I never tire of fantasizing and imagining my ideal. But some days it’s really hard to decide what would be better. To be slung sidelong over a rocking chair in the wash of yellow afternoon, watching the lift and ruffle of wisteria where it is teased by currents chasing around me on the old screen porch, drinking Blackberry Acid and reading Evelyn Waugh while the sound of Gershwin laughs its way out the door to shake the sleepy cat into a semblance of watchfulness? Or perhaps I should the rather be curled in a high-backed leather wing chair with Zola, maybe Garcia Marquez, a faint dark stain of Verdi’s Requiem insinuating its way slowly through my brain, the lamp turned barely high enough to read so that it doesn’t fade the firelight or those lights fourteen stories down where the city shimmers below, and with the scent of Boeuf Bourguignon drifting into the paneled room from where it’s simmering down the hall?
Yes, I say, sometimes it’s hard, so hard to choose which I should prefer. Would it be finer to be wandering up a quiet path in checkered green light, perfumed with the heady incense of cedar and douglas fir, emerging from their shadows into meadows lapping with avalanche lilies and paintbrush and gentians at my feet as I climb up higher, drowsy with the sun and hypnotized by the river crashing away, just out of sight, to my right, and stopping at last to rest on the stony shore of a glassy lake and slake my thirst, assuage my hunger, with a crisp sweet apple and some salty well-aged cheese? Or should I better like to stride out through wildly waving waist-high grass onto the dunes just as the lowering sky with its mass of high black clouds starts spitting a sand-fine mist of icy rain, but bundled so warmly to the eyes that only my cheekbones feel the chill, and watching the storm blow up a wave so high it seems to engulf the top of the sky before it shatters to smithereens on the bouldered bulkhead there–and just as that cloudbank starts to split to disgorge its mighty gout of rain, tearing up the beach to the safety of the white-painted cottage, where I peel off the layers of storm-proofing down to my jeans, drag the little table to the window to watch the show, cracking the Dungeness crab that I bought at the shop today, to drown it in butter while watching the shoreline also drown, and eat crab sweetness messily to the tune of pelting rain and smashing sea?
I suppose if all else fails I could simply ask my butler to make the selection, you see. No, this one I know: I’d rather ask my love, since whichever it is, it’ll be that much better a dream if he will only share it with me.
Art-Colored Glasses 
Wow, I wish that I could visit the places that you dream of! I would especially enjoy that lake, I think. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but your words capture so much more than a picture ever could. 🙂
I have a little confession to make, Ted: I didn’t just dream them up (see tomorrow’s post). Maybe someday I’ll find the file with the original photos of that lake to tuck in. But the mountain in the second collage is the one on which I’ve taken those woodland and meadow and lake hikes. Mt. Rainier.
An excellent piece of writing! I enjoyed dreaming along with you.
Isn’t that the beauty of sharing our stories!!
Outstanding dreaming aloud… I say, why choose, can’t we live all of them? You’ve made them too tantalizing to choose only one;)
And so I do *not* choose just one! (See my note to Ted up above.) 😉 I’m glad you enjoyed, though.
That shot of the mountain in your second collage is lovely Kathryn 🙂
Thank you, Eden, it’s Mt. Rainier, and though I lived in its shadow the vast majority of my years I never tire of its astonishing and ever-changing beauty! Can’t say I’ve seen anything *quite* like it since moving to Texas. 😉
You evoke your dreams so well that I felt I was there in the places you describe. The idea of the butler made me smile as I have been watching Downton Abbey (series with a butler) on DVD’s the last few days. However it is so right to ask your love to make the selection. Happy dreaming!
I’ve been told by a number of friends that I need to see Downton Abbey. 🙂 Maybe I’ll be able to choose my butler from among those there!
