Don't Foist your Dreams on Me...I have Insomnia

Dreams, whether at night while we sleep or in the day when we hope, can be wonderful and enlightening or horrifying and scary. At sleep, dreams can be mirrors of the stress in life or of mistakes made, no matter how long ago or of things we wish could be or have when we are awake. We can wake feeling happy or surprised because of the content: colors, people, places, answers. Or we wake sad or crying or feeling that deep seated sense of loss or loneliness. We never know what wewill get until we wake up and remember or try to remember what is was we dreamed. Dreams are such a personal extension of ourselves and our imagination that it sounds funny when we try to describe them. And, there is always something amiss or missing that would connect the dream dots. ah, but htese are dreams of sleep; we don't have to know what they mean. They just are and then they are gone.
But what about when we are awake and not dreaming but someone else is-about us and what we should or should not be or do. Now, these are true nightmares: images of someone else transferred onto us without our approval or input or desire. It is someone telling us how to be ourselves which is impossible because someone else is writing the definition and leaving out all the real truth. And what if we have chosen to allow this person to enter the door of our lives and invited them to sit at the table of our heart? They have scooted their chair in so far that it it wedged into the table, seemingly becoming one with it, one with us. The invitation now includes the inevitable throwing their dreams for us on us like a tablecloth. To them it makes us better, neater, coordinated with their dream. To us, it is a heavy burden to bear, to have to carry around and to clean when it gets dirty. And, what happens when we become their dream and lose ourselves? What condition will the wood of the table be when the tablecloth is removed? Will the finish be gone, eroded or worn away? Will there be any patina left? Will we be scratched and forever dented? Or will we one day throw off the tablecloth-the dream of theirs-and set the table with dreams of our own of what we want to be?
Dreams of someone else are never as great as our own. Dreams of someone else are never as clear as our own. And dreams of someone else are never as real as our own.

It's Too Darn Hot for November

Ah, November...cooler nights, cool and clear days. Not so this year...hot and smokey from fires; too warm in the evenings and still warm in the night. Windows are still open and jamies are tank tops. Flowers not due to bloom until April are sprouting in my untended garden and the poppies are still coming up.
But, the leaves are slowly turning red and not falling by choice but by the winds that are forcing them to leave their branches. Not fair! A leaf needs to stay as long as it can, hoping to be the last one left, a survivor of spring and summer, a dreamer of springs to come.
The grass is becoming that dry, straw color of an empty house, waiting for water, for fertilizer, for someone to care about it. I care but I cannot stop time and seasons so that the grass could stay green any more that I can stop wrinkles and gray hair. And, as I could medicate my face and color my hair, I could fertilize the grass and force it to green up but why? To make beautiful again what has faded? Or to mess with nature and make it what I want?
Tomorrow will begin again with a cup of coffee, a newspaper, a list of what needs to be done, and a glance out at the flowers that linger still and the grass that has chosen not to.