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Migraine Storybook Dream

Yes, I do realize that posting dreams is against all reasonable rules, but I just can't resist this one. I had a migraine, or a fever, and went to bed early in the evening. Then I fell into a storybook. Into Wonderland.

I'll put most of it under the cut. Ready? OK, now sit back and relax, here we go:

A girl/young woman lives alone in a hut by the sea. She doesn't know why she's there, but she doesn't think much about that. She spends her time exploring, watching the animals and birds and the sea. No matter where she falls asleep -- on the seashore, in the forest, even high in a tree (more about that later) she wakes up the next morning on her cot, with fresh milk, bread, and gruel at the door of her hut.

My Summer Vacation [Journal Excerpts]

How difficult it is, sometimes, moving this body from one place to another, heavily, though thick hot air. How many decisions are made to accomodate its needs.

There is clover in the ivy. I see those small round leaves, hiding --

small dogs
in the summer garden
    smelling everything

how they fall
    the rose petals

speaking into the emptiness, as if there were someone to hear

I've not been writing, I've not been doing morning pages, I'm dry. I'm not sure what is blocking me -- the heat -- the presence of another person in my house -- things I don't want to write about -- or just the natural cycle of rest & growth, rest & growth --

this day, then another, and another --

A dead squirrel on the path, and I am stricken, and angry. I saw J the other night, with a slingshot -- why kill things? What harm?

Bombs in Mumbai, and I struggle to understand how people are brought to this, the slaughter of innocents, in the name of some divinity -- to be the cause of grief also too vast for me to comprehend. A world full of wonders, and this, I suppose, is one of them -- that we do such things to one another.

D. interested in our/ her past, which seems so far to me, so vague. Are we born, or made? It seems to me that I was just beginning then [in my teens] -- that most of who/ what I am, has come since. Are we to think we are the products of a father's abuse; a mother's indifference; a grandmother's care -- and nothing since? Perhaps we are -- at least in part -- a product of our own artistry?

No?

Perhaps those who keep hold of the thread of their lives feel otherwise; they can follow it back, see its source. But for me, long hidden trails and turns into darkness, or brilliance. In places, the thread is broken, or lost, or seems to belong to someone else, some other life --

So that I begin again, and again.

I think of sitting on the floor, yarn stretched between my hands, pulled by my grandmother, rolled into a fat ball.

I've been tired, very solitary, very leave-me-alone. I feel that snap-back, that release, that let-down that happens when there's no more demand to be present, to be chipper, to respond.

It's heating up again. Two or three days, then some relief, then heat again. I suspect this is what the future will be like: heat, extemes, and surprising storms. I am filled with -- weighted with -- lethargy. Even eating requires management, so I make do with pretzels and yogurt. The rubber band has snapped; I'm limp, broken, useless.

I dream I am in a large, decrepit house. A bomb is ticking down; the world is ending. I am on the phone with X, we want to be together at the last moment  -- his brusque, abrupt goodbye.

The Artist's Way ~ Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith

This journey ends, another begins; time to review where I've been. When I joined this group, it was with the intention of also working with Danny Gregory's The Creative License, which I've done only slightly. But you know, I'm feeling OK about that, in the context of all that I have managed to do over the past three months; and I know I will get back to it.

I've wrestled with my meanest demon -- the why do they like me/ why do they like my work/ I don't deserve it demon. I know that this nasty little thing will keep dancing around the edges, but I know it better now; I see it. I've also acquired some peace around the issues of faith and religion. Not the resolution Cameron might prefer, but one that works for me.

As my life filled up, I became less focused on this project, and a quick review of the AW Bloggers list shows me I am not alone in this. I wonder if this is just human nature -- we begin something with high expectations, and then fade; or the season, which in this northern hemisphere is calling us outside; or part of the process itself, which is designed to bring new things into our lives, and new attention to what is already there.

In looking through old notebooks -- just one of the activities this process inspired  -- I came across this dream, from October 01991 -- about four years after I began writing:

I am gagging, stomach heaving, trying to throw up. A child tells me: This is how whales are born! I must have swallowed a whale sperm/ embryo, which grows inside me until it's ready for the next phase -- to be thrown up into the sea. Most people who carry the whale (the child tells me) don't survive the birth; they either die immediately or bleed to death slowly afterwards.

My note to this entry says: This dream was in the middle of the night. I woke to escape it. I thought: The whale is the writing. I thought: I will survive it.

On January 14, 02006, just a week into this project, I had the dragon dream, which I think is the same dream, only more hopeful. Spirals.

I did have some problems with the book, mostly around issues of class, which I wrote about when I became too annoyed to take what I liked and leave the rest -- but I'm glad I took this on, and want to thank Kat once again for initiating and organizing it. I would have been unlikely to do it on my own. Some of the group are continuing at Contagious Creativity; I may join them now and then.

There have been some great pleasures for me in these past months: my dear friend Niki's participation in this project; time with Linda; visits from old friends; discovering new ones. I took a whole month of photos. I know that I lost some readers, and gained others.

