Violin Dream

I dreamed I was in the elevator of an old apartment building I used to live in. There was a girl there wearing colorful clothes who immediately started talking to me. She had gone to high school in the city I grew up in (though not my high school), and she had some criticisms of it. She was a musician carrying a violin. I was fascinated by it, as I used to play one myself. But her violin was homemade, something she had crafted herself in a rustic fashion out of found wood. I picked up the bow. The back of it was thick, twisted wood, and in place of horsehair was something I could not exactly identify. I wondered what kind of sound it would make when dragged across the strings, and how the balance of it might feel in my hand.

While I was examining the bow, the girl had gotten off the elevator. I hadn’t even noticed what floor she lived on. I thought, perhaps I should go door to door until I find her.

I still have her bow.

Heretic Dream

I dreamed a woman I knew years ago was pregnant and wearing a black dress. We were standing in our old church, the one I grew up in, in a room used for gathering after the service. I had wanted to talk to her because I knew she was undergoing a kind of spiritual transformation. She had some kind of spiritual experience she couldn’t ignore, and this woman, who had always had a certain rigid religiosity about her, was finding Spirit and Mystery in a whole different way, one that didn’t jibe with the tenants of the church we were standing in. This hadn’t happened to her by choice. It had just happened. She was on a new path she couldn’t bring herself to turn back from.

In the dream I’d felt compelled to find her out of a sense that she must be helped and supported on this new path, and it seemed there were few in her life that were willing to do this. I didn’t particularly like her, or her family. But I knew what she was doing was absolutely the right thing. We spoke at some length about how her husband was leaving, even though she was pregnant with their third child, because he felt she was so in the wrong and could not support her new vision. I asked about her father, a man I knew in waking life as one of the most blindly and unpleasantly fundamentalist people I’d ever met. He hadn’t disowned her, she said. She was still his daughter, though of course, he disagreed vehemently with her. She was exhausted, she said; she took medication just to get to sleep. She had two other children to consider in addition to the new one she was carrying. 

Yesterday I was reading Monika Wikman, who writes that the word “heresy” has roots in the noun “hairesis,” the act of choosing. She says, “Me might again rethink heresy and see it as in the days of old, as our ability to choose, to embody our inner visions and knowing, including the ways we must carry our dissenting sense of the nature of the microcosm and macrocosm” (From Pregnant Darkness). 

I find myself wondering what new and interesting dissension my dream heretic is pregnant with, what inner vision it is that I will need to help bring forth, on the ground of what old order.

Promises to Nora June

During a family gathering a couple of years ago, I found myself talking with the Nurse and the Artist about baby names, and what they might name the children they hoped to have someday. 

Some time later, I had a vivid dream of sitting with them at their kitchen table. In my dream, the Artist was pregnant. They told me the baby was a boy, and they told me what his name, first and middle, would be. Back in waking life, I told them about the dream, and they replied, wow, that’s something – we were sitting at the kitchen table last night, talking about the possibility of naming a boy with those very names (though in their version, first and middle were reversed). 

Nearly a year later when I heard the Artist was pregnant, I wondered if the baby was a boy, and if so, if they would use the name. I thought about what a fun story it would make to tell the kid as he grew up, a little piece of family mythology. It’s amazing how quickly and easily we transfer our dreams onto the next generation, creating expectations for them even before they fully exist here with us.

Yesterday, Nora June made her entrance into the world. It was an unexpected kind of entrance to parents who had spent months actively preparing for a natural birth, and years more thinking about how they would start and shape their family. Nora was a breech baby, who, despite all efforts to get her to turn, remained staunchly in place, feet down. We all assured the parents, only half jokingly, that she knew how she wanted to come into the world, that she was simply insisting on doing this in her own way. It was a powerful reminder to us all. Forget the plans and expectations; this baby has her own reasons for being here and her own things to do. 

