AS MY BODY IS MY WITNESS If you're a dreamer desiring to be a lucid dreamer, and even better, having accomplished that, to become an astral traveller visiting the 'sleeping self' still in its bed, the advice from Those Who Know is to look at your hand in your dream. Or a light switch, for some weird reason. And to switch the light switch on and off. You then can become conscious that you are dreaming, and confirm what up till then was only a suspicion. (Of course. I knew I could fly. I must remember how to do this.) Strangely, when waking life takes a turn for the weird and unexpected, I never look at my hands. This might be a very good habit to cultivate.

What I have done is looked at my feet or my knees, invading new territory. When I was an 8-year-old from the Natal Midlands, I visited the great and faraway city of Durban. One moment stands out very clearly. Walking down the passage of the exotic Plaza Hotel, with the "Persian" carpet runner rushing beneath me, I looked at my knees for reassurance that we were all still together and actually here in this wonderful place. I spoke to my legs and said "Well here we are!" to make it real. And checked that the mole above my left knee was indeed there and so it was indeed I who was wafting down the passage to the communal bathroom, tightly clutching my new floral pink 'toilet bag' and towel.

Now and again the looking down in wonder has extended itself to a photo. The one I plan to attach to this blog loosely or tightly according to my skill with this new territory under invasigation, was taken at Dalebrook Pool here at Kalk Bay. Dalebrook is a wonderful place. It has hollows for fat bottoms to fit into and be cuddled, rocks that bake your back, kelp that fondles you in a most frightening way in the dark, (or was that the famous baby shark?) and it's big enough to swim lengths without the usual eye-searing chlorine that accompanies the swimming of lengths. And red hair needs bits of green algae to set it off and form a contrast.

So the moment deserved a photo on that day, when I looked out over the sea beyond the pool, gulls gliding about and mountains dreaming over the bay in the distance, and Kalk Bay containing all that beauty and quirkiness (and my cottage surrounded by neighbours from heaven) at my back. Incredulous at my excellent fortune, I looked at my feet dangling over the pool (am I really here?) and pondered the strange turns life takes and the wonderful spots it deposits me into. A photo seemed fitting as lasting proof.

I moved here at the beginning of February, into a tiny little fisherman's cottage (the cottage, not the fisherman, though I wonder about that too) and in the first few months life seemed very dream-like. It was like being within someone else's movie. And perhaps we all are. Sometimes that idea takes hold quite strongly.

When life has become too intense it's as if I live next to myself. Someone once called it disassociation, or dissociation, who knows what the right term is or whether it's even describing this.... but it feels as if one has become a watcher of it all, taken a step back. Evidently buying one's first house is the most emotional purchase anyone will ever make. My body bears the mark of that day. A year ago today I heard at roughly this time, that my bond had come through. It had taken a very long time. Banks don't really like lending money to self-employed artists. I had yearned for the news, with what seemed like every cell in my body. Then, according to the Rules of Manifesting What You Want, I let it go, out of pure exhaustion, even sincerely feeling 'I actually don't want it anymore, buying a house is too scarey.' And after that point, of course, it happened. They phoned me on my cell, and joy coursed through me like champagne. Stars popped and my body sang. The feeling was unforgettable. The sun shone brightly, and nothing was ever going to be impossible, ever again.

So what caused an indentation to appear horizontally across each fingernail? I think it was the waiting, until that moment. I don't think joy dents fingernails. Something similar happened recently, when I waited in Durban for a big job to come through and a little bit did, the (much, much) larger part eventually going to other artists because by then there was no time left for one artist to do it all. The dents are there again, dated a month ago. Perhaps it's because the mind is so powerful and so pervasive that really does involve every cell in our bodies. So when we wait, our whole body waits, and 'everything is on hold.' Even the growth of our fingernails.

My body is my dear companion through fat and thin, the waiting and the result. Have you noticed how a crisis always involves the waiting? Outside the maternity ward, inside the maternity ward, sitting at a deathbed, waiting outside a courtroom... or a principal's office, or the bank manager's office. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting is a skill women are said to have innately. Perhaps we acquire it out of powerlessness? Or is waiting patiently one of the most powerful things you can do? In love, strategic waiting can be the thing that finally wins you what or whom you want.

Death is the end of waiting, and hair and fingernails continue to grow. Perhaps it's the final letting go. The body is now left to its own devices and what else can it find to do, but continue in its old habits and entertain itself by growing its fingernails perhaps purely out of boredom and habit?

What I do know is when I've passed from this waking dream, at some point I will definitely look at my new feet. If I have some.
  ¶ 10:32 AM