:: walking down Marlborough Road in Ditmas Park makes me remember some of my dreams growing up ::
when i was little i always wanted a room with a cushioned bench by the window, so that i could sit there and look out and dream. safe and cozy, and still connected to the outside world.
later i envisioned another window, the kind that certain old houses have jutting out of their façades. multidimensional shapes built into and out of traditional structures. in this window i put a writing desk, unconventionally situated to look out of many windows with different perspectives. if this area had three windows, maybe i could look to the East and the West and find some balance in between.
“A Room of One’s Own,” as Virgina Woolf called it—a place to be me, free to create with my own idiosyncratic view of the world. i am led to wonder if our childhood dreams can manifest later in our lives, in one way or another, if we accept that it may be different than the way we imagined. i find that when i let go of feeling that something needs to be a certain way, i end up getting what i actually need.
i feel so blessed by this phenomenon. the unconventional path that I have chosen is meeting up with one that contains standard values that i never thought i needed or ever wanted. as i begin to get funded for my artwork, tour around the world, meet up with international collaborators, and go on journeys both daily and extreme, life becomes an adventure from one moment to the next. i wonder if the simple act of dreaming can make these wishes come true.
i always wanted a Room of My Own and when i look around my apartment, i realize that i have exactly that. i am blessed to be able to rehearse there, to house my loved ones when they need it, and to write by a window (or on a fire escape!) i may not have a hexagonal façade yet, but as i walk down Marlborough Road i find myself closer than ever. i am close to it. i feel closer than ever to many more of my dreams. i am illuminated by realities that i have never even dreamt of. and i feel closer to home.
so today, as i imagine myself writing in my dream room, i take a look at where i actually am. i am sitting in the sunshine, in this odd median between two different roads, under this amazing tree. the birds are singing and i am still dreaming. and i am preparing for the next adventure, which will imminently and undoubtedly bring me closer still to dreams that once appeared distant…
This man shall not glide away from me, like everybody else, on this false assumption; I will tell him the truth.
‘I loved Canterbury,’ she said.
He kindled instantly. It was his gift, his fault, his destiny.
‘Loved it,’ he repeated. ‘I can see that you did.’
Their eyes met; collided rather, for each felt that behind the eyes the secluded being, who sits in darkness while his shallow agile companion does all the tumbling and beckoning, and keeps the show going, suddenly stood erect; flung off his cloak; confronted the other. It was alarming; it was terrific.
~ Together and Apart, Virginia Woolf ~
The Lobsterbird Chronicles 