Living In A Stranger's House

I woke up a few minutes ago and looked around me.

The house seemed familiar, like I was staying at the home of a family relation - my grandparents, my great-uncle and great-aunt - the smells were new but old.  The sweet, musty scent of urine, like the aroma that hangs in the air of a rest home or nursing home from long ago.  Cedar tree from a linen trunk.  Body odour of a person who no longer uses deodourant daily.

Where was I?

I lifted the covers on the bed, making sure not to disturb my wife or the cats.  I walked to the cedar chest, put on a pair of sweat pants, slipped my feet into a pair of moccasins and listened to the creaking of the floorboards while I made my way across the house to the study so I could sit and write about this moment, all the while wondering whose house I'd entered.

Is this my home?

All these years I've been a stranger in my own house.  After 22+ years in this same domicile as one of the two original occupants (the dog that slept here during construction doesn't count), can I say I am the owner?

Do I own anything?

Who am I?

Is this another dream?

We are all dreamers within dreams within dreams.  Is this the dream from which one never wakes up?  Is this the dream that provides a brief view of reality before the clouds move in and the window shades close?

For a moment tonight, I saw myself as I really am and now I don't know which person I'm supposed to be.

Levels upon levels of labels from which to choose.

In all levels, on all labels, a happy person for whom the universe lives according to his wishes and desires.  No beginning and no end to time; thus, time does not exist for me; thus, I don't exist; thus, you don't exist; thus, we are all one.

These words do not exist.  The smells of a middle-aged man in his 22+-year old house do not exist.  This house does not exist.  The reflection of the desk lamp light from all the objects around me does not exist.

To see I don't exist and to see I exist to say I don't exist takes waking up within a dream outside a dream within a dream in and out of reality.

A brief moment of insight.

The world's problems do not exist but they won't go away.  Thus, a world of solutions waits to be found in waves of brief moments of insight to all of us at different times and at the same time, IF we're prepared to be unprepared for the moment the insight arrives unexpectedly.

Years of preparation for the moment(s) you never can anticipate.

Flashes of insight that tell you when to deal harshly with some and patiently with others (patiently and harshly with yourself, especially).

Pace yourself.  The race is long although our lives are short - we are relay runners all too happy to carry the baton for an instant of time.

We may be Maya in Uruguay or Wen in Beijing or Warren channeling Axl but we're all the same here, representing ourselves as examples of ourselves to ourselves and others.

Patience, my friends - we'll always be here tomorrow, in one form or another.  Look at life as if you'll be here another ten thousand years from now after having lived ten thousand years before.  What's the hurry?  Life is long.

I am a stranger in this house because in this dream I don't exist.  I will wake up in another dream in which I am familiar with this house.  The whispers bouncing off the walls are mine from the ghost of me who no longer exists.  The shadows passing by are from the me who hasn't yet fully entered this world from the future.  We pass one another in the hall and smile, out of sequence and in tune with the fact none of us exists all at the same time.

The perspective of middle age - seeing the baby you once were and the old person you may become, all at once, while your body reminds you that sleep is still a useful tool to get ready for the next day.

G'night and good morning!  May this day find the solutions you seek for yesterday's problems!