Working from Home

I have been blessed enough to be working from home this week, lovers.

I slept in this morning, went for a walk with my coffee-cup in hand to admire the shade-soaked Lavender and to feel the impending clouds as they began to circle and crowd out the warm sun.

And I still have time to sit here, in my bed, with my new yellow bedspread and my contrasting heavy black laptop on my knees to write this. My windows are open, blinds closed.  I can hear the birds calling and feel the breeze, and yet I am sheltered inside my ivory and espresso bedroom.

My mind wanders.

Last night, I dreamed about a man that I don't know.

He was a promising, young, marine mammal paleontologist with a natural affinity and distraction towards environmental law practice.  In my dream, I teased that he would need the fountain of youth in order to have all the time in the world to pursue these lifelong-career paths. His smile was electric.

We were living in England. He had come from there, in one of those many familiar-yet-unknown counties, such as Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, Sussex, Wiltshire, Hampshire, etc.

His schooling was from the James Cook University in Australia.  He was working on staff for Newcastle University, in the paleontology department- they were conducting research on prehistoric marine mammals.

I had taken a teaching job at Newcastle University- Aquarium Science 122.

I was working on my PhD in shark behavioral science and species conservation.

He had a mess of black curls resting on his crown and a pair of brilliantly blue eyes.  He was smart, and funny, and sexy and his laughter was infectious. His dancing was incredible. His name was James.

This is not the first time I have dreamed about James- this unfamiliar and yet so beloved face and name and character.

I had several prominent dreams about him when I was fifteen.  Last night was the first time in over four years that he's shown up in my subconscious since then.

Although, back then, he sure as hell wasn't a marine mammal paleontologist with a promising career and an obnoxiously extensive vocabulary.

Back then, he was a mysterious and flirty neighbor to me and my friends' in the ridiculously large, communal house we lived in.  He was the boy-next-door, with a great accent, an adorable sense of humor and he played the oboe. (Because when I was fifteen, that was all I wanted.)

It's funny how our minds can create something totally original.  And somehow, we channel that creation in our dreams.  I've never seen James' face before, at least not that I know of, in my waking hours.  He doesn't look like anyone that I know.

When I was fifteen, I was certain these uncontrollable dreams I was having about a total stranger must have meant something.

When I was fifteen, I was more than hopelessly in love with this figment, this character.

I had almost forgotten about this strange experience until last night, when it happened again.

I briefly wondered as I walked this morning if dreams can really be prophetic?

But then I thought about the many times I've accidentally dreamed of you.

And then the John Mayer song, "Friends, Lovers or Nothing," floated across the tide of my subconscious.

"There can only be one."

Suddenly, the possibility of my dreams about you as being prophetic causes me to stop walking. Lord, give me strength.

The scent of that shade-soaked Lavender made my heart swell like a rolling wave this morning. I don't understand the mystery of dreams and the meanings, prophecies, promises, metaphors, legends and deceptions they hold.

But I don't really believe we're meant to.  They're kind of other-worldly, and the reason we experience them at our most vulnerable, is because we're not meant to fully comprehend their weighty resonance.  If we were able to use our full capacities of reasoning and understanding to process the dreams as they were taking place, I honestly think it would drive the most even-keeled and logical of us to the brink of insanity.

It's not for us to know.  We only are allowed to catch minuscule glimpses of them, and then are left alone to interpret as much as we can on our own.

It's strange, and confusing, but I kind of like it this way.  It makes me feel like dreams, in their own right, are similar to fairy tales.

I think they're God's way of letting us know that magic is real, and He uses a little bit of it every night to accompany us on our REM cycle journeys.

What will I dream of tonight, I wonder?