I shall indeed gladly ask my love to do the choosing, as he’s done much of that with me and will know exactly why I so love it that I fantasize about it too. 😀
Each holds a unique allure – city, farm, river, ocean, lake…and our different selves are drawn to each, in turn. I love my country life, but equally cherish my time in the city. Both, and neither, are ideal.
There is also something to be said for a hammock, a tall, cool ice tea, a trashy romance (or Anne Rice), and the dulcet tones of Creedence Clearwater Revival…
Are there two hammocks there?! I’ll buy that whole package tour as well! Gosh, it’s been ages since I laid hands on an Anne Rice novel. Might have to remedy that. 🙂
You’re right, I guess the conclusion best drawn from my wanderings in this post is that I’d really hate to *have* to choose just one. So much loveliness out there . . .
Marie, have you heard that there’s a new Anne Rice novel out—that she decided to revisit her vampire sagas with ‘Prince Lestat’?? I just happened to be looking up something on my blog and came across this post (https://artcoloredglasses.com/2012/01/04/dream-a-little-dream-but-how-to-choose/) again, and…the rest is…kind of synchronous, something of which you and I seem to know! 😉
Hope all’s swell with you and the whole gang.
Lots of love,
Kath
Ooooh, cool! I did *not* know!
Things are crazy here, but progressing… Talk soon(ish) 🙂
Hope the house prep on both ends of the equation is going smoothly, if crazily. The people prep can be mighty frantic, too, when you’ve got a couple of young’uns to sort out along with all of the grownup arrangements, but those two will undoubtedly be great troupers, smart as they are. 🙂
Hugs to all!
Why choose? May you have it all, Kathryn, and your true love too. Amazingly vivid are the pictures you draw with your words.
Thank you, dearest, I’m glad you enjoyed it. And you have caught me in my guilty secret: all of the post is true, and I am one hugely spoiled kid. And very grateful for the indulgences! 🙂
I walked along with you in my mind as you led us on this tour, Kathryn, and meandered off on my own for a bit, thinking about a hammock on a porch on a house on a lonely stretch of beach on a warm evening in June or July. But I must agree that it would not be paradise without my sweet baboo.
Indeed, indeed. I’m glad to have you along for any of these wanderings. I’m quite sure there’s room in most of those storylines for others and their sweet baboos, anyway, even batches of us cow-eyed couples simultaneously, when they’re set in the great outdoors! 😉
These are lovely and vivid dreams. I almost felt the rain from your description in the dunes. I hope you enjoyed your butter-dripping Dungeness crab, I miss those wonderful crustaceans.
Thankfully, these dreams are so vivid because they’re all real life experiences. Too bad the crab is a missed delicacy now that I live in TX too! Not that I wouldn’t revisit every one of those lovely dreams any time. 🙂
What a wonderful dream…you took me from place to place with astounding imagery. I could imagine all the little temptations. And the crab. Oh my. I’m hungry now.
Me too! Crab. Butter. Mmmm. Okay, back here for a minute. All of the dreams have come true, and I just like to revisit them whenever I can!! Lucky, lucky me.
Aw. So sweet to let your Partner, your Love, choose the dream you’ll share. And i agree with this philosophy — just so long as that choice is the dream that includes Verdi’s Requiem and Beef Bourguignon.
Not giving *those* up anytime soon, believe me! I’m all about More, More, More of any good thing anyhow, or as Mr. Wilde put it so elegantly, “Nothing succeeds like excess.” So here’s to us all finding innumerable new things to fantasize about, and always getting to revisit the ones we love the most!
Any dream is good, especially the way you described them, they all seemed so…dreamy 😉
Having your love be the one to choose is the best move of all, you are both sweet and smart Kathryn
I may not be a genius, but I was clever enough to find the one man in the universe who best complements me (and compliments me often, too), and that makes it easy to feel sweeter than I would otherwise! I’m glad you enjoyed this one, Anyes–I know you’re one with a good romantic imagination too: it’s so clear in your beautiful posts.
What vivid words you write! I love to dream, and always such a better dream with a loved-one.
