You Need a Big Bag for Your Dreams

on carrying dreams and preparing for death

Usually these coastal mornings bring at least one hour of sun. Not today—though there hasn’t been one day like the other and yet, in some ways, they are all alike.

These are the days: Jack asks if I want coffee and I say, Just a littleee and he selflessly hands me a whole mug; I come home from work at 9am (work slogging at the moment) and sit down on the carpet, in front of the big window, even though we have four chairs. (The houses I have lived in have all become named in one way or another—Lemon Palace, Jank House, Orchard House—and I think this one is Stilt Mansion. Our house is on the second and third floor, and it is a duplex, not on stilts, but we have a view of the mountains over our neighbors’ roofs. I can see smoke rising from the chimneys as clear as wisps of clouds.) Because I am slogging, we have upgraded from lentils to pierogis. It was a childhood favorite when I was younger and my grandma often made a dozen when I would spend the night at her house. Last week, Jack and I made brown butter parsnip pierogis with roasted cauliflower on the side. Pierogi period. These are my days.

What the hell am I doing has become my favorite question to ask myself. It’s almost as if life is so funny, and maybe you relate, that the only thing I can do at this point is observe it. I have a CD in my car with Bonnie Raitt’s Not The Only One track. It is my favorite song to sing. I especially love the line Movin’ in the wrong direction and then the percussion that chimes in like x x X! later on.

Something people don’t talk about so much is the feeling of knowing exactly where you are headed but not knowing how to get there. I know I eventually want to get an MFA, have a dog (yeah, Trout), sit down by the river, turn an old building into an artist’s residency, start a sober queer bar, farm for the rest of my life, and blah blah blah. We all dream even if we can’t remember it. Somewhere, inside, they’re tucked and waiting to be pulled, heaved, waiting for the world to see what has been on the inside—our sack of bones which we carry in our vessel of skin like one long day, until we die. Maybe that is the slog, you know? Carrying it all from one place to another while our dreams become more and more stuffed into night or future or loss. All the while becoming heavy, just something to carry.

I’ve been thinking about that. How do we get to where we want to go? How do we carry dreams weightlessly?

The other night I went to bed and realized I had wasted a day. A whole day! And we only get so many! I feel Time lately—changing, slipping, dining so elegantly on our lives. This is an existential piece of writing.

That all said, I’ve been getting excited about death and the preparation before, because what else is life, and I know the moment before I die I will look to Anna—who is like some master of death, having gone through it so courageously and unexpectedly—to show me how. I’m always looking to her to show me how to live, to prepare for death. This is dreaming.

Preparing for Death:

• turning my phone on airplane mode

• saying no to capitalism / social media / anything you don’t want to do

• finding new shapes of sound on the strings

• drinking water

• making art without any binary of “good” or “bad”

• dreaming

• reading whatever makes me happy, even if it is alien erotica (do you know any?)

• eating pierogis

• missing my grandmother

• becoming accustomed to my fears and loving everyone in my path, simultaneously

I would love to know what is on your list of Preparing for Death.

Love! jo!