Hidden Rooms

Crow Man and Heidi

2011-12-20T09:59:00.003-05:00

Crowman and me
After The Crow Man, by Winterwolfe

Crow Man and Heidi

I am at the premiere presentation of Crow Man. Scientists have taken a real, livingcrow and added human chromosomes and done a series of operations. They intend to make him fully human,but have not finished yet. CrowMan is about three feet tall. Hisskin color is nearly a normal human color, pinkish, with a little grey leftfrom the black. His spine has beenstraightened he walks erect, his beak has been removed and his face lookshuman, though slightly strange. Hestill has the beak, which has been expanded. He holds it up to his face and he resembles a crow, he takesit away and he’s human again. Hishair is jet black and feathery. His hips are wrong, still, and his has trouble walked and especiallyturning. His feet are long andsomewhat crippled—and bare. Theycurl in such a way that he mainly walks on the outsides of his feet—moreoperations are scheduled for the hips and feet. He walks around awkwardly and comes to where I am sittingtalks to me. I ask him questions andhe replies. He takes a like to meand gives me a kiss. Not aromantic or sexual kiss, just a friendly kiss. When he turns around and walks back the other way, I wipethe cooling drop of his spit from the side of my mouth. Then, I look around in hopes no one sawme do that because it seems rude. I don’t want to wipe away the kiss, only the spit and any germs it mightcontain. But it seems like a fineline. The audience, however, isengaged in watching Crow Man. Orseems to be.

After the presentation is over, there is a reception, andpeople are sitting at picnic tables still listening to the scientists answerquestions. There will be food andbeverage, but I want to go take a walk before it gets dark. I go over to Heidi. Keith is somewhere, too. But Heidi doesn’t want to walk; shewants to stay and listen to the questions about Crow Man. She says Keith wants to stay too,though Keith is not in evidence at the moment. I try to talk her into coming, but she won’t come. Finally, I go out to walk alone. It seems to me that the questions andanswers are all a rehash of what has already been said anyway.

I am sad and a little upset and angry because the delay hascaused it to get dark. I am in a strange and unfamiliar place and don’t know myway around. I know there is a lakeat the bottom of a long gradual hill and decide to go there first. I can see the lake faintly in thedistance and also a long lawn running down to it—all in the very dark dark. Iwalk down toward the lake and in the dark, I trip on a pipe or some pipe-likeobject protruding from the ground up to about mid-calf. It hurts and I stumble and wakeup. Tuesday, December 20, 2011

What does this remindyou of?

Ø Shamanism: First, and dream with talking animalsreminds me of Shamanism, which I studied, including dream Shamanism. This is bad time for me, right beforeChristmas, to work with the dream Shamanistically; I am too busy and that takestime. Crows are veryintelligent. They are alsothieves. They steal food from farmers,and they also sometimes steal shiny things, like a magpie. They steal babies from otherbirds. They supposedly have beenknown to poke out the eyes of human who try to attack their nests—they areprotective. Because they areblack, they are sometimes considered to be evil. It would be interesting to consider what such a creaturewould have to tell and teach me. Imiss my Shamanistic practice—I seem to have less time for everything. I had no partner and no kid living at home back then.

Ø Walking: Walking is essential to my well-being,but sometimes difficult and painful. I need to try to cram it into every day, no matter how busy. This causesdifficulties for my family, my friends and me. I don’t mind walking in the darkwith a companion, but prefer to walk during daylight hours if I walk alone so Ican write while I walk. Also, ifin unfamiliar territory, so I don’t trip and possibly injure myself!

Ø Notwanting to walk: When Heidiwas here, she and Keith made it clear that they did not want to walk in themush-puhsh. I was secretly a little disappointed that she,my great walking companion of old, who lives in the wilds, was (in thoseinstances) so prim and prissy. Andwimpy. However, part of theproblem was her shoes, and later, she got out a better pair of shoes.

Ø Ethicsand Morals: Although I wasvery interested in Crow Man in the dream, and still am, sometimes it seems asif scientists do thing they should not so, and this might be one of them. I just finished a book where theprotagonists did some bad things, which is always upsetting and disappointingto me. I like the protagonists tobe the “good guys” and gals; they can and should have faults, but it seems tome that the good guys should not go beyond a certain point and if they do—theyare no longer good guys but bad guys.

Ø Bare feet: remind me of childhood, of nature, ofsavages (the primitive) of being in contact with nature.

Ø Trippingin the dark: Hmmm. I trip alot, both literally and figuratively, and more often in the literal and figurativedark than in the light. I couldask myself, “in what ways am I tripping myself up?” There are many answers and I have little time right now—Itrip myself up by walking at night, by eating bad foods, by beating myself up,by taking on too many projects, by not finishing the ones I have, but notsubmitting my work. By gettingangry.

"Wherever crows are, there is magic. They aresymbols of creation and spiritual strength. They remind us to look foropportunities to create and manifest the magic of life. They aremessengers calling to us about the creation and magic that is alive within ourworld everyday and available to us." Ted Andrews

Ø Magic: If I look at Crow Man is MAGIC ratherthan as a scientific teratogenic monster,it serves to remind me of the magic and creativity and love in life. Of transformation. And of joy and happiness, and gives mea surge of hope at a time when I am feeling overwhelmed and depressed.

"Since Crow is the keeper of sacred law, Crow can bendthe laws of the physical universe and "shape shift". Thisability is rare and unique. Few adepts exist in today's world, and fewerstill have mastered Crow's art of shape shifting. This art includesdoubling, or being in two places at one time consciously; taking on anotherphysical form, and becoming the "fly on the wall" to observe what ishappening far away....

"Crow is an omen ofchange. Crow lives in the void and has no sense of time. TheAncient Chiefs tell us that Crow sees simultaneously the three fates- past,present, and future. Crow merges light and darkness, seeing both innerand outer reality."

Sams and Carson Medicine Cards

Ø Shape-shifting: This is powerful Shamanisticstuff. Since my crow shape-shifted(with the help, in the dream, of the scientists, it reminds me of the studies Idid with Robert Moss in shape-shifting, of being in two places at once, ofsending the mind-spirit out to hunt. This is what we do also as poets and artists.

Ø The innerand outer reality: Seeing bothis like the healing process, bringing the subconscious to the conscious andbecoming aware.

Ø Beingchosen: The fact that Crow Manchose me in the dream—did not kiss anyone else—reminds me of my fear that I amchosen by men bent on hurting me (abusers), but also by this powerful but as ofyet crippled figure of Shamanistic power. (This reminds me of the Mogur in The Clan of the Cave Bear!) It gives me a sense of latent power,strength, and ability.

Ø Twisting: I notice that I am twisting theapparent meanings in the dreams—the surface meanings, into something morepositive. I do not necessarily seethat as a bad thing, because being in touch with deeper feelings mined in thismanner have given me more energy and cheer at a time when I needed it. Energy and cheer are useful. J

Ø Stopping: I notice that the work I do after Idecide I “should” stop is more important than the work before that. And were I to go on, I might do betterwork yet. BUT I MUST STOP. I have other things I MUST do. L

I would like to do some art to go with this, but that ain't about to happen immediately!!!

The green shirts

2011-12-09T10:15:00.001-05:00

I buy a bale of pale yellow green T-shirts, really cheap. But when I open them, not only are they more poorly made than I imaged, but also, they each have named inside the colors and are obviously used and frayed. One has many names. They seem to be children's shirts from camp, ad I am afraid they won't fit.

My Brother, his Novel, the Hidden Chair and the Security Unnecessary Guilt and False Accusations

2011-12-05T10:16:00.000-05:00

My Brother, hisNovel, the Hidden Chair and the Security

Unnecessary Guilt and False Accusations

My brother Robert lends me a book about a 14-year old girlthat he thinks I would be interested in. It is a novel interspersed with pictures, poems, and scrapbookitems. It has a cheap red coverand has fallen into two pieces, which are in danger of splitting further. The threads of the binding are hangingout. I am sitting at thedining-room table in someone else’s house reading and enjoying the book. There are maybe eight other people inthe house, and they are expecting their grandmother and when she arrives, theyall parade into the dining room. Iconsider moving, but do not. Someone complains that there aren’t enough chairs. Because there seems to be one chair toofew, about half the contingent returns to the living room. I stand up and point out another chairthat was half-hidden behind mine. But no one returns to the dining room. I feel guilty, even though I don’t think it is my fault, andI leave the house with my brother.

My brother has never been here, to this locationbefore. I tell him about the ancientgraveyard behind the house and we walk up the stone walkway up the hill to thegraveyard. It is not likeold American graveyards, but like old European graveyards. I am excited about this and telling himabout the ones we saw in Slovenia, Italy and Australia.

At the back of the graveyard is an old low stone building,and we go inside. We areimmediately drawn to a large glassed-in cage full of hermit crabs. There are robot arms with gripper jawsthat can be used to pick up the food for the crabs and deliver it from theplastic bins, which can be filled from the cage, to the crabs. We each have a turn doing this. I get an old rotted-looking brown onionand try to deliver it to a certain crab, but it rolls away down the rocks andhalf in ad half out of the water. I hope the crab will get it.

We leave the building and Rob is going off somewhere. I tell him there are snow-cladmountains just beyond here, but he says I can show him later; he has to dosomething. Because I’ve only beenhere maybe once before, and I am not sure I am remembering correctly. I decideto check to be sure I’m right about the mountains. Also, I remember, there are other interesting ruins. I walk past some appealing ruins andcome around a bend in the trail and can see the mountains in the distance—theyare tall, thin, and rocky with bulgy rocks rather than rock faces—very strangeformations, with patches of snow like alpine glaciers near the top.

I want to walk closer, but there is a large school busblocking the way. I considercrawling under it to continue my walk on the other side and bend and look underthe bus, but it is covered, under there, with thick black grease.