When my first niece, Elisa, was born, I made some promises to her about the support I will offer in this life she’s just starting to live. Already these two have different ways of coming into and being in the world, so I think different promises are in order. My promises to you, Nora June: I promise to always dream beautiful dreams for you. I promise to support you in finding your own way of moving through the world. I promise to read you your favorite stories over and over again, and to listen over and over to the stories you’ll love telling. I promise to teach you everything I can about this beautiful world we live in. I promise to remind your Dad of all the crazy and stupid things he did when he thinks something you want to do is crazy and stupid.

A Dream About Atalanta

In my dream, I had a beautiful friend, a strong, independent woman who carried a pineapple with her, which, in the dream, was a symbol of strength and independence. A man who admired her and wanted to be with her took the pineapple and sliced it in half, thinking that he had to get rid of it before he could approach her. I was furious. My friend was distressed but tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he didn’t know what he was doing, she said. Perhaps he didn’t understand the significance.

I thought of the story of Atalanta, a strong, beautiful athlete who would only marry a man who could beat her in a foot race. But any man who raced and didn’t win would be beheaded. The suitor who finally won had to use trickery. He enlisted the help of Aphrodite, who gave him three golden apples with which to entice and distract Atalanta. It worked; each time he was in danger of being outrun, he rolled a golden apple towards his opponent. While she slowed down to pick them up, he won the race. But the resulting marriage ended in disaster.

I looked at my strong, beautiful friend. I looked at the man who had sliced her identity in half in an effort to get close to her. I wanted to tell my friend the Atalanta story so she could see for herself what was happening, how sometimes, what is most attractive in a person is also what is most frightening and dangerous, how easy it is to think that killing off something in the other person that seems bigger and more powerful than you will make things better. But that’s an ego fantasy. To be in true relationship means engaging the whole person and risking losing one’s head.

An Advent Dream

I dreamed I was taking an acting class that met in the dark back room of a coffee shop. There were two rows of chairs, and I was perpetually late. Fortunately, the instructor was also perpetually late, so by chance, the class never started without me. A very cheerful woman was sitting on the dark stage talking to us in a very cheery manner about being artists. A man behind me, in the second row, said he was just not ready to make a change, to actually own an identity as an artist, or as anything other than a contractor, which was what he had been for the last decade. This stunned everyone into silence because he was universally acknowledged as exceptionally talented. Yet he said the one thing that was taboo, that change is frightening, that being an artist is frightening, that he wasn’t yet prepared to face that fear. I had to acknowledge that I wasn’t yet ready to face it either.

The cheery woman wanted to exchange phone numbers with me. I grudgingly obliged but found her annoying and thought her cheerful attitude was likely the result of delusion or denial about the difficulties in the world. Then I learned that she had a fellowship of some sort, that she actually made a very good living as an artist, and she was truly willing to support the idea of my doing work I loved as well.

I’ve had dreams before where a dream figure hands me a phone number. It seems to be an attempt by various pieces of my psyche to communicate with me, or with one another.

This strikes me as a particularly appropriate dream for the Advent season because Advent is all about the time of gestation and preparation before giving birth. When giving birth is understood as a metaphor that can apply to the act of bringing anything new into the world, it speaks to our lives in a new way.

Apparently, my psyche has a project that is gestating in the dark back room of a coffee shop in my mind. There is even an annoyingly cheerful fellowship recipient who knows how to do work she loves and make it pay. I’m not ready for any big changes just now, but I do have her phone number.

Through a Trap Door

I want a good night’s sleep.
I want to get up without feeling
That to waken is to plunge through a trap door.
   

George Bilgere, from “What I Want”
  

Lately, I have not wanted to get out of bed in the morning. The radiators in my ancient apartment building are not yet functioning at full force, though the morning cold is. Out of bed, there are conflicts to be dealt with, decisions to be made, impossible walls to be scaled. My dreaming life is so much more inviting. It is hard indeed to put my feet on the cold floor, look out my window, and say, sincerely, thank you for another day.