Let's see what a poem-a-day will do.

I Dream of Dragons

Uploaded by wam mosely

 

Saturday 14 January 02006

I am sleeping in my bed, in a large room, when a handmade greeting card arrives. I find it charming. It flutters in the air and turns into a dragon. A baby dragon, with large, thin wings; so thin that they are nearly transparent.

The baby comes to me to snuggle, and I know that, even as an infant, this creature can be dangerous. It begins to nuzzle me & I realize, just as I am wounded, that it is trying to nurse.

My dog or cat tries to attack the dragon, & I protect it; I restrain my pet.

The dragon's mother appears, to nurse it, but I know that she will pass the baby on to me when it is weaned.

In the news: dragons are appearing everywhere. There is a move to kill them, but those of us whom the dragons have chosen will protect them.

This is my dragon.

Scattered Thoughts

I had a lovely old-woman weekend. I walked with the dogs in the snow; watched Shrek 2 on television, with many out-loud laughs; then As Time Goes By Reunion on PBS -- more subtle but just as fun. I never imagined a life in which television would be a welcome diversion.

The Republican congressman who resigned this week after confessing to evading taxes and soliciting and accepting bribes, said he learned in Vietnam that 'The true measure of a man is how he responds to adversity.' As I watch developments in Washington, with the CIA leak investigation, the Abramoff probes, Delay and Frist and on and on, I begin to suspect that the true measure of a person is how s/he responds to the acquisition of power.

Yesterday I set my coffee mug down, as I always do, on the table next to me -- except that I didn't. I released it too soon, and down it went on the wood floor. Often this clumsiness early in the day augurs ill, but not this time. The day passed well, and brought a friend with a homemade meal: chicken, salad, pasta, and pumpkin pie!

This morning, real snow, the kind that sticks and hides icy patches. A neighbor has already taken a fall. The dogs happily shovel their noses through it. A friend and her grandson come around the corner, holding hands; she elegant even in this weather, and he with that stiff-legged child-in-winter-clothing waddle. And a many-colored hat with a ball on top.

I dream that I am oddly blind -- if light is too intense, or too weak, I cannot see. I am driving, and as I pass through areas of changing light, I no longer see my way. I clench the steering wheel in terror. Then the light settles again, I can see, I am safe. And again. I never have an opportunity to pull off the road. I must continue on, blind or not. Even if I can't see my way.

More Dream Oddness

Cross my heart -- this is what I woke from this morning:

The 1/8" tall man was jumping up & down and yelling & pointing. He had just found a very lively, tiny terrier and another miniature dog, and he wanted me to save them. I swore to myself then & there that I would do everything in my power to save this 1/8" man and his tiny dogs so he could tell his story of this Bush Administration experiment gone horribly wrong . . . 

As I woke, I saw this little man, jumping and waving, and heard the narration, just as transcribed.

It must be the drugs.

And now Harriett has withdrawn. What will I do with my November?

Odd Dreams

My dreams are the center of my creativity. Even as a child, I treasured them. Now, at 57, I am well familiar with my own dream vocabulary. Though I am occasionally blessed with a dream that seems to carry some special significance, it is rare anymore for me to be completely surprised by some new dream imagery. I woke surprised this morning.

I must introduce this dream moment (only a small part of one of those complex, labyrinthine dreams that winds and twists and turns back on itself) by pointing out that I am one of those rare individuals who smoked marijuana a very few times in my youth, and didn't like it. So in this dream:

I am walking through a large, ancient house, and come upon an elaborate, dark room, filled with cats smoking hashish from glass bongs and hookas. The cats (and kittens!) are sprawled about on rugs and cushions, holding pipe stems between their paws, and looking extremely stoned. The pipes are beautiful, mouth-blown glass, lots of swirling colors. Everything is very exotic. Even the me in the dream is amazed.

Now, on writing this, it occurs to me that it may be a comment on my rather dazed response to the recent medication change. Maybe it means I'm about to come out of it?

No Snapshot Poem . . .

. . . so perhaps a dream will do:

I have recently moved into a shabby apartment. People keep coming in -- poor people, homeless people, mentally ill and physically disabled people -- mostly women. They get in no matter how many times I lock the doors and windows. They are like moths, they are everywhere, they get in through the slightest opening.

I don't know why they keep coming in. There is nothing here worth stealing; I've fallen on hard times myself and there is almost nothing in this apartment.

Waking, I realize: of course I can't keep them out.

They are me.

Dream

I am in some sort of religious community. I am struggling with something that is troubling me. The women ask me, "Have you tried praying?" I confess that I have not. They throw themselves onto the ground, face-down; this is their posture of prayer. I say, "How about if I do it my own way?" and I get down on my knees.

Dream

exposure to something terrible, toxic
the skin hardens, cracks, breaks off in pieces
raw, bloody, mucousy
intensely painful
people hide from each other
there is no comfort
i write, and write, with a hand that is turning to jelly
on some odd substance, like strips of tree-bark
not - describing - exactly
more - poeming -
i keep writing - as long as i can -
because -