A security guard comes and is upset, thinking I want tovandalize the bus. I explain thatI am just trying to follow the trail to the mountains and the bus is blockingthe trail. I go around the bus,but the security guard follows me. She is haranguing me. Istop to defend myself from her accusations and a line of people walking towardthe mountains comes by the narrow space behind the bus where we arestanding. Among them are Bruce andDebby. They do not appear to seeme.

I follow them. The security guard follows me, making false accusations. I just keep walking toward themountains, ignoring her. Sunday,December 4, 2011

What does this remindyou of?

Ø a way to write a novel

o (Remindsme of a novel series that was popular maybe ten years ago)

o (Mightbe a fun way to write a novel)

Ø unnecessary guilt

o thatI was taking up a chair needed by someone else (someone who was welcomed andwanted whereas I was not welcomed.) but there was, in fact enough chairs.

Ø false accusations

o themissing chair: I was accused of making it so there were not enough chairs, whenin fact there was

o thesecurity guard: I was accused of wanting to vandalize the bus when it had nevereven occurred to me.

o IREALLY HATE being falsely accused.

Ø various failures

o Thehidden chair

o Feedingthe crab

o Iam sad and upset when I feel that I have failed

Ø successes:

o Rememberingthe cemetery

o Rememberingthe mountains

o Iam pleased to have remembered correctly

Ø things that engage and interest me

o thenovel

o theold cemetery

o therobot arms and the crabs

o theruins

o themountains

Ø ignoring the security guard

o Ignoringmy false inner voices

o Thesecurity guard is like my inner voice that tells me I am “bad” when I amnot.

o Inone case, I gave into it (the inner blaming voice of guilt) and left the housewhere there were sufficient chairs because I felt bad

o Inthe other case, I totally ignored the persistent accusations, knowing in myheart I was not guilty. Theharanguing of the guard was like a mosquito buzzing around my ear, an annoyancebut not heartfelt.

o Thedifference is, I think, that I was partly blocking the view of the last chairand therefore felt that I actually was PARTLY to blame for the anger of thewoman who chastised me. In the onecase, I knew for sure I wasn’t at fault, and in the other case, I felt somewhatresponsible and also unwanted and unloved. But even in that case, I wasn’t really to blame.

o Ifeel as if I am often falsely accused or blamed for things.

o Onthe other hand, I do actually make mistakes and do things wrong sometimes. L I really HATE being wrongand/or stupid. (I want to beperfect, but I am NOT! Darn!)

An Impulsive Mistake

2011-11-18T08:47:00.001-05:00

I am looking out the window of some academic building on somecampus with someone, and I see my daughters walking a bunch of dogs. I tell the person I am with that thosegirls are my daughters and that the dogs, or some of them, at one time weremine. I name the dogs and describethem, so she will know which is which. Sassy and Charlie are there, but all the other dogs are different, brownand blacks and larger than Sassy and Charlie. Sara and Erin go around the corner and I tell my companion thatthe girls are taking a class in that building across the street and it is anexcellent class with a fantastic teacher. We go over there, up the stairs and into the “lounge” of the classroom,which is a large living-room-like room, a little darkish, with couches and easychairs and displays of student work. I proudly show my companion my daughters’ projects and then the projectsof some of the other students. There are a number of students in the room who I seem to be mildlyacquainted with. I discover aproject I hadn’t seen before that was getting lots of attention. It had a sign on it saying that the twoboys who worked on it have submitted it to the president of the United States. The boys were both in the room and Iask them about it, and they say the famous actress Sherry Fairchild isinvesting everything in it in the spring. I am amazed and proud and glad for them.

I am holding a girl on my lap—a college-age girl in a whitedress, slender and pretty, the way I would hold a child. We are sitting in the room, and then weare sitting in a swimming area on a rock. I see several frogs swimming by and I think to impress the girl bycatching one and I dart my hand down and snag one. I am a bit surprised it was that easy. The girl, though, is a little bitupset. I tell the girl that the frog is worried because it thinks I am going toeat it. The girl gets off my lapand moves away and I am moving through the water with the frog in my hand aboutto let it go, when I put my hand on the top of a rock so tall jutting out ofthe water that I do not notice a HUGE frog sitting on top of the rock. The frog in my hand I had thought was anice large green frog, but this one is huge. Without thinking what I am doing, I toss my frog into thelarge frogs open mouth. I see thereason that it is open is that the big frog has another frog in its mouth. I want my frog to jump back out andconsider scooping it out. I amsorry I have thrown it in. Just asI go to reach for it to rescue it, feeling terrible and guilty, the big frogpartially swallows and my frog partly disappears, without a struggle, down thebig frogs gullet. It is stillvisible, just its head and one of its legs. I feel awful, bad.

I decide, however, not to try to dig the smaller frog fromthe throat of the big one and am standing on the side of the cement wall of thepond/pool area considering diving in, but I think the water might be tooshallow. And full of underwaterrocks, so I turn to the side and consider diving into the deep end. But I am wearing jeans. I wonder if I want to take them off andswim in my underwear, swim in my clothes, or not swim. Or skinny dip. All the students from the class, thosethat were in the room when I was there, are around in and out of the pool.

The teacher of the students asks me if they could take afield trip out to my farm. I amtelling her that the place is sort of run down and would not be a good placefor a field trip. I startdescribing the barn as having a green fiberglass roof held together with ducttape and I look up and notice that the roof of the school is made of greenfiberglass and has duct tape patches. But their green fiberglass is almost transparent and the patches areonly over the nail holes. I amwondering if I even have any chickens left. I tell her the ducks and goats are gone. I am visualizing, with great sadness,deep decrepitude. Friday, November18, 2011

What does this remindyou of?

The most powerful part of the dream is the business of catchingthe frog and feeding it to another frog. This reminds me of all the impulsive stupid things I havedone that I feel guilty about, most recently, the incident of hitting Keith andother angry outbursts. One in thepast was tattling on Linda. Thereare many things I feel sad and guilty about. Some were things I did and shouldn’t have and some thingsI didn’t do but should have. These things upset and haunt me. I wish time could be rewound to thepoint before the incident and I could be allowed to make a better choice. Thinking about killing that frog thatwas swimming innocently through the water makes me feel really BAD andSAD. I want to undo that and undohitting Keith and tattling on Linda etc. And the bad things that happened to Sassy, Charlie, Vickie, Buffy,Shendy etc. And my currentambivalent feeling about pets.

I started the dream by telling a companion about what I wasseeing, but at some point, the companion faded away and I was “narrating thedream as if writing a story.” Thisreminds me of my work on my current novel, all the other novels I’ve written,and my lack of getting any of them published. This makes me sad, angry, guilty, frustrated. (*)

The girl on my lap reminds me of when I used to hold Erin onmy lap, even when she was a big girl. It reminds me of holding all the kids, including Graham, and thegrandkids. And not holdingFrankie, because I’m too far away for him to know me. In the dream, my feelings for the girl were loving andinnocent. Motherly, rather than sexual. (*)

It also reminds me of being a kid and being held by mymother, father, grandmother, aunt etc. (And being held by Keith and the need for physical warmth.)

The teacher wanting to bring the class to the farm remindsme of negative things associated with the end state of the “farm” and of RavenGirl and Santana and Raven Girl’s foal, and of the worsening state of the housewe live in and my state of inability to function physically etc. (More things to feel guilty and badabout L)

In the dream, the president of the United States seems tostill be the kind of figure that a child thinks the president is, as opposed tothe bumbling fools I think of the presents now. In the dream, the president is impressive and wonderful.

Looking out the window at my daughters reminds me of how faraway they are and how little I know of their current daily lives and how I wishI lived closer.

The actress Sherry Fairchild investing in the boys remindsme of how I wish some editor or agent would discover ME and love MY WORK.

The students I seem to mildly be acquainted with through mydaughters remind me of the friends of my daughters I know (somewhat) and hookedup with on Facebook or in other ways.

The dream reminds me of

Ø My love of and lifetime relationships withanimals, good and bad.

Ø My desire to be a fantastic teacher, writer,photographer, artist, singer. Andmy failures. AND some successes!

Ø The academic community, my love for it, dislikeof it. My love of learning, myfear about Alzheimer’s/dementia.

Ø My academic successes and current failure toaccomplish what I want. Lastyear’s success at NaNoWriMo and this year’s apparent failure (I am running waybehind!)

Ø How I used to love to swim but rarely do anymore.

Ø The bad things on the farm—I guess I said that,must be time to quit.

In the Looney Bin and Almost Lucid

2011-10-25T10:18:00.002-04:00

I visit a live-in care home for crazy people, emotionally disturbed and retarded or physically disabled people of various ages. The “keepers” or staff are having breakfast and invite me to sit with them and I have some of their food which is a mixture of potatoes and meat—large pieces like a stew. Then I go in among the patients to observe. They are roaming around a courtyard that is planted with trees and flowers and looks as if it is a section of woods, pond and bog brought into the courtyard rather than a garden. People, children and adults are roaming around in various activities, but there is something strange about them and their wanderings, something random and disturbing.

One great huge fat young man rockets out of a cave on his belly like a gigantic otter, crushing some orchids I’d just been admiring. I look sadly at the mashed orchids. He is unconcerned, doesn’t even noticed, and I am disturbed and annoyed by this. The young man disappears into the forest within the courtyard.

I need to use the bathroom* and throughout the continuing dream, I try to do this and am thwarted. I discover that the first sets of bathrooms I find will not lock. I decide to use one anyway, but then the director of the place, a man, comes in to ask me if I want the same thing for breakfast today as yesterday. I say, “I will have anything, or that,:” and then realize I have to tell him about my allergies. I am standing there with a wad of toilet paper in my hand I think I have to flush the toilet because I started and didn’t finished because I’d gotten up to check again for a lock when I heard someone coming. Later, I find a staff bathroom with multiple kinds of locks including a special high power unlockable lock for staff, which has a long key about three feet long. I fiddle with the lock. I really have to use the bathroom, but it occurs to me that this seems much like a dream. Ῠ I might be dreaming, so I’d better be careful so in case I am, I don’t pee and wet the bed. I feel, stroke, palpate the bathtub next to the toilet—it is cold and very hard, shiny, and feels like porcelain. The toilet has no seat. I lower myself onto the cold hard porcelain, and take a moment to consider. It’s cold, it’s hard, it’s a real toilet and not a dream. I pee a little, but I am afraid. Tuesday, October 25, 2011

I wake up to discover I am in fact in bed, and luckily, I did not actually pee.

