There seems to be a fine line between reality and something else without a name. There are names for what people perceive is outside reality but I think unless you are teetering on the precipice you can not truly understand that there is more than what we can imagine or assign a label to that is beyond what we know to be real.

I am forced to stand on the fragile edge. I am strong, I am intelligent but I have lost someone I love most to this vast mystery on the other side of all that I was taught to believe. I stand here on tip-toe looking out as far as I can see and it is like a desert with waves of heat rising, it is like and ocean with a horizon that goes on forever, it is like the sky and there are a million stars passed the last one I can see.

I reach out hoping that someone will grab my hand and pull me into it, explain it all, and send me home safely. I have gently and carefully moved a foot in but have pulled back afraid that going over alone would assure that I would be lost forever.

In my dreams it is different and I go where I go, no one is watching and I always find myself in my own bed in the morning. Last night I was in love with a dentist who looked like Ben Kingsley. He had a beautiful house by the ocean, and I was there with all of my family, they didn't know he was my lover. I wanted to tell them but I knew Steve would be upset even though he had a girlfriend, a British artist who hated me. I didn't want to hurt him but I needed to stay there with him or go back home with Steve and all that comes with it.

Last week I dreamed I was working in a hospital again, I could not find an instrument tray. The department responsible for processing sterile equipment was on strike and we had a woman who needed a c-section in our OR. She was prepped, we were scrubbed but we had no tools. I searched the whole hospital trying to put together what we would need. In my dream I recalled each and every item we would need; the mayo clamps, alice adairs, straights, scissors, the eleven blade, two retractors, lidocaine, syringes, cord clamp, saline, suction bulb and cannula, tubing, lap pads, towels, cauldering blade, grounding pad, needle holders, sutures, basins, and stapler for closing.

I found bits and pieces as I searched cupboards and raced through other departments but it was exhausting and everyone was waiting for me, I felt responsible. I woke up in a panic feeling like I needed to go back to sleep and finish finding the rest of it, I didn't want anything to happen to her baby.

I dream I can fly, breath under water, run with cement legs.

It all feels very real, being in love, the feeling of responsibility, the freedom of flight. Could it have been? Just for that moment? A different real?

I woke up this morning to find a grasshopper on my window screen and the same three red roses that bloom, die, then bloom again in the same place since she died. While I was staring out the window a flock of little blackbirds lifted from a tree somewhere and flew over everything. It all seemed choreographed and I wondered if it was planned for me, if it is always planned for us and we just forget to pay attention.

Yesterday I was listening to a book on tape. I bought them for Stevie when she was sick and couldn't read, I thought listening to it would give her some pleasure. She hated the readers voices, so I read to her instead.

I found the audio books while cleaning the other day and chose one randomly. I took it with me to listen to while I was painting the gallery walls. The story unfolded the mothers name was Gina and the son was Stevie. The father had passed away and they were at his grave-site. The narrator read off the date of his birth, then his death-April 19Th. I held my breath.

A woman came into the gallery a little later to have some old art framed. The paintings were by a man who lived in Japan in the seventies. I stopped what I was doing to look at her pieces. Sawsan told me they were called "Girl With Poppy" she explained that this man painted this girl, these flowers and horses. I almost fell to the floor. I flashed back to John Muir and the Red Poppies, Stevie would tell me they were her second favorite. One day I picked one and gave it to her in the car, it wilted by the time we got home. There are red Iceland poppies, yellow tulips, and white Shasta daisies on her grave now.

I felt like my daughter was trying to tell me she was there.

If I believe this would I be crossing the fine line?

If I believe every single thing is perfectly planned, the grasshopper, the birds, the story, the girl with poppies and ponies...Does that make me insane? Desperate? Am I placing more that my big toe into the unknown?

I think I might have to risk it. Maybe I need to let go of all the things I thought I believed and open myself up to believing something new. When I dream I do not question my sanity, I let myself live in that world, I trust it. Maybe I can see this life like a dream and just go with it, let all things be possible.

Who wrote:

Go to the edge
No, we will fall
Go to the edge
No, we will fall
He pushed them
and they flew...

I think I am ready to fly.

Maybe I can make a long rope from bedsheets so I can find my way home, maybe I can make paper wings and a compass necklace, Maybe I can hold my hand out as I leap and hope someone will catch me.

I believe in the stars I can not see, I believe that the ocean keeps going past the horizon and that someplace in the desert there is an oasis.

I believe my daughter is somewhere and the way to find her is to let go of the fear that she isn't.