dream number three

I dreamt of Tad this morning.

I was walking up a grass-covered hill with a group of French-speaking friends. The place was a cross between the Marin Headlands (steep hill with a view on the other side) and the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City (wide expanses of grass with a few tourists here and there). Deep green hill on a majestic blue sky.  When we got to the top of the hill (effortlessly!!) a small group of people were sitting around talking and enjoying the view of a huge suspension bridge in the distance and water below.

Suddenly Tad walks up from the other side and speaks to them - he is wearing his usual baggy shorts and a tank top t-shirt with a back pack over one shoulder. He has his beautiful pre-cancer body back: broad masculine stance, thick biceps, perfect baby-skin, massive thighs, dark shock of hair. The only difference is he now has a tatto on his right shoulder - a radiant, sun-like circle with beams coming out.
He looks up at me, makes eye contact and smiles. I feel that immense indescribable warm sensation I get from his gaze, our gaze -- a gaze only he and I can create, so different yet similar to every other gaze in the world.

Then his sweet cat woke me up to tell me it was time for me to fix her breakfast. I tried to go back to the dream but it was gone. Dream chasing at 6:30.

Now - later - I am trying not to cling to it, to replay it all day like a looped video but the temptation is great.

I am preparing my bags for a long hike in a place I don't know, with people I don't know, in conditions I don't know.
For two weeks.
In silence.

The only thing I do know is that the organizer is a man of principles, a man of love; a mentor who has been part of my life for two decades now; who spoke the eulogy in a small village church when my dear friend's cousin was viciously murdered.

At a time when I see clearly that I do not want to make a new life for myself, I do not want to move on to the "next phase" of my life because I do not want to say good bye to the last one -- I am choosing to do something frightening and mysterious. I am choosing to step deeper into the world of the invisible relinquishing a large dose of control (which is of course only my fantasized version of "control").

I see clearly that silence speaks volumes more than all the words and noise, that the invisible is far more sustaining of my essence than the visible, the mystery is immensely more wise than the predictable.

How long will it take me to really understand this? And when will I start living by it?