*I often have dreams about needing to use the bathroom before I wake up in the morning, because, in fact, physiologically, I do need to use the bathroom. Usually, the dream goes out of its way to thwart me, to keep me from using the bathroom until I wake up.

What does this remind you of:

I am fascinated by the workings of the mind. The fact that within the dream, I realized I might be dreaming and had better be careful not to pee the bed interests me. The fact that within the dream, I investigated the toilet and bathtub and found them to be HARD and COLD and shiny and smooth and in every perceivable way like a bathtub, but was still afraid to pee indicates that at some level, I knew I was dreaming. It also shows how REAL a dream can be, which indicates that any time we believe we are awake, we could be dreaming, which brings into question all of “reality” or the phenomenal world as we perceive it. If in a dream, when I am laying in bed in the dark with my eyes closed, I can see light (lots of light), and flowers etc, and FEEL cold hard tubs and toilets, and in every other way experience what is convincingly real, how do I know what we call reality is real? And not just my dream or someone else’s?

Ῠ: note that again, I had an opportunity to become fully “lucid,” that I came close to it, but failed to realize consciously (as opposed to simply consider) that I was, in fact, asleep and dreaming. However, this is a step closer, so I am hoping to still be able to possible do “lucid” or conscious dreaming.

The location reminds me of a home for disturbed people I visited after an accident in a blizzard. I found it very disturbing and it haunts me. I am writing a book about it. Or, it appears in several books I am working on. (Discuss?)(Maybe have already been discussed multiple times?) Why did/do I find it so distressing? In the dream, I found it distressing. I tend to “tune in” empathetically to various “energies” people put out, including crazy confusion, and then I feel somewhat crazily confused and disoriented. (The dream about the loony bin is much more detailed than described above; I can no longer recall the details.)

I’ve had a fear of “The Looney Bin” ever since I was at Langley Porter and they said I would never recover. Interesting that at the Looney Bin, I am “almost Lucid,” but not quite. Sometimes, I think that the truly “sane” are “crazy.” I’m not sure that being truly sane is an appropriate goal—perhaps being happy and conscious (aware) is a better goal? No, not “happy,” because no one can be happy all the time, probably, unless they are in fact a little crazy or touched or something, but what? Total self acceptance? Inner calm? None of these seem right, because sometimes, calmness is not the appropriate response to what happens—SOME core of inner calm could remain, though. And I guess total self acceptance might be a goal, I just have trouble imagining being that forgiving of one’s foibles.

Orchids and other rare wildflowers often get stepped on and crushed by animals, which seems somehow ironic. I’ve also seen them crushed by young men on motorcycles, which angered and upset me. In the dream, I wasn’t sure if that great fat young man (teenage boy?) had the ability to care about the flowers. So I wasn’t sure whether to be sad or angry.

Sometimes, I feel as if I am becoming like that great fat boy, mashing everything in my path, and that I may have to navigate by sliding along the ground when I am too fat to walk. Needless to say, I am upset by my weight and size. 

Lessons

2011-02-26T15:53:00.001-05:00

Lessons

Through cracks in the sea-shrunk boards of the shanty

flows danger-darkened air. Vapors billow, taint the room

with the smells of searot, putrefying fish and terror. I do not need

to open the door to know that outside, a sea witch waits. Through

heavy oak wood, I see her clearly; her feet drift an inch above the step.

Her gown shimmers, glitters and floats around her in waves of blue,

green, and endless black. Beside her stands her merman consort

with his scaly legs and sharpened trident. Apprehension clings

to my skin like dirty spider webs, like decaying fishnets. I peel off

the slime of fear and flick it out the window, slam shut the opening

against invasion. I shutter myself as well, close my eyes, cover

my ears, sleep away the day. Hours later, when my husband returns

with his catch of the day, the witch and her companion still stand

at the door, waiting. Waiting. Patient. When I ask what she wants,

she says, "You are finished," and her voice reverberates

deep in the bones of my chest. She is a teacher, my husband

reminds me, but I dread her lessons. Like my mother, my father,

and all the men who claimed to love me, she enumerates my faults.

The baggage of my shortcomings pile on the floor around me,

as many and endless as waves on the sea behind her. But when I ask

what she is selling, thinking elixirs, miracle cures, redemption, she

and her silent green merman disappear, leaving the stoop empty

but for a sudden whirlpool. Twisting waters suck me in, twirl me

around, whisk me away. Now, with the same joy I find in flying, I ride

inside the belly of a fish as transparent as if made of glass. Through

the prisms of its scales, I watch, in exultation the passing coral,

yellow tang fish, clown fish and anemones in shifting kaleidoscopes

of sparkling light and color. If I broke open now, this rainbow

would paint your face, this laughter serenade your dreams.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

"Finished" and Glass Fish

I am in a small cabin with a bed, some spare furniture, and multiple doors. I want to do some exercises that require partial nudity, but 2 people are standing at the side door (stage right). I can't see them, but I know they are there and I am afraid. I do not want to answer the door because I'm alone and scared. I do not think they have knocked; they are just standing there. Their unexplained presence is worrisome.

I prop a very flimsy small folding chair against the door and start doing exercises.

Later, Keith comes home, entering stage left. As I am telling him about the strangers at the door, I walk to the front door (stage rear), and look out. The two people are still there, now at the front door. I turn back to Keith and say, "They're still there!" and am wondering why they moved from the side door to the front door.

In anger and frustration tinged with fear, I ask them what they want.

One of them, a woman (in black?), who seems to be in charge, says, "You're finished!"

She says it in a deep, severe tone of voice, like a death knell, and I think she is death, come to take me away, and I am terribly frightened.

But she continues, "You can't even take care of the baby" (there is suddenly a baby in an old-fashioned wooden rocking cradle by the fireplace—my baby?) and then blah blah blah a whole litany of everything that is wrong with me—"you're fat, more than one hundred pounds overweight and deep in the throes of addiction, you're lazy, you're messy, you're defensive, etc etc etc on and on and on—[I can't remember everything she said, but it was all negative, all 'true' and the sort of thing I beat myself about.])

I am lying in a chaise in front of the open door where the woman is expounding my faults and shortcomings, and am half asleep. I ask sort of sarcastically, "what are you selling?" (I am thinking maybe she is selling some sort of miracle cure to all my problems—drugs—religion, meditation, something).

No answer.

I get up and look out the door. No one is there. The front porch is empty. They've disappeared.

Keith tells me that the woman used to be a kindergarten teacher. Her companion never speaks. 2-20-11

I wake up, go back to sleep, dream

I am joyously riding in a glass fish that is swimming in the water and watching the colors in the glass change as it moves. I look up and down and all around—it's so incredibly beautiful and blissful. Then I am home thinking about painting what the world looks like from inside a glass fish. I think it should be a movie, because it is in 3 dimensions, or it should be a sculpture you could get inside of. 2-20-11

What does this make you think of?

Ø the first dream was "negative" and upsetting, critical, scary. The second dream was full of light and beauty, uplifting, creative, engaging. It makes me think of yin and yang, of the ups and downs of life, of the creative process of living and dying. Obviously it makes me think of death and dying.

Ø perhaps I have died after the first dream and the fish is my ride to heaven or heaven itself or some form of it.

Ø My grandmother died of cirrhosis of the liver. She may have been a drinker, but if so, I wasn't aware of it. Cirrhosis of the liver is a now becoming a common cause of death by obesity, along with breast cancer, heart attack stroke, and a whole host of other health issues caused by obesity. The dream seems like a warning for me to do something about it. But it doesn't tell HOW. (Other than deal with the addiction, but how?)

Ø Who is the baby? I have two biological children, a stepson, grandchildren, including a baby, and I also have my books (my book-babies). Maybe I am not taking care of all the book-babies I've already birthed. Frog Haven, for example. Story 16. The Herpetologist. Following Wolfie. Muddy. Etc.

Ø If the woman who tells me I am finished used to be a kindergarten teacher, maybe she is trying to teach me something. Maybe she is trying to shock me into changing my lifestyle. But she doesn't actually TEACH anything; she just criticizes, like so many adults and teachers, parents etc.

Ø The fact that she disappears so suddenly when I ask the wrong question makes me think she is a spirit guide, and I need to listen. But if so—perhaps she should speak more clearly. Give me some useful info.

Ø Nearly asleep on the chaise—sleeping through my life, being in denial about (or not wanting to hear) all the criticisms. Sounds like a negative abusive parent or spouse. Sounds like a child tuning out a parent! But also, when I dream I am sleeping, it is partially an awareness that I actually AM sleeping.

Ø The glass fish makes me think also of Jonah and the whale, though it seemed that the glass fish was relatively small and I was also small. And also of the great fish dreaming the world.

Ø Maybe I am the baby I can't take care of—my inner child.

Ø I wonder why I looked out the front door for someone who I thought WAS at the side door? In my life, am I looking for something in the wrong place?

Eric says he was never a flasher. I have many memories of him as a flasher, but who is to say my memories are right and his wrong? But why would I remember him as a flasher and no one else, and why very specific memories, very clear. (Were they dreams? I don't think so!)

The Unconscious Boy, the unstuffed suitcase and the hissing boot

2011-02-11T11:40:00.001-05:00

The Unconscious Boy, the unstuffed suitcase and the hissing boot

A woman is driving around calling for her son, a boy about seven years old. He is lying unconscious on the floor in our livingroom. Graham wants to stuff him in a suitcase and leave him for Keith, but I say no. The boy has special boots that blow up to form an insulating seal around the feet. One of them has fallen off and it hisses and hisses. I pick it up and listen to it hiss, a very upsetting sound, and look for a switch to turn it off. When I don’t find one, I open the front door, stick the hissing boot in the barren windowbox (painted white, bare dirt) and look up and down the street for the car with the woman so I can signal to her that we have her son. Friday, February 11, 2011

Ø I don’t know why the boy is unconscious. He is not dead.

