I'm the kid who ran away with the circus.
Now I'm watering elephants.
But I sometimes lie awake in the sawdust
dreaming I'm in a suit of light.
Late at night in the empty big top,
I'm all alone on the high wire.
‘Look, he's working without a net this time.
He's a real death-defier.’
I'm the kid who always looked out the window,
failing tests in geography.
But I've seen things
far beyond just the school yard —
distant shores of exotic lands.
There the spires of the Turkish empire.
It's six months since we made landfall.
Riding low with the spice of India
through Gibraltar, we're rich men all.
I'm the kid who
thought we'd someday be lovers,
always held out that time would tell.
But time was talking.
I guess I just wasn't listening.
No surprise, if you know me well.
And as we're walking toward the train station,
there's a whispering rainfall.
Across the boulevard,
you slip your hand in mine.
In the distance: the train call.
I'm the kid who has this habit of dreaming.
Sometimes gets me in trouble, too.
But the truth is,
I could no more stop dreaming
than I could make them all come true."
These are lyrics to a song by Buddy Mondlock. He's a Nashville based signer-songwriter whom I've enjoyed for 20 years.
(He has a song, can't remember the title but the chorus says "She would kick up her heels on Michigan Avenue, and she would dance all night" which reminds me of my mother's mother. I saw him perform at Bluebird Cafe a few months after she died and cried, sitting at at table in the front, for the whole song. Just thinking about it and her is making me cry. My grandma was a fabulous woman.)
I've always been a dreamer. I've always had a place of escape in my
head. Usually, it's some business scheme, like a coffee shop or craft studio, or about living in some other place, like an off-the-grid utopia, or France. Rarely, when I have a moment and especially when I'm stressed, have I not drifted off into my reveries. Lately, because I've been trying to be aware of being "in the moment" I've been trying to notice when my thoughts drift, but truly, what a herculean task! This chihuahua mind of mind is seeming more like a monkey with a lion on the prowl, of late. It seems like when I try to still my mind it goes into emergency thinking mode in which it has to think as many thoughts in as possible. Whew! I try to center down and pray and almost immediately my mind begins to wander. After a few minutes of random chains of grocery lists, work plans, daydreams, memories and idle drifting, I notice, pull my thoughts back, apologise to God for having a short attention span and begin the process again. After 3 or 4 times of doing this I'll find that 15 or 20 minutes have passed and all I've accomplished is to feel frustration. If the road to hell is paved with good intention, I am there.
I guess the beauty of this whole thing, the grace, is that there's no test. I get to start over how ever many times as I need. The only one judging me is me. God is just waiting patiently for me to get where I need to be, leaving signs of encouragement and love along my path.
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