In Dreams

What I find most difficult about studying for the bar exam isn't the amount of material I'm expected to memorize or the inane head fakes from the examiners we're told to expect. I've learned to ignore oft-repeated statements like these, which I've heard countless times in my bar prep course: "If you leave the exam feeling good about yourself, I'd worry. You probably don't have a good enough understanding of the law to appreciate how difficult the questions were." The bar will happen, and then it will be over. I will pass, or I will fail; in the latter case, I will suffer the slings of outrageous embarrassment and retake the exam. Or will I? I don't know. So much remains to be seen these next months.

It's the isolation that gets to me. Bryan turns the handle to my front door so rarely these days, of necessity; when he does, I find myself greedily inquiring about ordinary things. Errands. Traffic. Weather and sailing conditions. What it feels like to be outside on an ordinary day, to have an afternoon to oneself. I am dreaming, too, about the ordinary in great detail: signing a lease; painting rooms in the new house and potting plants; hosting dinners; making friends with my sewing machine and journals; books to read, letters to write, hikes to take; talking my neighbors into turning down their music; sweeping porch steps; plunging a toilet; even taking a nap! In each instance, I have awoken, not wondering whether all imagination's fled even my subconscious in this process but refreshed and eager, knowing that the plain world lurks just beyond the brink, waiting.

This poverty of time enables countless quiet encounters.