Ø I don’t know why I didn’t signal the mother sooner. She is out of sight now. I seem to be moving in slow motion, sort of frozen in place for a while.

Ø I don’t know why the boy is at “our house”

Ø the boy I call Graham seems to be my stepson, but is not clearly Graham

Ø the father I call Keith seems to be my husband and the stepson’s father, but is not clearly Keith

Ø I don’t know why the stepson (Graham?) wants to stuff a live but unconscious boy in a suitcase and leave him for his father. We—Graham and I—seem to be leaving on a trip.

Ø I think there was more to the dream before this.

Ø I wake up very disturbed. The image of the boy in the suitcase and the hissing boot seem very ominous.

What does this remind me of?

Ø The bare window box where I stick the hissing boot makes me think of my mother’s house—the front porch and window box were just like hers. My mother, however, was not present in the dream, unless “I” was her, which I didn’t seem to be. The house reminds me not of the house I grew up in, but the house where my mother and father lived for many years after I left home. It was the last house my mother lived in, and I lived in it only briefly twice, once when Sara was a baby, and then briefly after my mother died while I was sorting through her things and taking care of her will etc.

Ø The unconscious boy reminds me of Graham, who seems to go through life not conscious of much of his surroundings, needs, commitments, other people, their needs etc.

Ø Graham’s wanting to stuff the boy in the suitcase reminds me of Graham’s violent video games

Ø Graham’s wanting to stuff the boy in the suitcase also reminds me of things I hide and have hidden throughout my life. And things I hide from myself or others or refuse to look at. Eg: extra eating. I stick to my diet sometimes, and sometimes, I grab a handful of potato chips or something worse (eg chocolate.) I am also “hiding” my past by not really revealing all of it. This is in part because I’ve been told not to—that is Blake and various other people told me not to tell all about my “sordid” past, but just to go on cheerfully (yeah right) as if it never happened. I used to want to “come clean” and tell people things that had happened or that I had done so there would be no secrets. Secrets, large and small. I’m mostly not unwilling to tell Keith, for example, anything that happened, I just don’t want to burden him. I feel somewhat less willing to tell Brian. I feel as if Keith loves me, I feel safe with him in that respect. I still feel somewhat like a “bad” person with Brian.

Ø I’d like to stuff everything bad in a suitcase and heave it off the back of a boat into the water. BUT the boy in the dream who is unconscious did not seem bad. Just his one boot. The left boot.

Ø Even though the unconscious child is a boy, he could represent my own lost inner child. (I was a tomboy who always wished I was a boy.) Perhaps I have stuffed my own unconscious (or memories or inner child) into a suitcase.

Ø The hissing boot reminds me of sounds I don’t like such as the vacuum cleaner, the exhaust fan in the kitchen and fireworks (etc). It is very ominous and frightening in some way.

Ø I often think I need to give myself a good boot—to get myself going or to punish myself.

Ø It could also represent death and dying (unconsciousness, being stuffed in a suitcase (grave).)

I'm Going to go Eat Worms

2011-01-31T08:41:00.004-05:00

“I’m going to go eat worms”

A guy—someone I seem to know—turns into a grey squirrel. The squirrel at one point looks sickly. It seems as if the man turns back and forth from a man to a squirrel and back to a man. A book I am reading has predicted this. I am telling the guy about the book when he is in his human form. In his squirrel form, he skitters around the room or sits on a blanket grooming himself.

At the Village Market, one of the men who works in produce and other areas who has been mean to me in the past is being nice. He offers to let me use his cart to take stuff home. The cart is, in some way, superior to mine. I say I will bring it right back. We are leaning close together and talking like close friends. (It is an intimate but not sexual moment.)

I am eating worms—BIG night crawlers that are chilled in the fridge but still alive—I seem to crave them and they taste good to me. But I don’t like them to warm up and crawl around in my mouth. And it sort of bothers me a little that they are alive. (This was also predicted by that book I read (am reading).) 1/31/2011

* * *

Somehow, this seemed to be all one dream and there were other parts to it, all strange, but this is all I can remember now. (I remembered more when I first woke up, but they faded away before I wrote them down).

What does this make me think of, remind me of?

The eating worms reminds me of the song: “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I’m going to go eat worms, long slim slimy ones, short fat juicy ones, fuzzy-wuzzy wuzzy wuzzy worms. Every body likes me, nobody hates me, why’d I eat those worms? The long slim slimy ones, the short fat juicy ones, the fuzzy-wuzzy wuzzy wuzzy worms.” Perhaps I’ve been feeling lonely and friendless lately.

Eating worms also reminds me of the cravings during pregnancy and the cravings I had when I was recovering from my last bout of illness. I was craving grapefruit, red peppers, and other foods (but not worms.) I ate the foods I was craving thinking that I might have depleted certain nutrients during my sickness. In the dream, I was thinking that the worms were good for me (nutritious), besides tasting good. However, being without friends is not good for me!

The Grocery store employee makes me think how I always wish that people I have to deal with (or even just see regularly) would be kind and courteous. After being mean to me once, he has in fact been nice to me several times. (This reminds me of my father—this guy has a small black cloud sometimes.)

The guy who changes to a squirrel reminds me of shamanism and my dream of the madman in the maze/labyrinth. But it also seems like a physical representation of a physical, mental or emotional problem or disease, since the squirrel seemed unhealthy. Some dream dictionary suggestions: Being highly efficient, productive or industrious, Moving too fast, Planning, saving or providing for the future, Hiding something or putting, it in a safe place, squirreling away, A person that is skittish, unpredictable or difficult to handle ...

The book that predicts things may mean that the dream is trying to
tell me something. (Changing back and forth into a squirrel is like
my father changing back and forth from a nice person to a black cloud,
except the squirrel was not a black cloud and did not have a black
cloud, the guy at VM did.)

Missing the Train

2010-09-08T10:17:00.003-04:00

Missing the Train

Keith and I are at some winter resort playing in the snow. Many other
people are also playing in the snow. We have all purchased tickets
for the train, which will take us further up into the mountains.

I slide down a very steep hill into a bowl of snow. When I reach the
bottom, I see that all the people have run up toward the top and are
disappearing over the edge and I know that the train is coming. I run
toward the steepest part of the hill, which leads to the train stop,
but it is very steep, like a cliff. I poke the toes of my boots into
the snow, but the snow has been melting and doesn't hold. My feet
keep slipping down. I call and call for help, but no one comes!

Eventually, I reach the top, but the train and all the people,
including Keith, are gone.

I go into the building through the back door, which is closest to the
hill where I came up. There are double doors with a room or entry way
between them (like in a darkroom), but someone has removed the handles
(knobs) from the insides of the center part of the double doors and I
am trapped between them. It takes me a while to pry the inner door
open. My mother is inside. She tells me the train will come back for
me in a little while and that she is making me pancakes for breakfast.
It seems I have not had breakfast yet.

I think I hear the train coming and rush out through the front door.
But once again, I am trapped between the two sets of doors. I pry the
outer door open by jamming my fingernails under the somewhat loosened
black screws that used to hold the handle, which has been removed,
just in time to see the blur of the train whooshing by. I yell and
wave my arms, but the engine is way past and it doesn't stop.

I sit on the ground and cry. My old college friend and lover, Chris
Burnett, appears, looking just as he did in 1970, forty years ago. He
sits in the snow beside me and I tell him the whole story of what
happened. I am crying. I am very distressed to not be with Keith on
the train into the mountains. I also feel abandoned by Keith,
although I realize that he thought I would catch the train when it
came around again.

After I have finished telling my story, Chris rolls over on top of me
and starts humping me gently outside my clothes. I say, "Do you want
to go to my cabin?" I am thinking about my mother inside the building
making pancakes for me. I am very hungry and the pancakes sound good.
I am thinking about Keith. Chris rolls over away from me and he has
a hard on and no pants (Earlier, I didn't notice him being nude from
the waist down). I notice his erect penis is small (and not is big as
Keith's!) and rather child-like and strange.

* * * *

I wake u p, disturbed that
I would offer to take Chris to the cabin I shared with Keith (and have
sex with him—that was the implication). 9-8-10

In my "real" waking life, I have not seen or heard from Chris Burnett
in nearly 40 years. Nor have I thought of him or dreamed of him in
that time, at least, not recently. I have no idea where he is, and if
he were to show up here, I doubt he would look like he did 40 years
ago, I doubt he would act like that, and I highly doubt I would invite
him to "my cabin" to have sex. (And of course, my mother is no longer
alive and I can't eat pancakes any more, due to my allergies).

Concerns:

• Missing the train—TWICE!
• Barriers to reaching my goals:
o the cliff
o the uncooperative snow
o the doors with no handles or knobs
• The missed breakfast with my mother
• The strange sex temptation (I have none in my "real" (waking) life)
• I miss my mother and the "unconditional love," acceptance and help
(and food) she provided me. (Not that I need the food).

Possible connections:

• Over and over, I keep having problems and barriers to completing my
work (writing) because of computer failures and other problems (health
issues, company coming, a variety of problems and issues to deal with,
lost manuscripts. I may be (I AM) afraid I will miss the boat (train)
with my manuscripts. And I might! [I got a form rejection from
Adams Literary. ]
• I keep having dreams of abandonment by Keith, but he has not
abandoned me as far as I know (two previous husbands did).
• (My mother's birthday was recently.)

I also dreamed about wolves earlier—they were like big old lazy dogs
lying in among a grove of skinny-ish trees and I rubbed my foot on
one, the way I would pet a familiar dog without bothering to bend
over. It had very thick fur. The coloring was also wrong; they were
like the Australian shepherds I used to raise, but they were supposed
to be wolves.

