July by the Hoornsemeer

Were I to choose, I would always pick dreams over reality. I, of course, mean specifically the dreams you conjure yourself during tiring or prolonged days. You know those days when your body gives out from use and your mind yields to exhaustion. The dreams that manifest during nightly slumber are different. They lack structure and are beholden to the whims of that foul creature that lives inside us, the subconscious. Conversely, daydreams are the works of our inner child. They are hopeful and magnificent. I used to have so many growing up. As a kid, my greatest adversary followed me into every room. Every room had a clock somewhere on some wall or table. The ticking of the seconds going by was nothing else but a chisel chipping away at the time I had left. Youth pays no mind to the chisel or its chipping, but you will come to realize how loud it gets, the less time you have left. So now I often come back to that childhood tradition of dreaming during the day, during my waking hours. Not to pass the time, but to breathe hope into my future. I let my inner child take the wheel for a few moments and I rest in the backseat, just happy to be along for the ride.

    A few days ago, I had immersed myself in thesis work, barely lifting my head from the copious amount of literature I had to consume. My eyes felt inflamed. Each blink was a blessing, no matter how infrequent or in dire demand. The posture I held during the work brings me great shame in retrospect. Spines are meant to be straight, but you could shoot an arrow from mine had you but a taut string. My body was a mess and my mind even more so. Information gaps bridged themselves and crossed over other connections, tangling into a Gordian network of endless ends that ultimately led to nothing profound. This exertion induced an overpowering fatigue instead and I graciously granted myself a break. The meal I planned to fetch for myself had to wait for the kitchen was occupied by one of my roommates. In an honest attempt to avoid a faux pas, I decided to elude them, as cruel as that might sound. In my defense, I had lost command of the faculties sufficient for proper human interaction. Therefore, my last resort was to wait them out like a storm.

    April in the Netherlands is blessed with sweet showers, smelling of lilacs and lavender. The rain is somehow softer, unlike November or February. However, on that day, there were no showers or pesky winds. The sun had awoken from its hibernation and draped the land in freshly shaven gold. I opened my balcony door and stepped out to bask in its rays. Nothing draws a smile from me like a calm sunny sky and crispy air. Why not enjoy the calm weather while waiting for the kitchen to be free? Agreeing with myself, I took a seat in a chair outside and leaned back, counting the clouds. While counting, I started thinking, and thinking leads to dreaming. I thought of life after my thesis, after my work had been done. Suddenly, the clouds in the sky were no longer the same. Time had passed and its passing altered them.

    I saw myself staring at the same sky, counting the same clouds, but it was no longer April. It was July. What was once my balcony was my balcony no longer. I wasn’t sitting in a chair either. My back was pressed against a picnic blanket that lay strewn across the ground. Looking to my left, I saw the nearly blinding, shimmering surface of the Hoornsemeer. The light from the lake and the sun above was reflected in the dew scattered among the many millions of grass blades that surrounded me. I looked back up to the sky and felt a gust of wind wash over my body, reassuring me of some future victory. In that lively zephyr and the sun’s warmth, I found a lasting peace that took to every cell of my body. I was in the grave of contentment, with my bones finally restful. My breath sounded in my ears and I knew that that time was made for respite. In the distance, I heard the song of my favorite bird. Back home we call them sjenice, but I’m in their home, so I will call them koolmezen. Their song carried over the water and lived on in the summer breeze. The air smelled like summer too. It had the smell of warmth and serenity. I would give my soul to go back there somehow, but in my imagination, I had lost track of reality.

    A fierce gale met me, messing up my hair and turning my head to the side. There, I saw no Hoornsemeer. I couldn’t hear the ambient hum of its clear blue waters nor could I hear those koolmezen anymore. The warmth drained from me as I saw the sky had forfeited its sun. Where I expected to find a cerulean Dutch sky, I found myself staring at a milky cotton cover instead. And then? Rainfall. The first droplets were a warning. They showered me but I refused to move, begging instead to be back in that sunny future. The drizzle descended from the heavens like a fine mist, coating me in a thin layer of rain. Perhaps I had fallen in the lake and this is what it felt like to drown. I so desperately yearned for it to be July by the Hoornsemeer again. Those droplets turned to drops and then the drops became something more akin to bullets than water. I thought the heavens had been sundered somehow and lead began pouring from above. It seemed to me like some cosmic punishment that had finally caught up with us. No, it was just hail, in the middle of April, the cruelest month. The weather here is capricious. Just then, I heard the kitchen door slam shut and silence occupied the house. It’s time to eat. New dreams will come with new days.