I would assume that at times throughout the writing of this email that I would have mentioned the myth of the eternal return. I can’t think of any examples of it, off the top of my head, but it is one of those thoughts that is always in the background of the things that I think about. The eternal return, to put very simply, is an idea that all of humanity is essentially returning back to where it once was. This is a very simple explanation, but it is evident in most forms of philosophy and theology, taking on as many forms and streams as you could possibly imagine. It is about restoration, redemption, the return to Eden, the New Earth, whatever you want to call it- it is the concept of “home” in her most pure and pleasant form. Home is the center of creation, the place where the divine and his creation intersect. It is everywhere and it is pre-Christian, paralleling ancient Judaism as well as classical philosophy. I really like the eternal return. We always end up back where we started, and deep down, that’s what we all want.
I had these dreams last night, a mind skipping from one location to the next, as vividly as these things can get, I suppose. In one moment I was back at my aunt’s farm, a place that I spent so much of my time before my aunt and uncle divorced in the early nineties. In a flash of light I was there in the backyard, the horses and the swimming pool and the back porch were all there, just the way I left them so many years ago in my memory. I wondered why I was there again, and then in another flash I found myself in the backyard of my grandparent’s house in Douglasville, the place I lived between the ages of about 6 and 12. These were such memorable and formative years, the memories are etched in my mind, cataloged like a library. So many memories from that place are easily recalled at a moment’s notice: Christmas, baseball cards, woods, tree houses, my grandfather’s death, our loneliness afterwards, the thrill and the heartbreak of my first girlfriend.. they’re all there, ready to be viewed at any time that I allow my mind to settle long enough to be reminded of the past.
And I was there again in this dream. I don’t go there often, but I found myself in the backyard and I saw a figure there working on something, and I was sure that it was my grandfather, a person who I have interacted with in dreams before, but only once or twice, and each time it is sharp and remembered now as if it were a conversation that I had in my living room yesterday. In the dream I was sure that I had found him again and so I ran to him- the blue jeans and the red flannel shirt in the distant and finally, as if magically, I was in front of him, but it wasn’t my grandfather this time. It was my great-uncle Johnny- who is also gone- and he was telling me that he was preparing the house for later- as if this old place that I haven’t seen years would be my home again. And I wish you could have been there with me in this dream at that moment, because it wasn’t just a dream. I was there, I tell you. I felt it the way you can only feel reality.
It’s amazing how our dreams can carry us back to the beginnings, to the places before your heart was broken, before you failed, before you risked everything, before you moved away from a place. Its like there is something in us that wants to return.
I was talking to a friend late at night the other day, and we were talking about how vivid a memory can be. One of my memories that keeps returning is in the clouds. Give me a particularly pleasant day and hang a few puffy white clouds in a perfect blue sky and I will instantly go back to being about 5 years old, laying in the grass with my neighbor, staring up into the large dome and trying to guess at what shapes these clouds were taking in that moment, the faces, the animals, the western states and cartoon characters, ever shifting from one to the next. I can close my eyes in that moment and smell the grass of 25 years ago, I can anticipate the ice cream truck turing the corner of the street, I can feel the time slipping away from that perfect moment when I will have to go inside and wash up for dinner. It is one of those memories that you can completely feel, not just remember. You have one too, I bet? We all do. It’s the traces of the eternal return in all of us.
I was running this evening through the park, the weather warm and breezing as I traced a line through the fields and trails of the park. I would come out into a large open field and the sun would cast down a long shadow. I could feel the freshly cut grass kick up the back of my leg, and I could see my grandfather pushing our lawnmower. I would take down the trails in the woods and I would taste the dust of my aunt’s farm, the mysterious trails that I would discover for the very first time, just a child, a whole word unfolding at every turn right there in front of me.
We’re returning somewhere. It’s in the art of all of humanity because it is true, it is a part of who we are. The eternal return points to something bigger than just the grass in the front yard, more real than the dust of the trail and the shadow cast by the sun. I know its there, but I can’t tell you exactly what it means or what it is. I just know it. If you closed your eyes for a moment on a clear day when the sun is in just the right position, hanging up there in the sky the way he always does, you’ll get the sense of what I’m talking about. That’s the eternal return, or a taste of it, at least.