Pursuit in Mortal Fear

2010-04-26T10:13:00.001-04:00

Pursuit in Mortal Fear, Monday, April 26, 2010

Several men with guns (three?) who have already killed some people are
on the rampage wanting to kill more. They are chasing me/us. At one
point, I am in a school cafeteria warning people. We are temporarily
safe, but the gunmen are coming. I am mopping the floor. I crawl
under the table where the milk machine is to mop something that looks
like vomit. Then the gunmen arrive and we are all running again,
through the building, over and through fences, through the backyards
of nice suburban homes where we warn the residents, who are all out
enjoying their yards. More people join the fleeing mob. About 4-5
children of varying ages climb varying heights into a tree, and I say,
"get down, run, go for the woods—the have guns, they have rifles, they
can shoot you in the tree." We think we see some woods (where the
trees would offer some shelter), but when we get there, it turns out
to be a dead-end quarry with unscalable cliffs. (They are covered
with vines that from a distance looked like trees.) There are small
caves and tunnel-like holes and I stand with the others considering
what to do (terrified), worried the caves might be dead ends.

I wake up fearful and relieved to be awake and "safe."

Last night's reading may have influenced the dream . Blanco and crew
were chasing Ren, Amanda, Shackie, Croze and Oates. But I have lots
of these dreams even without the scary reading. Life is a fatal
disease. I don't want to die. Or suffer. I am fearful of what lies
ahead. (In this moment, I am OK.)

The Boy with the Guns and the Burned-up Lady

2010-04-24T08:26:00.001-04:00

The Boy with the Guns and the Burned-up Lady, 4-24-10

1)The Boy with the Guns: A teenage boy has several guns and knives
and kills someone. He is a strange boy with a roundish body and long
thin but strong arms, a round face like a younger child. At first,
there are many people, but no one does anything, so I sit on the boy
and hold his arms and try to disarm him. The boy is very strong and
keeps getting away. Everyone else leaves, except Keith, and I keep
wrestling the boy to the ground and he gets away again. I get one gun
away and he gets another from a hidden holster. He wants to kill
Keith and me and is very angry and powerful. Over and over he escapes
and over and over I wrestle him down. I holler at Keith to bring
ropes to tied his wrists and ankles so we can call the police, but
Keith can't find any rope and comes back with adhesive tape but
doesn't put enough on and the boy immediately gets out and I wrestle
him down again and Keith applies more tape, but a little while later,
he escapes again. (The tape doesn't seem to stick well, and he
manages to peel it off.) This goes on and on and on. Keith does not
assist with handling the boy. He does not understand how strong he
is. I tell him over and over but he doesn't seem to believe me. The
boy also pulls a knife and later a third gun. I always seem to be
able to temporarily disarm him, but never get the final better of him
(never get him safely under control.) At one point, I am sitting in
a chair with the boy on my lap like a child (he is smaller at this
point), holding him like a child who is out-of-control. The boy's
brother comes in and sits down and we are talking to him. He is an
adult, but is very sick with some degenerative disease, so we cannot
get his help. He is unable to help us and we do not even tell him
that his brother has killed someone. It seems pointless to burden him
with this knowledge when he is so sick. The boy with the guns seems
crazy and somewhat unwell, but not in a way that affects his strength
or will.

2)The Burned-up Lady: A woman burns up from the inside, leaving only
a perforated shell (like thick aluminum foil) and a few small pieces
of charred bones rattling around inside.

* * * *

The second dream followed right on the heels of my waking up disturbed
from the first. After that, I was unable to go back to sleep.

The first thing that popped into my head is my struggle with addictive
allergies and food cravings, which can, in fact, be fatal, both
directly and indirectly. If the dream represents my food issues, I
don't know why a crazy boy with guns would represent it. But it would
explain why I am the one doing the wrestling. Or simply my struggle
with my weight, which alone could be deadly. It could also be my
brain tumor.

The burned up lady could be a hint about the first dream, or it could
represent my anger and my fears about it.

Everyone leaving during the crisis reminds me of the time the giant
boa was trying to kill me and Frank said, "Don't panic," and ran out
of the museum.

One Ski, Friday, March 12, 2010

2010-03-12T09:42:00.003-05:00

One Ski

One Ski, illo by me, view it larger here.

I am with my father and my brothers staying at a ski lodge. I am feeling tired and low energy. As we leave to walk to the slopes to ski, I feel too tired to carry all my gear, so I take one ski. My plan is to leave it at the base of the slop and go back for the other ski and poles. The ski I am carrying is long, shiny and blue.

As we walk toward the slopes, my father suggests we walk up for the first run, rather than taking the lift. I don't understand the value of doing this, but don't argue. Other people have been doing the same thing, punching their toes into the hard-packed snow along the side of the trail, so there is almost a stairway there. We start up. My father, one of my brothers and I walk slowly up the side of the very steep trail. One of my brothers is walking up the center of the trail (and is way ahead of me). I think that is a bad idea, because he might get hit by skiers coming down (though none seem to be at the moment) and also might damage the slope with his ski boots. I call, "Tom, come walk up the side," but it is not Tom, it is Bob. He is a young teen, still small, and skis gracefully and competently down to my side and starts up again on the side.

I suddenly realize that since we are climbing the side of the very steep trail, that it is the expert trail, and I don't want to make my first run on the expert trail, since I am not feeling well. Then I realize I can't ski down with one ski; I need to go back to the lodge where we are staying and get the rest of my gear. I will have to climb back down the slope and should do so before I climb any higher.

I go back to the lodge to get the rest of my gear, but there are a series of complicated problems that prevent me from getting what I need.

__________________________________________________________

I have HALF the gear I need to ski, 2 boots and one ski (3). I missing one ski and two poles (3). What is difficult to do that I am now trying to do with half the gear and not enough energy? Live? Love? Paint? Write? Heal? Keep house (clean)?

The hassles at the end (which I now remember only as hassles and obstacles, but in the dream were fully detailed and complex), are very much like all the things that happen in my everyday life that keep me from accomplishing my goals. Family commitments and obligations, required phone calls, doctor visits, driving Graham around on a variety of wild goose chases, complex messages from Ellen Bowen that I have to waste time deciphering, etc.

The skis in the dream are the skis I had as a teenager. And my brothers are teens and my father still vigorous and eager. But at that age, I wasn't tired (normally, unless I was sick) and would never have attempted to climb a slope with one ski—that's more like things that happen now. At the moment, I can't think of anything that happened then that resembled that, but it was a long time ago. Ski trips were something the four of us did together. My Mom stayed home at "Margaretto's Lodge" and kept the home fires burning and had a hot meal ready for us when we returned.

I was sad to leave my father's skis in his basement when we sold the house. L But I had no use for them, other than sentimental. I left all his books behind, too, including ones inscribed to him by his mother, my grandmother. L And I left all my aunt's books in her basement. She wanted me to take them and love them, but I didn't. I was too overwhelmed at the time to even take one.

Did something happen when I was 14 or 15 that's affecting me now?

There was a period of time when I had ski dreams regularly. One of my repeating dreams was of trying to ski when there wasn't enough snow. Moving from patch of snow to patch of snow. I realize this dream is different, but there's a resonance—I am trying to do something without enough of what I need to do it and with many obstacles. (Why skiing?) I'm just not sure what it is and how it relates to my family of origin.

And: why walk when we could take the lift? Later in his life, my father would not have suggested that. But we did do it, at his suggestion, in the early days, for some reason that I no longer recall. (It's not that I'm against walking for the sake of walking, but when skiing, why not take the lift?)

In what way(s) in my current life am I not taking a lift that I could be taking? How am I attempting to ski on just one ski when two are available? How (or why) am I taking just one ski along when it would be more appropriate to carry 2 and be prepared? In what ways am I unprepared for what I am attempting to do?

I don't know, but if I did, it might make an interesting poem because I love the metaphor of climbing a steep, expert ski slope with only one ski. (Am I failing as a poet because I cannot unravel this metaphor?)

A factor in all these things could be time. This is because I try to do more than is humanly possible in a multifaceted life. I am not carrying enough arrows of time in my quiver of goals to accomplish them all in the face of the complexity of the obstacle course I have to run. (I am mourning my inability to finish new work for the current green show that I wanted to enter and my probable inability to submit an air poem to the contest I wanted to enter and all the novels I want to complete and send out.) I may need to wrestle my ADHD and my ultra enthusiasm and drive to accomplish to the ground and pick one or two projects I really want to accomplish and do those and put everything else on the back burner. I also need to do a better job of balancing LONG-TERM goals with short-term goals. I tend to concentrate on one to the exclusion of the other.

BALANCE—that's what I need! You need two skis to be properly BALANCED! But I need a dynamic and changing balance to suit the variety of projects and interests and needs, family and personal.

Or, maybe I just need to relax a little and not be quite so upset when I fail to achieve all my (sometimes unreasonable) goals.

I would like to have a better system for prioritizing. Sometimes I waste time on petty or small goals or even distractions (ADHD!) and mess up on big important goals because of it.

OR, I could, as some people have done, learn to ski down the expert slope on a single ski. (But unfortunately, that seems unlikely). (I'd have to lose weight to do that—and don't get me started on that as a metaphor or I'll never get my tasks done!)

Maybe I need to learn to Snowboard. Yeah, add that to my to-do. Snowboarding is a bit like skiing on one ski. Friday, March 12, 2010

Runaway Car

2009-12-24T07:42:00.001-05:00

Pulled in two directions and being left behind by my car etc

(I dream that):

A huge gang of people are leaving on a trip from a big house and I
don't want to go, but they've taken my car and I have to go to try to
get my car back. Some guy has organized it, but my car is full of
other people and I am assign to a 4-horse cart—white horses. Somehow
in the dream, I know how to drive them. But I am thinking I will be
getting farther and farther behind from the my car, which as already
left—I don't want to go at all, but am eager to get going before the
car and the people are lost to me. Keith brings me a packed suitcase,
but it is a suitcase packed with junk. I send him back to get me some
stuff, my coat, changes of clothes, underwear, and he comes back with
them all loose, not in anything. Meanwhile, my assistant has released
the horses—am trying to instruct Keith and my assistant, no no, don't
release the horses until you are ready to leave. This whole thing is
turning into disaster. I want to stay with Keith and finish my
projects, but I need to retrieve the runaway car.

