Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Bubbles All the Way Up and Down: A Dream

 [Note: This poem, inspired by Gene Gendlin’s approach to Focusing-oriented dreamwork, is a follow-up piece to “Postscript”, which I posted here last November. It was drafted shortly after that piece, but for various reasons I put it aside at the time and have dipped back into it several times, letting it sit with me, incomplete. Recently it occurred to me that (a) “Postscript”, (b) this poem, and (c) “Seventy-five” (which I posted here in June) combine to form an emotional sequence, with this piece connecting the other two. Together, I see them as marking a “time of turning” in my life. -Robert]


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1  A Dream of Fragility

 

Another night, another dream:

 

I’m running a training session,

A small group, about ten people,

In someone’s house, just as we did

In the old days of the approach.

 

And somehow I’m outside

By a busy road

Speaking into a wireless microphone,

With the signal breaking up,

So I don’t know if the people

In the training can hear me.

And then of course my phone rings.

 

So I go to a brief break in the training;

And answer the phone.

You are there, after 50 years,

Phoning at this precise moment

To make contact.

 

I tell you I can’t talk now:

I’m about to do a live demonstration:

A short session in front of all these people,

Which I always begin

By publicly imagining a bubble

Around myself and my volunteer client.

This protects the two of us

From judgement or distraction.

While the audience watches to learn.

 

It’s a good excuse.

But the truth is,

I’m surprised to find in myself

A fragility I didn’t know I had,

As if your phone call

Was the foreshock to an earthquake

Revealing a previously unknown

Fault line in my world.

 

Then phoning you back

Once the live demonstration

And the rest of the training session are done,

I feel my body begin ease

At the sound of your voice:

You are OK, it sounds like.

 

I’ve been so worried about you,

As if I couldn’t afford right now

To lose another foundational

Person in my life.

(Philip and Margaret are both dead.)

 

Then my alarm goes off,

Insistently beeping in the gathered dark,

And the dream of you vanishes

Like the soap bubble

Wish fulfilment dream

That it was.

 

Yet I’m left with:

You are still out there in the dark.

I know where you are,

But I do not know how you are

Or even who you are now.

 

And I don’t even know if this dream

Was about your fragility or mine,

Or even how to tell the difference.




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2  Associations: Professional and Personal Bubbles

 

Where this dream of fragility takes me:

 

As a therapist, I’ve long focused

On other people’s fragility:

Anybody’s fragility…

As long as it’s not my own.

The therapeutic bubble,

Well boundaried and one-sided.

 

But this has always been an illusion,

An avoidance of my own fragility,

Another soap bubble fantasy

Of solidity and safety.

 

This makes me wonder about

All the different bubbles

That buoy my life,

Like a fragile raft

In the middle of large ocean,

 

My life like a brief bubble

In the sea of time,

Mostly spent

On all manner of things

Significant and insignificant.

 

The fragile feeling says:

Now there is far less

Of that life remaining

Than what has already passed;

I’m mostly done.

 

Of course, I pretend this is not the case,

I ignore the truth

That compared to most humans

Who have ever lived

I am on borrowed time,

Beyond my span.

 

I let myself forget

That my life is a debt

That can – and will –

be called in at any time.

 

My little life is like

An aneurysm about to burst,

A blood bubble in my brain,

A fragility on which

My continued existence depends.

 

Many questions bubble up in me,

Have I done enough?

Have I made a difference?

Have I lived a worthy life?

Does anyone care?

Will anyone remember me?

Does that matter?

  



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3  Carrying Forward: The Song of the Bubbles

 

I don’t know how

To answer these questions.

They leave me speechless

And empty-handed.

So I wait. And I wait.

 

And this is what comes:

 

All I know is to go with the bubbles,

To dance to the song of the bubbles.

 

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,

We are all bubbles,

Our little lives and loves.

Bubble after bubble:

Bubbles emerging from

Geothermal vents

At the bottom of the ocean.

It’s bubbles all the way

Up and down.

 

Soap bubbles and soup bubbles;

Financial bubbles propelled by excitement or greed;

Bubble tea: floating tapioca beads,

The fad its own kind of bubble.

We are all bubbles,

Our little lives and loves,

Bubbles all the way

Up and down.

 

Speech bubbles evaporating

Into the next frame of my life.

Hope bubbles bursting into despair

Like broken blisters.

Despair bubbles bursting into hope,

Like geodesic domes on the moon.

Our little lives and loves,

We are all bubbles,

Bubbles all the way

Up and down.

 

My life bubble surrounded by the time

before my birth and beyond my death;

Quantum foam, constantly flickering in and out of existence,

No solidity anywhere, afloat and adrift.

We are all bubbles

In time and space,

Our little lives and loves;

Bubbles all the way

Up and down.

 


 

 

                                    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 -Pleasanton, Oct 2024 (revised,  Lodi, July 2025)

Images generated by AI using Adobe Firefly Image 4, 

using selected verses as prompts.

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