Certain days the flow of creativity resembles the snow-melt from the mountains. There’s a cold, deep, purity to the ideas that spring underfoo. Some days there’s little to be found. A return to drought-stricken summer and all you can think of is your swollen tongue and sandpaper throat.

I keep having dreams that make me re-imagine the scope of what we can know in this lifetime. Brief, brilliant ignitions of phosphorus in a cocoon of darkened silk. I’ve spoken to gods in my dreams— or rather— I’ve stood and listened. All four entities of vast, cosmic power— all warped and twisted in their own way. All a reflection.

There are dreams that don’t have the feel of altered reality. They have the feel of lives led. Of Deep Meaning that stands defiant in the face of what we view reason and reality.

The dreams never provide answers. Instead I’m continually fed curious questions.

This has been a time of growth. The subtle, deep workings of roots inching forward— breaking through thick, knotted soil. I’m not the same as I was before arriving. None of us ever are. You look at old photos or movies— you see a character being played before you. A similar face or body— and yet not the same as what you have now. Not the same that will be in the future. There’s a tenuous line held by trusted memories through the expanse of time. A shimmer that blurs the edges and focuses your attention inward.

I sit in the middle of my room on a Sunday afternoon writing this in a pleasant silence. I’m learning the way solitude can build you. Or how loneliness can strip you. I’ve alternated between both states during my time here. I’m much calmer nearing my thirties than I was a decade ago. That’s to be expected. Or hoped for. But I always had this sneaking suspicion that I wouldn’t feel complete until I had flung myself across the globe. If only to understand what it was that I left behind. Or the realization of all that we carry within us— and the reassurance or burden it can be.

It’s the chromatic colors filtered through the sheen of a soap bubble bobbing upward. The distorted brilliance of altered reality. It is the echoes of consequence and the wealth of the world pressed into a single bead of light.