Archive for dreams
Diane, the owls are not what they seem.
A dream:
A peaceful, wondrous feeling comes over me as I consider the darkness and shadow which lies just yonder, beyond where I can’t see anymore. Where the blue-speckleware ends, and nothing begins. I am happy, and glad for the quiet. The dream ends with my brother calling me home.
This is a dream I had all the time as a child: me entering a quiet, secret room, which looked like the giant inside of a speckleware roasting pan, like my mother used. Lately, as I read Robert Bly’s “A Little Book on the Human Shadow,” I can’t help but wonder, is this what I was pondering back then? Was this dream a precursor of future nocturnal wanderings into unknown, shadowy territory? Would the inside of this dark blue, starry room be my natural home?
Sitting in this space, between the brightness of what we think we’re supposed to be, and the depths of who we really are, feels nonlinear, dreamlike, peaceful, and terrifying. Like a painting by Salvador Dali or any other surrealist narrative…such as episodes of “Twin Peaks,” be it season one, the more widely accepted, “brighter” season, or the shadowy, freakish, season two. Yes, even “Twin Peaks” itself, as a show, has an evil, misunderstood twin which only now quietly begins to appear from the Shadow with its recent release on DVD.
So many of the characters on “Twin Peaks” had some type of twin, mirroring each other’s existence.
There are no guiding scenarios to lead us into some kind of communion with our shadows, our freakish twins, our other selves, which we have stuffed away. At least not yet, Now, all we have is one dark story attempting to show us the twin out of shadow. There is no narrative to instruct and define how to deal with our more dangerous selves, the ones we have so hygienically sealed off, so we can play about in a world of light.
We think we have created an impassable ravine between the two sides of our selves. One side is a tangled mess of waterfalls, wildlife, flora, invisible creatures, and mad thoughts. The other side of ourselves is safe, and sane. That’s the one, the one miserably spending and consuming, that we say is real, and true. At least “Twin Peaks” had us calling over to the other side of the ravine. Not a guiding light by any means, but more of a call of an owl in the darkness.
The space between is a safe, silent void, where the persistence of memory is quieted, and one can look a little more closely at the shadowy self on the other side.
Geologists and two-headed serpents
I love that University of Washington geologists, when faced with a gap in geological history, turned to Salish stories to help fill in the picture.
As in, were there any major earthquakes prior to white history? Gosh! There were! And the two-headed spirit of a serpent is here to confirm it!
And the five places where the spirit of the serpent appeared to shake the land and the water, there are five physical landmarks. As in, the sunken forest off the southern tip of Mercer Island, is an actual sunken forest. And the Spirit Rock, where the two-headed serpent was to have emerged, creating a huge landslide in his wake, is an actual boulder just south of the Fauntleroy Ferry.
I love that my caucasian tribe and the Salish tribe are really describing the same thing, together, with different narrative devices.
Bowing Kitten: the trickiness and secrecy of grace
I gave a bowing kitten to a woman on Sunday, telling her I loved him, because he jumped out at me when I was really focused on anxiety and being upset. There he was, in a sea of people (the Saturday crowds at Uwajimaya). Just bowing, with a serene smile and closed eyes.
Soooooooooooooo CUTE!
And mysterious, and…I just said “oh!” and I was happy. And that was grace.
I spent most of Sunday with a group of women calling in the Four Directions, being smudged, beating drums, giving gifts, and being generally cozy with the shaman population. When Rev. Elke MacCartney pulled junk out of my aura and threw it into the fire with a snarl, I felt strong. Someone even said my eyes got bluer.
My hair still smells of sage smoke and I feel…happy. Someone handed me a silver ring with a labradorite stone, which looks muddy until sometimes, the light makes it gleam green-blue. In fact, there is an airy quality inside this mud, which fits me perfectly.
Someone else gave me my very own drum they had made, saying it needed to go home with me.
I now have met my roots…and I get to do this again in two weeks.
