Redtree Times

Summerdream (1995)– At West End Gallery

The creative action is not voluntary at all, but automatic; we can only put the mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus the true state of creative genius is allied to reverie, or dreaming.

–Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Many of us walk a fine line between remaining engaged with the outer world with all its chaotic madness and escaping into the dreamlike quietude of our inner world. I think we need to keep the two somewhat in balance, to never reside fully in one.

For as much as the inner world nourishes our souls and dreams, we can’t reside in that place entirely. And try as we may, we can never fully retreat from intrusive reality of the outer world. It is always lurking nearby and must be dealt with.

But we need to maintain that inner world, that place to dream and expand. A place where we can float on a warm breeze, unburdened by the weightiness and gravity of the real world.

I am not sure what brought this on this morning. Maybe I felt the need to avert my eyes from the outer world for a moment? Nobody could be blamed for that in this strange moment. We all need to visit that inner world for at least a short time every now and then, if only to be reminded of what we are looking for in the outer world.

The question is: Can the dreams of our inner world ever come to reality in the outer world?

That’s a big philosophical jumping off point that I am not willing to leap from just this minute. Like most people, I have outer world needs to which I need to attend. But in doing so, I will bring my inner world along with me.

Maybe I’ll ponder that question at some point while I am floating on a breeze. Maybe not.

Here’s a song from the late John Prine that I’ve loved for a long, long time. It still gets to me after hearing it countless times. It’s a live performance of Hello in There from 2001. It’s a song about aged folks who live in an outer world that has passed them by and now ignores and they have retreated into their inner world which is filled with more memories and images from the past and fewer dreams for the future. But in those remaining dreams, they might sometimes be floating on a summer breeze. And this line from the song’s chorus surely might be echoing there as well:

Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day