“A lot of times, real life is more surreal than writing.”
Jesmyn Ward
Dateline: AOY 2018
Salvador Dalí once said something like this: Give me two hours of reality a day, and 22 hours to dream.
I don’t have good internet here or I would look the quote up, but what he said, yep, that’s my job.
Dance between reality and dreams, we all do it whether we admit it or not, the numbers may change between two and 22, lets hope, but if I’m honest, and you deserve that, I’m at 50/50, maybe 60/40…dreams in the lead over reality.
Just saying.
Here’s why, here’s my last 48 hours, dreams, reality.
It began here in the not so very cheap seats for an Elton John concert.
A bucket list, try to see live all the great songwriters of our era, as John Lennon said of Sir Elton John, when he stops working I’m going to throw out my radio (again no internet), here he is singing…
…”Candle in the Wind,” goodbye Norma Jean.
Fast forward eight hours, I’m at 30,00 feet, window seat, pilot side looking to the west, way out there below me I see blue, I see green, I see brown, and way, way, way out there, way I see green and brown and blue all mixed up. I don’t know what it is out there but a line from a song played less than eight hours ago plays in my head: “…never knowing who to cling to when the rain sets in…” and I’m thinking way out there somewhere are the victims of Hurricane Florence, and I know that a part of the lake that the Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year Championship is being played on is in the state of North Carolina.
And so at 30,000 feet, I turn my body slightly from the passenger next to me who’s watching Deadpool on his iPad, and slowly as if brushing a crumb off my chest, I make the sign of the cross, and instead of a prayer, which I don’t know how to do or what to say, I whisper simply this, “Please help them, please cling to them when the rain sets in.”
Surreal is seeing an actor in a red suit playing a superhero next to you when in fact out there where the blue, where the green where the brown is mixing, people in jeans and T-shirts, and a variety of uniforms, are being real heroes.
Two vs 22.
A few hours later, this scene…
…I’m at launch, several minutes before light comes up over the mountains it’s those few moments between night and day, between the old and the new…
…where on one side of the mountain it’s a new day, but on the other side, night is still fighting…
…still fighting the eons-long fight between dark and light, but morning creeps up the mountain…
…and as the Elite boats with their safety lights on see the sun, they all instinctively move toward the dock and start lining up ready to begin but not before…
…the American flag is unfurled, and everything stops, and it is once again the time for dreams…
…and reality. I don’t know her name, don’t know why she is here, who she is with or who she is for, all I know, is what I saw, a quivering lip that whispered the words of the song, hand on heart, and I thought back now 32 hours to this photo…
…at first I thought the photo was ruined when the lady in the first aisle jumped up and starting clapping after Elton played the song “Tiny Dancer,” but then it struck me the position of her hands, and Elton, and as I stood there and watched the woman walk away from the crowd when the National Anthem finished and take out a tiny crumpled up tissue and wipe her eyes and in that realm between reality and dreams, between night and day, as I watched the woman standing all alone with her thoughts, her dreams the song “Tiny Dancer” whispered in my head:
“Looking on she sings the songs
The words she knows, the tune she hums.”
And once again I turned and brushed imaginary crumbs off my chest, “May you hold her in your hands and sing songs to make her smile.”
Is there really such a thing as surreal, reality vs. dreams, or is it all planned, planned so that every once in awhile, reality and dreams blend? Blend in the moment when a clap hold the person you are clapping for, blend when from 5 miles in the sky the normal greens and browns suddenly blend with blue.
I do believe it is planned, hence the crumbs on my shirt.
I do believe it is planned, when reality and dreams come true in one moment, when reality and dreams are placed dead smack in front of you as if it was a swift slap up the side of your head that shouts yes, reality…
…and dreams do blend. Do blend and then illustrates it for you.
And calls it, love.
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“A lot of times, real life is more surreal than writing.”
Jesmyn Ward