It Doesn't Matter

It has been over a month of growth and death.  I feel the sting of stretching myself.  Staying with my parents for this week, a week in the wake of weeks stretched by French wine and romance and a desert explosion.  Wanderlust.  Wonder lost.

Wonder banged.  I feel the real me going to school again, growing and watching for cannonballs.  I keep dropping them on myself.  All this pressure to do something, to count for something, to finish something.

When this anxiety slinks in, I remember a thing that happened (continues to happen), three weeks ago following a dusty birthdeath in Nevada.  It is best described as a dream, but to call it that would be misleading.  I might also call it a vision or a cogent hallucination.

I was sleeping on a friend's couch in Orange County.  I woke early, the soft cushions unfit for my frenzied tossing and turning.  Unable to re-doze, I decided to meditate for a while.  I call it meditation, but that connotes an activity that requires effort. Really, I just lie on my back and feel myself existing.  (Sometimes I fall asleep.)

I did this.  I dropped in.  Immediately I entered a lucid dream state.  Waking into my subconscious (or wherever I happened to be), I quickly noticed another being with me.  Turning to face her head on, I found myself in the company of what I perceived to be a goddess creature.  She appeared like a gelfling from The Dark Crystal - subtle, pixie-like adjustments to the human form.  I was instantly thrilled to be in her presence.  I could tell she was powerful, the incarnation of greatness, the one who might be able to answer some of my questions.  I went for it. 

"What should I do?  What is my purpose?" I asked her.  The volume of my voice surprised me.  It echoed throughout the room and I was sure that my friends sleeping on the couch adjacent mine, would wake and assume I was slumbertalking.

The deity melted backwards, dissolved into the walls, the room, the very space around us.  She surfaced periodically, rearranging random table objects into a face, pressing a form against the patterned wallpaper, unfolding in a multitude of expressions.  Her presence laughed at me.  There was no verbal response, but the air itself was thick with her humor.  Who do you think you are?  It seemed to say.  Why would you ever consider such a question important?  Ha.  How ridiculous! 

I remained still, despite the waves of deep breath humility pumping through me.  After a few moments, she surfaced again in the cluttered floor and spoke aloud.

"It doesn't matter," she chuckled, evanescent. 

"It doesn't matter what you do...as long as you're laughing more than you're not."

I woke up.  I couldn't breathe at first.  I woke up and (for a little while) stopped taking myself so seriously.