I think this is a stress dream from all the things I am trying to
accomplish and failing.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Synchronicity

2009-09-10T11:58:00.000-04:00

I had another little synchronous event this morning. A "silly" little thing, but just a reminder! I was doing exercises, counting (sit-ups) and listening to an audio book (Blasphemy!) and when I got to the 33rd sit up and was saying 33, 34, just exactly as I said 33 and then went on to 34, the audio book said, 33, 34, right with me. And 33 is one of those numbers!

I have been having whole series of these events lately, and I am listening. Quietly.

Erin's new old house (Dream) 090513

2009-05-13T09:44:00.001-04:00

Erin's new old house (Dream) 090513

I dream Erin has purchased a huge old house with serious decrepitude, but has resources and plans to fix it up. It's so big she has not explored it all, but has discovered a theater inside which at this point can only be accessed through a narrow trap door (it's on the second floor). I theorize there must be an alternate way to get there and she agrees but hasn't found it yet. She tells us, me and Sara, that she intends to restore the theater and use it. I am eager to join Erin and Sara in exploring Erin's new house. I return later and there is a woman there that Erin has hired as a housekeeper/guardian of the house and I am explaining who I am because Erin is not at home. I tell her I fronted the money for Erin to buy the house, but am not sure this is true. I wake up confused about that final point.

No Help for the Snake Bite (Rattlesna...

2009-04-17T06:56:00.004-04:00

No Help for the Snake Bite (Rattlesnake dream/nightmare)

I am out in the distant "bush" on a work-related task when I encounter a snake. The snake comes after me, chases, attacks and bites me in the finger in spite of my efforts to elude it. I am in thick underbrush and cannot run. The snake is small, brown, and thin and does not look like a rattle snake (they are usually thicker, huskier). It is wrapped tightly around my finger and won't let go, and its tail is hidden in its coils. I try to remove the snake, but it is locked onto my finger. I manage to press the coils aside and I find the tail which has 3-4 rattles on it; clearly its a rattle snake and poisonous. I struggle and struggle and finally get it off and it tries to attack again, repeatedly. I am encumbered by the brush and thicket which I can barely press through let alone run. I escape the snake and realize of course that I must go for help (and abandon my work). After I press through more brush, I have to swim across a large body of water. It is choppy and dark. The sky is very "black" with threatened rain and I fear lightning. I am, however, proud of my ability to swim through all this. At first I swim hard, but then realize that the excess flailing with circulate the poison so I swim more gently.

I have now arrived back at work which is a school/museum. Many of my work friends and coworkers are there in a meeting and I tell them I've been bitten by a rattlesnake. They are joking around and telling me unrelated things having to do with work and with their personal lives. No one is listening or hearing me, that I have been poisoned and need help. I make a loud announcement to the whole group, which embarrasses me, but they still don't listen. I ask the security guard for help--but he also does not help, he is busy with his own problems. I call 911 and get the police station and the person who answers the phone cannot give me directions to get there. I am thinking I need to get to the hospital. I keep saying; it's been over an hour, I need to get to the hospital, but no one is helping me. Because the snake was small, I think it may not kill me, but it still could, some snakes are more toxic than others and I don't know what kind of snake this is/was. I wake up in a panicked dither.

Things I am saying in the first narration of the dream:

I am being poisoned
I am being attacked
No one is listening to me or hearing what I am saying
No one seems able to help me
I am encumbered and held back by multiple barriers to getting help/healing (underbrush, water crossing, bad weather, lack of assistance, stupidity/ignorance, distractions)
I am in danger

Since all the characters in the dream are parts of myself (as well as other people in my life who aren't helping, doctors etc), I need to look at how I am holding myself back from healing. And why. And how I can change this pattern.

My chapbook, In the Circus of my Sanity, was sitting on the dining-room table at PB's place and I moved it over to the other side of the table. BB must have been looking at it, reading it. It shows a picture of "me" wrapped up by snakes. This image, fresh in my mind from yesterday, could have influenced/"caused" this dream.

Possible extended meanings:

Since snakes can represent penises and sexuality, perhaps I am being "poisoned by my sexual experiences," e.g.: rape etc.

Snakes can also mean:

transformation and healing
possible betrayal or loss of money
someone liking/being attracted to you.
hidden fears and worries
phallic temptation, dangerous and forbidden sexuality (as mentioned above)
a person around you who is callous, ruthless, and can't be trusted
knowledge and wisdom
Goddess Worship/the old religion
doorways or journeying/knowledge/wisdom healing/shamanism
my own masculine energy--the ability to take action in the world
a poisonous or toxic situation in my life (if it's a poisonous snake)
and of course, they can mean other things as well, as personal symbols. A controlling person, a parent etc.

I have always liked snakes in waking life and am not normally afraid of them, but most of the snakes I've encountered have not been poisonous. I did get very close to and photograph a Massasauga rattler, but it looked nothing like the snake in my dream. They are very placid snakes and do not attack (most snakes do not attack unless cornered.

The dream could also be a warning about the dangers of therapy and getting into toxic or poisonous areas of my life/mind.

I have snake dreams fairly often. One I had recently took place in the water (subconscious?)

Of course, the snake, too, represents a poisonous part of myself--and I can be toxic to others as well as myself. I keep returning to snakes, like I do to eggs.

The Fallen Moon

2009-04-08T11:35:00.001-04:00

The Fallen Moon, by Mary Stebbins Taitt. This is from a dream the
other night--actually from two dreams in early morning. The white fox
in the trees and the fallen moon were juxtaposed dreams, one after the
other.

Dream Poem "Backwards"

2009-04-03T09:57:00.001-04:00

This poem is from a dream I had last week. I had considered making a poem of it and didn't attempt it because it seemed too hard, but it continued to worry me, so I attempted it and here it is (danger, upsetting images!):

Backwards

Round, puckered and striated like a nipple, the fossil

hides among rocks on the mountain top. I stroke it,

feeling the bumps and indentations in grey rock.

Limestone, perhaps. Below, sky stretches, endless,

fading toward white. It shimmers like the sea. I call you

to see this ancient stone creature, knowing

how you like breasts, the soft roundness of them,

the responsiveness of nipples. Not rock ones,

of course, but still, "come check it out."

But you frown and step back, refuse to touch it,

and when I look back, I see, not a fossil,

but a dead girl, naked, lying deep in the rocks,

disintegrating. An arm here, a leg there,

features half rotted from her skull, the nipple

just showing in shadow on the twisted torso

deep between the summit's rocks.

Boulders shift and ocean now surrounds us.

We're on a breakwater, but no waves strike

the rocks. The water is still, calm and blue as a summer sky.

We stare at the dead girl. She's become intact and fully clad,

her clothes pressed and clean. Her cheeks blush

with color, brightening. She lies on top of the rocks,

no longer lost between them, and I'd swear I see her

breathing. She's flung across a slanted rock

as if dropped there by great bird, head downward, legs up,

long brown hair draped down the rock toward the water,

facing the endless blue above. We're on an island,

a shrinking island, no land in sight, only the glassy water,

the unmarred sky. I'm surprised when I realize

she looks a lot like me, at maybe nineteen.

Her eyelids flutter, and I awaken, in another century,

in a distant place, alive, and much much older. Tears

dribble down my cheeks.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

090403-0930-2a, 090402-1757-1c, 090402, 1st 4:15 PM; from a dream last week

The Casks

2009-03-09T11:24:00.003-04:00

The Casks

The woman watches Jesus play with the sun. He tosses it into the air
and catches it, throws it behind his back, bounces it like a rubber
ball on the yellow pathway through the lawns and parks of Heaven.
Through his body she sees trees, bushes and an odd black sky with
unfamiliar stars. Jesus shines translucent white, bright, but not too
bright. He bounces the sun, lifts his leg so that it bounces under to
the other side. It passes through the light fabric of his robe
unencumbered. He catches it, places it back in the sky above the
earth, and turns to smile at her. He offers her his hand and she
takes it. It is warm and feels like ordinary flesh, like her
husband's hand. Like love. They descend a long series of stairs into
the darkness. She thinks Hell, and when he opens the small oaken door
and ducks inside, the scene there does not dissuade her from that
fear. Dwarfs, elves, and monsters. Wormy things sitting on benches
and stools. The room glows red in spite of darkness; a huge fire
burns in the fireplace. Gargantuan oaken casks rise behind the bar
from floor to ceiling. Everyone talks, laughs, drinks. At the bar,
Jesus orders them each a drink. His glows yellow and she watches it
enter his body, which brightens and shifts to a yellower hue. She
tips and rolls her glass, sniffing. It smells of chocolate, coffee,
and raspberries, tastes like roses. It makes her terribly sleepy, and
she awakens, of course, in bed. Her husband snores loudly. She wants
to rouse him and tell him her dream, but knows he will dismiss it.
'Just another dream about death,' he would probably say. She might
elbow him sharply for that unspoken comment if it weren't for that
glowing hand on her shoulder. Instead, she accepts another drink and
goes off to explore the future.

Mary Taitt
090309-1012-3a, 090308-2236-2a, 090307-2110-1c, 090307-1122 first

This is a new PROSE POEM from two back-to-back dreams.

Here are the dreams:

Jesus with the ball

I dream that Jesus is bouncing a yellow rubber ball and it goes through his robe under his knee (which he lifts as part of a bouncing game he is playing. The ball passes through unencumbered. Jesus is bright white, his face, clothes hair, everything, and half transparent (translucent). There is a scene around him, but it too is somewhat pale--a sunny yellow walk, trees bushes and grass.

