Like heaven

The idea that dreams somehow comprise a place, a state, a territory, is of course an old one. It's rather easy, for instance, to think of musical illustrations of the idea. Bette Midler once offered this take on the subject:

There's a place worlds away,
Time has wings there, green with springs there.
Smiles and songs bloom on every tree.
Only in Dreamland, just wait and see.

Or there's Bob Marley, who, in imagining dreamland, perhaps predictably imbued his vision with an element of melancholy and distance:

There's a land that I have heard about
So far across the sea
To have you all, my dreamland
Would be like heaven to me.

Well, last night Cleo got to visit dreamland - and for an extended stay, at that. Worn out by our visit to D.C. - that's her watching a cricket match, above - she fell asleep at about 4:50, and slept through the entire evening and night, finally waking up this morning at 5:30. And when she did awake, after almost 13 hours of sleep, she had something she wanted to tell me:

If you catch a dream, she said excitedly, you get to go to dreamland. And dreamland is a real place. And last night I got to go. The world - not the people in it, but Mother Nature, choose it. And I went to see the goddesses. And Nathaniel climbed up and pushed the leaves away and we could see all of the goddesses. And I could see the muses, too. I don't remember if they called me beautiful. But Clio said to me, she said, Come back.

Well, why not? It's always there, Cleo. And it can feel, momentarily, like heaven. Even if it does seem, sometimes, worlds away.