Dreams

“He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven” - William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

New York might be called a city of dreams. Most New Yorkers were not born in New York; they have made their way here for a reason, and those reasons are often described, one way or another, as dreams. Many have dreams dream of coming and making their fortune on Wall Street, a fortune that will secure their future and enable them to live the good life. Many dream of coming and garnering fame: not simply fame as celebrity (that’s what L.A. is for), but fame as renown, one who is respected and admired as a master of the craft. And more generally, we all come to New York with a dream of the lives we will live, of the people we will become. In New York, and in America in general, a dream is usually thought of as a goal, an aspiration, a vision for the future that we are trying to create.

But this city can be hard on those kinds of dreams. Sometimes it just grinds them into the mud like a child’s lost mitten on the side of a slush-lined road. But more often, it slowly unravels them over time like an old blanket: pulling a thread here, snagging a corner there, until we’re left shivering at night wondering why we can’t get warm, unable to see how thin and threadbare the whole thing has become. How many office temps are “really” singers still working for that big break, and are convinced that they can’t take a permanent job because any day now they’ll get signed to a show? How many waiters rattle off ten minutes of memorized details on the ingredients and cooking method of specials because they are “really” actors who spend the rest of their time memorizing lines for an audition scene that they’ll probably never actually perform? How many corporate associates are still staring at their computer screens at 11 pm on a Friday night, certain that things will change once they make partner, pretending not to notice how life right now is running through their hands like water while waiting for the “good life” that always manages to stay about 3-5 years around the corner?

Perhaps we need to be more careful about our definition of dreams, which is where this poem is helpful. At first, it just sounds like a particularly good love song. What lover hasn’t wished (in far less exquisite words) for “the heavens' embroidered cloths, enwrought with golden and silver light, the blue and the dim and the dark cloths of night and light and the half-light”? Only the full-ranging beauty of the cosmos, in all its shining colors and haunting shadows, all its blinding power and quiet mystery, is a worthy gift for the one they love; failing that, what is one to offer?

Well, he has an answer: “I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” And this is why this poem is not just a particularly good love song. You see, he’s not talking merely about goals and aspirations and vision for the future. For Yeats, dreams are not something that we are working towards; they are something we already have. They are the springs of love and desire and fear and insecurity and insight and reflection that run deep within us and well up in our sleep and visions. They are the fragile tapestries that reveal our deepest identity in all of its jumbled beauty and ugliness, which we do our best to hide away in the dark chambers of our hearts, far away from the probing and damaging light of the outside world. And so they are the only thing comparable to the whole canopy of the cosmos that we have to give to the one we love.

It is no accident that the slogan for this city has long been, simply, "I Love NY." We don't simply live here; we have a relationship with it, a love affair of sorts that goes through the emotions of any relationship: joy, grief, frustration, desire, disappointment, and satisfaction. But it is the very uniqueness of that love that can cause us great problems. We have to learn not to expect more from the city than it is able to give. New York never treads softly, and while we may be able to achieve our goals and realize our aspirations, we cannot trust it to safely hold our dreams, our deepest identity and being; goals and aspirations are difficult enough.

No, there are some things that only another person can be trusted with; though as for that, there aren't very many of them, either. One of the most common refrains in this city is how hard it is to find "a good man" or "the right woman." And what that really means is someone who is able to fully give what you need and, perhaps even more important, take what you give; someone you can connect with at the deepest level of our being; someone you can really trust to bring down into the dark chambers of your heart, see what's there, and both understand and appreciate what they see. To unveil the blue and dim and dark tapestries of our true self there and gently lay them at another’s feet is perhaps the most profoundly vulnerable and profoundly loving gift we can offer. Will the other trample them into the dirt in contempt? Tear them with their heel in careless indifference as they turn to go? Or refuse to even come in to look in the first place, lacking the capacity or the desire or the courage to accept such a gift? Any of those results are possible, even likely, from most people; the temptation, then, is to begin believing that, like the city, there is nobody out there who is really capable of making this kind of connection, of being trusted with this kind of gift.

But here, I think the city actually can be trusted: with 8 million people representing the whole spectacular spectrum of humanity in this place, there's at least one of them who's capable of receiving the gift of each of us. At least one of them, when you spread out your dreams at their feet, will not run away or try to change the subject or stare at you in confusion. They will step forward in wonder, and gently and slowly walk across the delicate cloths, bending down to take in every shimmering color and dusky shadow as you wait, holding your breath. And finally they will straighten up, and carefully step back towards where you are watching anxiously. And they will look at you and smile softly, and then breathe out those words you have been longing to hear: “I love it," they will say. No, there aren't very many of them. But you only need one.