At the Dwarf Bar

I dream that I am at a dwarf bar which is full of dwarfs, elves and a variety of other beings, some quite strange. The bar is all made out of oak, oak bar, oak walls oak tables and chairs. There are HUGE oaken casks behind the bar as tall as the whole room. There is a lot going on. My attention begins with a group at the bar and sweeps along the bar and then around the room. I hear conversation but cannot remember it now.

When I wake up, it seems incongruous and somehow wrong that this dream followed on the heels of the other. One light, one dark. Not that there seemed necessarily to be anything wrong going one, although some of the beings I saw seemed a little scary. (A bit monstrous.) There was a sense that something could be going wrong there, but I did not feel certain of it--there were conflicting feelings of enjoyment and foreboding. I am not sure I am articulating this well. The scene seemed fairly happy. But strange, a bit frightening and incongruous in contrast to the previous dream.

Click image to view larger.

Spring, Discovered!

2009-01-27T10:19:00.001-05:00

Here is an art piece to go with one of my new dreams.

In the dream, the triplets were juts a little older than this. I am wondering why I am dreaming of Jewish triplets. Supposedly, things coming in threes either mean good luck or PAY ATTENTION.

Perhaps I miss my friend Jacob who I've known since he was a boy? I really have no idea. Tu b'shavat?

Two Dreams in January

2009-01-27T08:20:00.001-05:00

Spring Discovered

We are on a road trip driving through a countryside that is brown and dead looking. Suddenly, I spot a bush that has a few flowers and then one with even more and one fully flowered--perhaps a shadbush. I want to stop and take pictures of the flowers, and there are humming birds in them, lots. A Jewish man with a yamakah and three sons, also wearing Yamakahs (triplets) are with us. Everyone is jamming in around the shadbush to try and get pictures of the hummingbirds (who do not seem to be afraid of us at all and are flittering close to our faces and cameras) when the boys discover a robin's nest with four nearly fledged baby robins. They are holding them, very carefully, but after a while I am nervous and want them to put them back in the nest. I want the babies to be safe and the mother to return to them. At one point, I want to photograph the three boys, each holding a baby robin and sitting close tilting toward each other in a very attractive way (more by accident than design). There is one small grey-brown unhatched egg. I notice it is not blue and wonder if it is rotten or if the egg of a parasitic nester (eg: brown-headed cowbird).

I think this is a wishful thinking dream, as it is very cold and wintry here. I am eagerly awaiting warmth and flowers, birds, etc. I love taking pictures but don't like elbowing my way between other photographers to do so. I am sometimes torn between taking pictures and protecting flowers or birds. The egg could be "rotten" because spring is not about to hatch here any time soon! I am also the three boys wanting to hold the baby robins, wanting to be very careful with them. I hope there is not some rotten egg in my life about to hatch into something dreadful--like death, disease, loss etc. The hummingbirds are a symbol of life and energy and JOY! (I could use a little joy, I've been kind of depressed for quite some time.)

This was a very realistic dream and I suppose it could happen. But I do not know a Jewish man with three identical triplet boys and can't imagine why I'd be driving through the countryside with them.

Unprepared for and Bad Memory of Richard and Mimi Farina

A Bar hired me to sing Richard and Mimi Farina songs, but I was unable to properly prepare and have forgotten many of the words and even the songs and song titles. I am botching it up badly, starting songs and unable to finish them, substituting songs by other artists like Peter Paul and Mary. At some point the bar is entirely empty and I am singing on alone becase I am getting paid to do so but feeling like a complete loser.

This is probably a stress/worry dream.

I worry a lot about being unprepared when I have to do a presentation--in my job, for years, this was a daily concern, but it goes back even farther, to school and homework etc. And I have two classes and all my manuscripts to prepare.
I worry a lot about my failing memory.

on the other hand, Richard and Mimi Farina were a LONG LONG time ago, and to expect myself to remember them well without having prepared is absurd.

I am very unlikely to ever be hired to sing at a bar--I'm not that good a singer. And if I were, it seems unlikely that I would be expected to continue singing to a totally empty bar! I say this because one of the things it's good to ask about a dream is this: could this happen? Meanig, could it be a premontion? It could happen, but it is pretty unlikely.

2 eggs and a scale

2009-01-15T23:37:00.001-05:00

I had another dream last night--it could have been in response to the
friend one, since I'd asked for clarification and it could also
havebeen its own thing.

I dreamed that we were breaking camp and everyone had gone ahead andI
was making a final check. I found two eggs and a scale, a small
electronic digital balance scale (black).

Both eggs were brown, one was boiled and one was raw. They were
slightly different in color and size. I took them with me because I
thought the scale might belong to Graham. It turned out that the eggs
and scale belonged to a friend of Keith's who was traveling with us
(friend).

When I woke up though, I felt that the dream was a message to stop
trying to measure poetry against art. Each is its own thing and has
its own place and I need to stop weighing them against each other.

Poetry is the cooked egg, in a sense, I've been studying it and it is
more well-developed. Art is the raw egg, still in process. Poetry is
ready to be eaten. Art still needs to be cooked.

Or maybe the message is to eat the cooked egg first--maybe I AM
supposed to weigh them.

There was a friend in the dream--maybe it means that the friend who is
angry and afraid and lashing out has many creative powers and energy
that would be useful to me if I reintegrated her/him.

I don't know. I'm tired. But I found the dream powerful and full of
symbolism. EGGS and SCALES are both very powerful symbols (like SNAKES
are powerful!)

Persephone/Demeter are also meaningful for me--Virgo with her scales.
Scales can mean justice, Balance (which I sorely need),
decision-making.

And eggs. Ideas, growth, birth. Fertility, creative potential. Also fragility.

In the dream, I went on a long solo journey with the eggs and then
when I found out they belonged to the friend, I KEPT them and did not
return them. Felt a little odd about it, but put them into MY/our
things.

I hereby ask for yet ANOTHER dream of clarification for THIS dream.
Does it relate to the other or is it its own thing?

Snakes in the Water

2009-01-13T00:14:00.003-05:00

Snakes in the Water

A woman friend* (?) is visiting me. I seem to be living in Big Sur or someplace like that. We are on a cliff looking down at waves crashing on the beach. She speaks of swimming, but I say we can swim up here, and it's very peaceful. "We can swim to the right, we can swim to the left." There suddenly appears to be a deep clear warm lake at the top of the cliff. The water is comforting, warm, refreshing, pretty. After we swim a bit in peace and comfort, we encounter snakes. They are swimming in the water around us, and my friend is frightened of them. I ignore them and swim right through them, and they ignore me. But my friend yells angrily at them and splashes water to scare them off. Instead of fleeing, they rear up in the water hissing, showing their fangs, and then come at us in attack mode, opening their mouths to bite. I am offended that they are attacking me when it wasn't me who attacked them. I am also put off and a bit frightened by the now angry snakes. And I am upset with my friend for provoking them.

*In the dream, I know her, but when I wake, I can't remember or figure out who she is.

I had this dream several days ago and it has been haunting me.

I often think of water as the subconscious.

The green snakes (they were all green and in a wide variety of sizes) seemed peaceful and harmless at first. They floated in the water like lily pads. Relaxed. But when riled, they went into attack mode.

Snakes can be sexual and represent male genitalia, but also represent female power. The Goddess. They can represent nature and the power of nature.

The snake can be a symbol of transformation. Snakes are often seen as symbols of life, death and rebirth. In North American native tribes, the shedding of the snake's skin is associated with life and a new beginning.

If all the parts of the dream are viewed as part of myself, one could look at the dream as two different ways of dealing with life. If I approach life and change in a relaxed and calm way, I move through it without difficulty, but if I get frightened or angry, yell, splash around, than life becomes a problem and attacks me. I've seen this over and over!

I also wonder if the dream could have been caused by a confrontation with the security guard at Elmwood Cemetery. I can't remember if it happened before or after that. The guard was upset and K was exacerbating his upset instead of soothing it.

In any case, ONE message of the dream is to relax and go with the flow, so to speak, be soothing rather than angry and reactive. Unfortunately, when riled, I tend to attack, just like the snakes. That's the wrong approach. I learned it again today when calling the bank about an issue. Calmness works better. BUT, how do I get a grip on myself when upset?

I hereby ask for a clarifying dream.

Could this happen in waking life? Yes but it is unlikely.

Note: I am not normally afraid of snakes in waking life. But I often am in dreams.

OK, I have worked ALL MORNING and part of the afternoon Tuesday on a poem about this, 6 drafts so far.

Thin as Our Fingers
(Turning Flowers to Garbage)

A lake appears along the trail, above the cliffs
and pounding surf beneath. Bounded by cliff-side rocks,
it stretches nearly as far as we can see. Huge,
like the ocean below, but calmer. More welcoming
than the crashing waves of the sea. The trail
enters the lake and continues out of sight under the water,
as yellow as the yellow brick road in the Land of Oz.
I plunge in, eager, excited. Warm as air, the water
caresses me. Soft. Buoyant, delightful. I exhale, sink into it,
and rise again. “We can swim to the left, we can swim
to the right!” I tell you. And demonstrate. A smile
blossoms on my face and fills me with light
like the first sunny day of spring. You hesitate, then follow,
slowly. Wade, then swim. Then smile, too. We drift together,
above the yellow path under the water. You laugh,
bob, sway, almost seem to dance, until you see
the snakes. Green snakes, hundreds of them.
Some are as thin as our fingers, some as thick and long
as our arms and legs. The snakes float on the water like lily pads,
hold only their nostrils above water, heads suspended, tails dangling
like the long stems of water lilies. I swim and glide among them,
easy, relaxed, smiling. No clouds crowd the horizon; the sky
wears the clearest, deepest blue robes imaginable. Reflects
the endless blue water. But you stiffen. Hang back.
“Look,” I say, “they are harmless.” Snakes surround me,
and pay me no mind. Still frightened, you refuse
to swim forward. Suddenly, you yell and splash at the snakes.
In an instant, they all rear up, draw scaly lips back
to expose their fangs and hiss. They charge us both.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
For BB and jo(e)
090113-1229-1eb

I wonder if I should attempt a version of this poem that not only tells the dream but also explores feelings and possibilities about it. That feels challenging and frightening to me. Making a good and successful POEM out of all that. And right now I am totally overwhelmed, but maybe I can try it later.

