Writing through

Had another lost in airport dream, can't reach final destination, this time--San Luis Obispo, California. Was flying with Liz, friend from Salt Lake City since fourth grade. She has four kids now and a house four times the size of mine. Not much in common anymore, except the once a year that we get together, usually when I fly out to SLC to attend the Mormon wedding reception of one of my sisters. We never run out of conversation, though, able to transport ourselves back to the best friendship that began in fourth grade and continued until I got out of SLC at 19. BFF signed at the end of all notes written must mean something because even after years, changes, Liz is easy to be around--I like this about her.

On our way to SLO from SLC we somehow ended up in New York City, dreams often not making sense in the ways that we think that they should. We finally found someone to help us and he seemed to not know what he was doing, his first day on the job, or a strange obsession with numbers. We decided to wander the airport ourselves, looking for a monitor with our flight number and departure time. We couldn't find one, Liz thinking that our plane must be too small, unworthy of having its information placed on a monitor. After much wandering, maze like, we found a small, comfortable office. Oversized chair like the one at Lone Gull. Window with light streaming over woman's shoulder. She was talking on the phone. We waited and when she finally hung up she said, "Sorry. You've missed it."

If I were an expert at analyzing dreams, which I'm not, I would say that I'm conflicted. As if this isn't obvious when reading my posts. So much time, in dreams, spent trying to get on planes to go somewhere else. The fight I'm fighting in these dreams: How does one stay when one wants to go without feeling guilty for wanting to go, but not really wanting to go--only for a little while if it means that I can come back and only because going is what I've always done. Definitely love kids. Definitely love husband. Definitely conflicted.

I don't necessarily want to be unconflicted, but I do want to be the bare tangle of branches that I've recently been photographing. I want to be free to grow whichever way, but in the end I want to make sense. A kind of ordered chaos. I want to be something beautiful, perhaps in a fleeting way--like Andy Goldsworthy's art. How can it be done? More importantly, how can it be done without getting on a plane?