The picture is of a painting that my mother hung over my cot when I was a baby. It’s a poor reproduction and it has suffered through time. But it remains very special to me.

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Cyranny suggested here that she had a wonderful childhood (that’s what she said at the start of the post, anyway, so I just ran with it. She may have denied it later) and that is certainly my remembered experience, likewise. Others have informed me that I am mistaken, that in fact my childhood was influenced by all sorts of negativity and unpleasantness. But that’s not how I remember it. And if I can’t rely on my own memory then what can I rely on???

But if I’m wrong then it would suggest that it’s all been a dream and so I thought … maybe that’s it. Maybe this is just a dream and I’m writing to you from within that dream … though you are all, I suppose, in that dream with me …

But I really did wonder if, from birth, one begins to dream of what lies ahead and of what one’s life might become. But as time goes on one’s life takes its own twists and turns and doesn’t really take the same direction as the dream, but the dream is happy to adapt to circumstances and alter its past so that it always stays aligned with the only reality that it knows. So eventually the dreamer (you and I) comes to an inevitable point where the dream becomes a fulfilled prophesy.

But the dreamer doesn’t like the prophesy and thinks, “What went wrong? What can I do about this?” The answer is obvious. It’s time to start dreaming again.

So the dreamer dreams of being the little boy who thinks he can dream of whatever he wants …. but he is doomed, eventually, to dream of being the dreamer. And around and around it goes.

Does that make any sense to anyone? Or am I just dreaming?

Anyway …. I wrote another silly poem about it ….

***

Oh, to be that little boy

Each little thing, a little toy

Each little story, little book

Enchantment with each little look

Oh, to be again so small

When now I stand so very tall

Please gently tuck me into bed

Put little dreams within my head

Oh, to be so sweet. Naïve.

Oh, to sleep with make-believe.

To wake with every day anew

With every dawn a different view

I’ll dream forever. Or until

I wake to find I’m dreaming still

With treasured dreams I cannot keep

Until, again, I fall asleep

Each dream a dream, and once begun

A dream of what I’ve now become

Each dream will reach this moment when

I dream to be that boy, again.

***