Soulparking

Wednesday, 14 June 2006

Have you ever felt your life is on permanent fast forward?  And there is no way to stop where you are or where you are going?  The button has been pushed and you are heading to the end of the movie – regardless if you want to or not.

It reminds me when I was in kindergarten and at nap time or when we were supposed to be taking a nap – I used to lay on my sleeping mat thinking about all sorts of things.  One of the things I thought about often was that I was the only person alive.  I would look around the room and see all the other sleeping kids or see the kids who couldn’t sleep like me staring back – and I would tell myself, “They don’t exist.”  Life seemed surreal.  Life was the dream.  And sleeping was the reality.  That all the people around me were robots – human walls that directed me into a direction towards life’s cheese.  I was the big experiment that God looked down and entertained himself with.

And if sleeping is the reality, last night I dreamed of lions.  Just like in “Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway, I was dreaming of lions.  I was on a reality television show and they released a grown lion and a teenage lion – not a cub – but a little larger.  And all of us as the audience and the participants – the lions were after us.  They would corner us and leap in the air – snapping their jaws trying to snag us in their teeth. 

I also remember there were regular cats.  These regular cats were owned by the audience / participants.  And as the cats roamed around the television set – the lions would target them and leap.  I found myself frantically gathering the cats up in my arms and trying to rescue them.  The owners didn’t care – they were trying to save themselves – pounding on the walls and the doors trying to find an escape.

I woke up exhausted.  I was so tired.  So spent.  In my head, I kept remembering that every time I would save one cat – the other one would jump out of my arms – and be lost on the ground or be chased by one of the two lions.

Still. 

I need to find a place to sit still.  Right now I feel like King David in the Bible / Torah, I miss the old days of hanging out in the pasture with the sheep.  Longing for my teenage years when I was waiting for my life to begin.  Looking up at the blue skies and dreaming about the future, realizing my present, and being cool with it all.  Before the responsibilities.  Before knowing too much.  Before knowing too little.  Before the vices of my personality reared their ugly heads.  And as king of my own life, I feel like the peasants are causing revolution.  I am being overthrown.

In the past, I would run away to Exeter, England.   That was before I knew anyone from there.  Now I have too many friends – and if I ran away to there – I would get too busy.  One of the problems with traveling all over the world – you make so many friends – so much global family – it makes you feel guilty to show up in a city and not say hello. 

So I am off to find a place to sit “still”.  I have to find a place where I can reject my selfish belief that I am the only person alive.  I have to let the cats go.   I have to find the hidden door off the reality television set – so the lions won’t get me.  If not, I will be eaten alive.