Most of my dreams have a twilight glow. As befits a dream, they occur in the world between day and night, light and darkness. This particularly vivid dream took place a little deeper into the gloaming. It was dark enough that the light from train windows seemed like an underwater world. I was trying to catch a train to the city (a dream city). I missed the first one by a whisker. I was anxious to catch the second but a different train crossed between me and my train, and it was dramatically derailed — it fell over on the exact spot I was going to wait to cross the street, and then all the train cars crumpled and fell behind it, accordian-style.

So I was stuck at the station, but so were a lot of other people, though they were all pretending they were trying to catch a train. I knew with dream logic that they were just pretending, I could read that in their gestures and their expressions. And the feeling of being stuck here slowly expanded and grew, and I understood why they were stuck here and knew I might be, too. But they were funny, engaging people, making meals together and setting up makeshift beds in the train station that were quite fancy. And I thought they would make good movie characters, and next thing you know they were making a movie. They weren’t lost souls in this in-between place, they were where they wanted to be and they were working on something.

Strange how well I remembered this dream, and as I lay there thinking about it, it was clear to me that this was about my “career.” About that feeling of being perpetually and eternally waiting for it to begin, but being happy where I am and who I am with. That feeling that everybody is in this place with me, even the people who seem driven and successful. Even the people who seem to have caught the right train and arrived in the right city. They must feel like this too, sometimes.

A few days later someone walking by my window said, “You know it’s never going to get any better than this. You should be happy where you are.” They weren’t talking to me, obviously, or even to each other. They were talking about talking to someone else, which has a dream logic all its own.

And then a little later, in this dream of a life, or earlier, maybe, I was talking to a friend about how sometimes it feels like we’re treading water. Whether you have a job or you’re looking for a job. Whether you’re working on making something good or thinking about making something good. At some times in your life, you’re in between. (All the times in your life?) You need a moment aside from it all. You’re treading water.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot a lot. Treading water. I know people are tired of hearing about my dreams, but I have these dreams, too. I’m in the middle of the ocean, with the twilight light of my dream ringing in the warm bottle-green water, with pale birds wheeling overhead in the dream slate of a sky. The waves are gentle and insistent around me, and I’m treading water. Treading water in the briny ocean is a strange feeling. It’s a lot of work, but you feel like you could do it forever, with the waves swelling and falling around you. And you think about the water that you’re in, which is so full of life. So full of strange creatures that you could never have anticipated, brushing against you as you tread water. Worth exploring, worth getting to know better. You think about the water itself, full of waves of warmth, waves of cool. You think about the impossible expanse of the ocean, and how this water you are in is connected, could somehow have touched, water and land farther away than you have ever been and deeper places almost than you can imagine. This water has buoyed people who are treading water off the shores of countries far away. And it has been home to creatures deep and strange and dream-like, with stories and dreams of their own.

And when you get tired of treading water, you can float onto your back and look up at the stars in the deepening dream of a sky, and let the water carry you for a while. In the ocean, you can see the curve of the world, and you get an odd sense of your place in it, in the whole round world. And it’s never going to get any better than this.

What a wonderful issue of Tidings of Magpies we have this month. Beautiful writing, art, photographs, and music. As ever, I’m so grateful to everyone who shared their words and their work.  Please take the time to read, and, as ever, submit, support, subscribe. And have a look at Tidings of Magpies on Instagram.