Before dawn on my first morning back in Prague, I have a thrilling experience in the liminal space between sleep and awake.
Behind closed eyelids, I see an opening like the outline of an eye. Through it, I look into a marvelous blue deep, the deep blue of ocean. I flow through the blue portal. The seascape is vividly alive, yet neither literal nor artificial. I feel I am in a living painting, where imagination can shapeshift and generate forms.
I can see to the other side of the ocean, which now seems to shrink to the size of a lake. I am now in a city. It seems normal enough, and pleasant. I do not know the name of this city. It may be in another reality. I am ready to explore, but want to check that I can get back to the body I left in the bed in my Prague hotel. I open my eyes. Yep, I'm still in the body I left here a little while ago.
What's with that blue depth, and that portal? I have been thinking about the term "blue dream" which in Spanish (sueño azul) also means "daydream". I've been looking to freshen the vocabulary we use to describe various types of dreaming, including dreaming wide awake, eyes open, when you are IN your physical body but things around you are unfolding with oneiric logic, in the way of a dream.
I have a lunch date at the Cafe Imperial, an art deco palace where it isn't hard to recognize that you may be dreaming with your eyes open, with a wonderful Czech artist, psychologist and dream teacher, Kamila Ženatá. I am curious to see whether my blue vision will resonate with her.
The story gets better. She has a fabulous gift for me, a painting of a blue seascape she had made for me. The male figure out there in the water is me. Her title: "Robert IN the shoreline".
