Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The Key

The Key (writing exercise using words: dying, encouragement, disappointed, explore)

As Laura began to explore her dreams in a more consistent manor, writing down bits and pieces of remembered ones, she felt disappointed. Her grandmother told her she would find a key to what she was looking for. But after four months of diligent work only one dream stood-out as eminent. It was a carefully executed accent of a mountain. She was so there, not watching but actually climbing, scaling steep surfaces, exerting herself more than she ever thought possible. Clearly this was a physical challenge along with a mental one, especially after one of her essential tools jettison over a ledge and she had to remain calm. The consistent feeling was long periods of extreme effort giving way to moments of deep satisfaction and an almost pleasant exhaustion. Upon awaking from this dream, she couldn’t remember if she actually summated but she was left felling an inner glow, like all was right with everything on such a deep deep level. Her first thought after recalling the dream and the feeling was that this sense of “all is right” is imminent in her life. But that was three months ago and she was needing encouragement if she was to continue to be a literati of her dreams and find a key.

The whole notion seemed outlandish when granny first said it. But she loved her grandmother and thought she’d give it the effort it deserved. And effort it was, daily, every morning and sometimes even in the middle of the night after a bathroom stop. She might just remember a face, a scene, a name, and following the promise she made to herself, “no matter what, if I remember something, whenever and wherever, I will write it down.”
She thought she would visit her grandmother this weekend to see if she could be relieved of her duties. Not that writing in a dream journal was duty or that she really needed her grandmothers permission to stop but somehow she did.
She put her dream journal in her purse along with snacks for the hour or so ride. As she drove she found herself thinking about what exactly she wanted to discuss with her grandmother. She realized how much she had accomplished over the four months in fulfilling her promise to herself in recording every dream. She’d been so distracted with looking for the key that she dismissed the large achievement of following through with her promise to herself. She started to feel good about it and realized she was dying to tell her grandmother about her sincere efforts, having not shared this with a soul.

As her grandmother opened the door and her arms, with all the smells of her warm home and life surrounding her, Laura realized she already had slices of “All is right with the world” and that maybe that was “the Key” her grandmother had sent her off to find.

Mary

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