s young past.

The palest of pink wisps were breaking through the gray dawn hours when I slipped out of the house and into our own backyard pool, floating on my back with eyes closed and letting the warm waters wash over my face. And in the half light of those early hours, thought about the new baby that my cousin and his wife welcomed to the world just yesterday. And how little Lucas Christopher would never know the great-grandmother that used to hold and feed and play with his now-grown Dad. And how his other great-grandmother, his Dad’s paternal ‘nanny,’ was this very day preparing to pass on, racked with cancer. And I wondered if he would meet her before she left this earth.

And the tears flowed, salt water to salt water. I didn’t open my eyes again until the sun broke over the horizon and light danced on the water like diamonds.

My grandmother showed up again today. This time she was dressed to go out – to lunch, or shopping, or visiting, as her generation was want to do. I could feel the fabric of her favorite black and white sweater, recognize her jewelry, smell her cologne. “Where are you going,” I asked – as if that were a normal question. “To meet a friend,” she replied and turned to leave. Then stopped and turned and said, “I really saw those angels, you know.”

I know. I know.

The Beginning

How do we know a thing exists if we judge it only by waking standards? For the lucid dreamer, there is but a breath of separation between waking and sleeping, between consciousness and dreaming where ‘all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream’ – where the conscious doing of thinking and subconscious act of dreaming unite. This is the place I’m called to journey; to discover what is as true in dreams as we believe to be in real life, to discern a false awakening in real life as we experience in dreams; to grasp the teachings in a well-spun tale, the poet’s verse, the true confession.
(photo by Erin Cowherd Swemba)

A Dream Within a Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!/And, in parting from you now,/ Thus much let me avow/You are not wrong, who deem/That my days have been a dream;/Yet if hope has flown away/In a night, or in a day,/In a vision, or in none,/Is it therefore the less gone?/All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar/Of a surf-tormented shore,/And I hold within my hand/Grains of the golden sand/How few! yet how they creep/Through my fingers to the deep,/While I weep- while I weep!/O God! can I not grasp/Them with a tighter clasp?/O God! can I not save/One from the pitiless wave?/Is all that we see or seem/But a dream within a dream?