I would like to award you the Versatile Blogger Award. I hope you accept. You can read about it here: http://pamelazimmer.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/life-without-pause-getting-caught-up-with-a-new-award
Thank you so much, dear Pamela, and you will see in today’s post that I did go over and visit ‘your place’ to see! You are so generous. I will be recognizing those to whom I am “paying it forward” in an upcoming post as well, but I think I may have covered the “things about me” part reasonably well, between yesterday’s and today’s posts. Oh, wait: *all* of my blogging seems to be about Me. Oops. 😉 Thanks again, kind lady!
Dreams are beautiful and this is the perfect example. 🙂 Loved this post.
Please have a look at my articles too, would appreciate some feedback.
I will certainly be visiting your blog, my friend. I’m happy you’re here and that you enjoyed the post. The more you get to know me, the more you realize just how *much* of the time I’m daydreaming and inventing fantasies! 🙂 All the very best to you,
Kathryn
Your words spark such wonderful visual images. But just point me in the direction of lounging on the beach with a drink in hand and nobody gets hurt 🙂
I’m not a ‘lie on the beach in the sun’ person–can’t be, I’m too palely Norwegian!–but I’ve always found the coast and beaches and shorelines immensely compelling. With a drink in hand? That makes pretty much *anything* exponentially better, no? 🙂
Beautiful photos. I’d have to say you make blackberry acid sound really good.
Juicy is, I believe, the best word! But I’ve have to go a-Googling if I want to tell you how to make any Blackberry Acid myself, having only tasted such things as someone else’s treat to date (and exceedingly long ago). Glad you like the pictures.
Having dipped my toes
in these vivid dreams
I would plunge my soul
into their waking stream.
To float and cavort
in their crashing colours
and rub my skin
with their rusty textures.
Behind my eyelids
they melt, they converge,
dreams within dreams
take flight, they emerge.
And once each has had
its vivid say,
I would blink my eyelids
and begin again.
What beautiful dreams you have, Kathryn! I would dream each little dream, again and again. Thank you for filling my eyes with such wild and precious beauty.
Rama.
P.S. I loved, loved, loved, ‘Sleep Invention’.
P.P.S. Have you read Brideshead Re-visited?
How can I thank you for such an exquisite comment! A lovely, marvelous verse that is worthy of posting itself (and you should, if you haven’t already), and I am so pleased that you enjoyed the shared dreaming session! I’m still rather fond of ‘Sleep Invention’ too–I think I wrote it a couple of years back, but I’m pretty bad about keeping track of dates and such after all these years–and my memory isn’t exactly getting *better* over time!
Yes, I read Brideshead and loved it. *Quite* a long time ago, I’m afraid. I’ve pretty much loved everything of Waugh’s that I’ve read, most memorably ‘Scoop’, ‘Decline and Fall’, and the inimitable ‘The Loved One’.
Thank you again for your gracious commentary, my friend!
Do you know, after I posted that comment, I was a little worried because I suddenly wondered if I was being rude by spouting my “stuff” on your blog post. Sometimes, when I am carried away by emotion, I tend to lose track of all etiquette and blunder on. And its such a relief to me that you are not offended. Thank you! Thank you!
I did not post the verse on my blog yet. But now I will. Just as soon as I figure out how to link your post to it because your post inspired it and I want to give credit where credit is due. Plus, its such a beautiful post. I am happy to share it. 🙂
Very sweet of you, Rama, and if you need help figuring out how to link, I think I can help you with the ‘procedure’. 🙂 I’m learning!
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Your words carry your readers into the world of your making, and oh is it lovely. You take the stuff of the common everyday world and spin it into gold again and again.
Thankfully, my parents didn’t opt to name me Rumplestiltskin. 🙂 Thank you for the lovely compliment.
Amen.
And don’t forget, there’s room for plenty of others in my fantasylands, as long as everybody plays nicely!
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