But today on my way to work, I passed a landscaped lawn with one sprinkler on. The sprinkler turned, the water hit the light, and a rainbow formed, just in that one moment, as I happened to glance over. It was a wink from some other awareness, from the part of me that knows, this seeming reality, too, is just another dream world. It was a moment of seeing, awake, to the other side of the trap door. It made the idea of getting up tomorrow a little easier.

Dreaming of Power

I dreamed there were powerful men who slept a drug-induced sleep in my parents’ bedroom. I moved between our waking world and their dream world to see what they were up to. In their dreams, they had unlimited power and exercised it at every opportunity. I was carefully deferential in that world, so as not to arouse suspicion. Back in our waking world, we tiptoed around them, knowing they’d be angry if they woke. Anyone would be angry, to lose the illusion of so much power. 

I think perhaps Congress has been having my dream too.

The Room of Spiders

The Photographer and I are staying with the Nurse and the Artist this weekend, in their attic room that doubles as a studio. Showing us to the space, the Artist warned that there were brown recluse spiders behind the walls, so she understood if we preferred an air mattress in the living room to the studio attic futon. She showed us where she had placed cotton balls soaked in eucalyptus (which apparently brown recluses don’t like) and sticky traps around the edges of the room. She brandished a small wooden stick and said, “I call this my Death Stick.” It was used to kill spiders that were found half-alive in the traps. 

I was sure the Photographer would prefer the living room air mattress. He was sure I would as well. But ultimately we unanimously opted for the studio attic, because it felt good to be in a creative space that was real enough to incorporate a little danger. The Artist talked about how they challenged her to be deliberate in her studio. A piece of fabric left casually on the floor would be an invitation to an approaching spider, and a careless moment of picking it up less than thoughtfully could mean a poisonous bite. We talked about the association of spiders with creativity, in myth, because of their web weaving ability.

Falling asleep the first night, I thought that the good thing about brown recluses was that they are, after all, reclusive, and prefer the darkness and safety of the space behind the walls to the frightening openness of the room. We tend to think of all dangers as though they are stalking us, poised to attack. Reality is a bit different. Most dangers we live side by side with, and when we understand a danger’s nature and limitations, we can often trust it in a certain way.

The Photographer dreamed that he woke and pulled back the covers to find a spider where his feet should be. But it was a gentle scare. All in all, we slept well in the room of spiders.

Tank Girls

I had a dream that I was near the beach. The sand was like snow, and it made the roads slick as I drove. After getting stuck a couple of times in the deep drifts, I pulled over. People were driving fast around a curve in the road, and suddenly, a vehicle that was half camper, half army tank came swerving by. Unable to stop, it barrelled into the side of a building, then bounced, flipped, and came to a stop.

I rushed over, and when the door opened, I saw that it was a group of girls inside, about junior high age, maybe a bit younger. I looked for the driver, or the parent, whatever adult was surely in there with them. But there was no one. The girls explained, they were here for a school trip, and there had been no adult to accompany them. But they were fine on their own, they insisted, a little shaken, but not hurt. I quickly looked them over as they climbed out of the tank, one by one, and started walking down the road. I offered them my phone number, in case they needed some help. I felt they should at least have access to a responsible adult if they needed one. No, they said, we’re fine without you. Then one of the last girls, one I seemed to know from some vague time in the past, turned around and said yes, maybe I do want your number, just in case. So I wrote it out for her and watched her walk away.

It seems I have not just one determined, resilient child inside, but a whole tribe of them, riding around in a tank.

 

Broken Shoes

I dreamed I was driving on the sidewalk. Why the sidewalk I don’t know, but of course, it was a dream. Somehow my car jerked to the left, and I fell into the street with two flat tires. Fortunately, there was no traffic. I got out of the car and started walking, but I fell over again. I looked down, and the soles of my shoes were split and hanging off of my feet. It had started to rain. I could not walk without water seeping into my broken shoes.

Sometimes, the universe seems to pull out all the stops just to get me to stand still.