Confessions of a day dreamer

Oh my friends, my fellow participants in the workaday world. How hard it is to wrench myself from day dreaming and get right down to the tasks at hand. I love my train trip to the city in the mornings because it is perfect for day dreaming. Sun (now that spring is on its way), acacia in bloom with lit up golden green leaves positively shining from their interaction with the sun. Uneven, soft bushy shapes running past my window and stroking my eyes with their colour. As the train meanders shafts of sun move through the carriage, sometimes crossing my chest, sometimes my cheek, sometimes a bit of my leg – warm, generous sun kiss in the otherwise shaded carriage. The noise and motion is also lovely – a jolt and clunk which is so reassuring, so old fashioned in its mechanism, like something from an Agatha Christie novel about crossing Europe in a sleeper (but less crime), but still, somehow elegant, old fashioned, gentle, not getting anywhere in a hurry, enough time to enjoy the scenary and muse on things that need musing on. I love day dreaming. Day dreaming to me can be just following the long and windy string of a strange thought and finding all the strange thought friends in your mind – the little ideas that join hands and beckon you forward till you stop minutes later and can’t remember where you started or what your original question was, but you have been completely engrossed by the meandering enquiry and delightful wander. Day dreaming can be no thinking at all, just gazing out of the window, with the sun and your skin having their own conversation. It can be the just listen to the conversation between a small child and someone they love, smiling, warm feeling. I love the roll a feeling around in your mind day dream, where a little event, like a kiss, or happy realization, like some good news, steeps in the hot water of idle time, to make a lovely cup of day dreamy tea. I love the idly pick balls of fluff off your top or inspect your nails day dream. Of course there is the structured future looking day dream of possibilities, sometimes I do this (though to be honest, rarely), or the replay a memory backward looking day dream – both nice, in moderation. I love the half asleep, just about to drop off, thoughts all get unhooked from their ropes and start to waft upwards on updrafts and play in the clouds, without any direction from you at all, daydream – when you become awake again you realise that you had almost slept, but the details of the thoughts and their dances are nebulous and hard to catch, they are just a sensation of a shape or feeling. I love these ones because they are mysterious day dreams, that seem to have their own special secrets, and they feel nourishing, you return feeling rested and content. An actual day dream I suppose is the dream you have in a nap, which I also love, although don’t always dream / remember dreams in naps. I do like a nap though.

This is why I can only sometimes do office work on the train – my work has to compete for time with day dreaming, and often day dreaming wins. This is why super efficient plans for my life often derail (such as the ill-fated ‘use all 4 hours of train commute time as part of my daily work hours by using them efficiently to edit and write sensible things’) they don’t factor in the day dream factor, without which I am unhappy and not very useful. Sometimes in the office at my desk I will take a little moment late in the day to look out the window and watch the colours changing on the sea-shell coloured harbour city buildings. Sad really how often a full minute of looking out the window and musing will attract attention ‘ho! Just looking out the window are you?’ (yeah – you should try it sometime). Blogging is nice because it is kind of like a day dream shared, and also a day dream with an excuse, a functional daydream, a day dream varnished and presented as a shy gift. So thank you blog visitors for giving me a vehicle for daydreaming publicly. Feel free to send your daydreams my way, I can even post things if you want more space than the boring old comments box allows.