I was up really late working on this last night and have done nothing else including EAT (no food yet today, BAD for me!) exercise chores etc. This has really consumed me but I MUST do other things!

The Broken Eggs

2008-12-05T10:57:00.000-05:00

Here's the dream that went with the poem:

The Broken Eggs

I am at Florence Morrison's house for a class she is teaching and she is frying eggs for us--we have to get them from the fridge and bring them to her and she tosses them into the pan--to speed things up. When I go to get mine, the fridge is full of broken brown eggs, and stacks of shells. Everyone else finds eggs, but I find only shells and broken eggs. Florence tells me broken eggs are still good and I say, "remember how I used to have chickens bag then, I know about broken eggs," but I still can't find any that are edible. She tells me I need to hurry and I crawl inside the refrigerator in order to see better. Now, even the cracked ones are gone.

I wake up with images of cracked and broken eggs haunting me. (Broken dreams?)
I feel somehow sad and left out.
I honored the dream by writing that poem, and I ask for dreams of clarification.

I am grateful for

enough sleep to dream.
a husband who seems to really love me, in spite of the wretched poem I just wrote about him
a husband who is handsome and sexy
the fact that I lost some weight! YAY!

The Sinking Raft

2008-12-05T10:32:00.000-05:00

The Sinking Raft

Slowly, my husband unloves me. He stops
putting the clean laundry in the drawers, then stops
fluffing and folding it. Brings it up and dumps it
in a tangle. Stops greasing my feet, rubbing my back,
making love to me. "I will do everything,"
he said, when he was courting. I dream of Florence,
wife of John, my botany professor. More than forty
years ago, John tried to get me into bed. I refused,
despite his gifts and constant attention, but Katra caved
and fell that long dark fall where you know you'll die
when you hit bottom, and she wasn't dreaming.
Katra didn't die, she became a lesbian, after John.
Who could blame her? And Florence had an unfaithful

husband. I hated John for that. "I'll do everything,"
my husband said. "You can't," I countered.
He tried, but couldn't. Of course
he couldn't. No one could. I can't
do anything. I rarely sleep, stare, zombie-like
at the increasing chaos I can't control
with my exhausted brain and body.
But each time he stops, I see him turning away,
turning his face to the wall, inching toward the farthest
edge of the bed, away from me. He does that, too.
Leaves me in sleep. I leave him, too,
get up and pace the dark for hours, too tired
to be useful. I finally sleep and go

somewhere he's never been, without him.
When I dream of Florence, her refrigerator is full
of broken eggs. She fries eggs for all the women
her husband courts, and everyone gets eggs
but me. But why go back now, forty years later?
Menopause? Dashed hopes, broken dreams?
Is, like John, my husband unfaithful? "Remember
when you used to love me?" I ask my husband.
He tries the same on me. "See how it hurts?"
He clings to me in bed, before he turns away,
clings as to a life-raft in a stormy sea.
I cling to him. We're not unfaithful, only old
and getting daily older.

Mary Taitt
081205-1026-1c; 081205-0945 1st

Tantrum Dream

2008-11-26T18:01:00.001-05:00

Tantrum Dream

BB, PB and I are in the basement eating, talking, discussing, arguing. PB is watching TV. I am eating a yogurt which explodes in my hands, I am wearing white gloves and get going yogurt and red jelly all over my gloves. I run upstairs to clean up and BB is coming up too. There is a baby on the counter in a child seat(the counter is the exact same blue formica as our current counters, and the baby looks like Sophia, but her car seat is like the one BBJ had as a baby), BB is feeling the baby red jelly with a spoon and managing to block the sink so I can't get cleaned up. I wait at first, then try to squeeze by. The mess is getting worse and I feel desperate to clean up and I start having a tantrum. I beat BB on the chest with my first and and kick him in the shins and cry. He says, "Does this mean you don't want to go for a walk with me later and I say "Yes." "I mean no!" I am trying to say, 'Yes I want to go for a walk,' 'no I don't mean that!' but he has stormed out and can't hear me and I wake up all agitated and upset.

When I telll BB the dream, he says it's a classic Freudian dream about sex and the mess is jism and the dancing around is sex and the confusion is all the confusion brought on sex (and the baby is the result of sex).

I suppose you could interpret it that way, but I tend to think otherwise--or at least that there could be multiple interpretations. I think I am feeling guilty about the times I get angry at at BB and he done nothing intentionally to hurt me/ Mostly, he means well. I tend to be over sensitive and reactive, especially when I am tired.

(I am really tired right now, from baking all day--3 pies, cranberry marshmallow salad, chocolate wafer cake etc-- HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!)

I statements from dream:

I can't get cleaned up!
The mess is getting worse.
I feel desperate about the mess!
I am having a tantrum about the mess.
I am having a tantrum because BB is blocking the way for me to get cleaned up. In the dream, he is in the way and I can't get to the sink. In my waking life. He is uncooperative (sometimes) about helping to clean and very uncooperative and stubborn and slow about dealing with Susan's stuff. I feel as if HE is in the way to my getting unpacked and settled in to this house. I need to find ways that I can proceed even without his help and cooperation, or I will be endlessly unhappy.
I "hate" BB (during the tantrum)!
I know I love him and will want to be with him later (as the tantrum subsides.)
I am eating something that I'm allergic to. In the dream, I am eating yogurt, which I'm allergic to--this may mean in my waking life, i am eating something else I'm allergic to and need to pay attention to what that might be.)
I am wearing white gloves. Gloves can signify security and abundance. White gloves can signify handling a situation with care. Messing gloves, especially white ones, can signify difficulties. White gloves can signify looking for messes. (I don't need to look very far!)

Here is that reoccurring theme of being disturbed and distraught by messiness! This was an upsetting dream! I really need to get a grip!

Gratitude List:

three pies made--I made: apple cranberry, lemon meringue and bumbleberry pies
salad (cranberry-marshmallow) and chocolate wafer cake made.
BB is making dinner. YAY!
I had two 15 minutes today
I got a new light therapy lamp which is supposed to help my sleep. I hope it does.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Two Dreams, Wrong Trail, Backing up the Dream

2008-11-23T18:34:00.001-05:00

The Wrong Trail

BB, PB and I stand in an arid sunny woods with very little understory. Trails diverge in a number of directions, and there are signs pointing the way and colored trail markers, blue and orange. At some point though, we have lost the way and stand and argue, which way. PB points up the hill, I think we need to go left along the ridge. But PB is adamant and we follow him, up over a ridge and down. We emerge from the woods in an area that is under construction. Large yellow construction vehicles and partly finished buildings litter the landscape. I want to say, "I told you so," but I refrain. This is not where we wanted to go. This is not where we want to be. But as I am looking around, I see that there are many strange animals wandering about, as if escaped from an animal farm, or zoo. A large deer-like animal (female elk?) comes up to investigate me and I somehow capture it. I want to take it back where it belongs, to lead it back, and it is willing to come with me. But I wake up.

Backing up the dream

I am making a drawing and something bumps my arm. This causes me to make a stray mark where I don't want one. I know I am dreaming, so I back up the dream the way you would undo a mistake in photoshop, and thus erase the mistake. I am drawing a tree, and coloring the branches a pale shade of orange.

I statements from the dreams:

I am on the wrong trail. (We are on the wrong trail).
I am not where I want to be. (We are not where we want to be.)
I am under construction.
I can lead the animals.
I need to back up.
I need to be assertive when I am right. (?)

(?) My spirit guides are wandering around aimlessly because I am not giving them guidance by asking for guidance. (?)

Advice from the deer spirit guide: "listen, watch, pay attention, hide well, consider carefully irreversible decisions. (WARNING BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP!) Be a deer--a DEAR. Or--you are a dear."

"An elk in a dream symbolizes strength and endurance. You need to spend more time with friends and eat healthier food." Boy do I

"Elk in a dream signify that you'll have no need to worry about your attraction and/or ability in regard to sexual relations." I'm doing OK in that department, no concerns there.

Elk dreams relate to being in nature. They point to the basics of life and longing for freedom and simplicity. You need to roam about, you need wide open spaces, you need mental clarity and openness. You need passion. Elk are also symbolic of self-development and redemption. Elk can be symbols of grace.

elk Graceful strength, versatile, or noble. Dreaming of this animal can represent:

Having too much of one of these qualities, or that you could benefit by being less this way
Not having enough of one of these qualities, or that you could benefit by being more like this
Someone or something in your real life with whom you associate one of these qualities (an event, situation, threat, etc.)

For more clues, pay attention to what the animal was doing or any particular characteristic that stood out.

I was going to lead the elk BACK to captivity in my dream. It seemed at the time to be the right thing to do. But I FEEL LIKE A CAPTIVE IN MY LIFE soemtimes, separated from what I need by being in the city.

I need:

freedom, freedom to roam about
nature

These are things I do NOT have in abundance in my current life.

Elk, who are you? Why are you in my dream?

I am I-sisis, EYE-sie-sis. I am the spirit guide of the wild and open spaces, come to remind you of your need for freedom and clarity, for power and strength, for health and companionship, for being you, for holding your head up high. I am strength and power, sexuality and creativity. I am the she-goddess incarnate. Worry less, BE more. Go make dinner! SMILE!

Out of Control Dream/Dreamwork

2008-11-07T12:57:00.001-05:00

Out of Control

Today, my mother is scheduled to die.
She will swallow a lethal dose of poison.
Her begging for death, her plans and schemes,
have finally paid off. She will join my father at last.
Before she goes, I want to race to the nursing home
to say goodbye, to say "I love you." But the roads are snowy
and slick. A good foot of snow, packed to ice in spots.
As I turn to the left, up a long hill, the car slides
backwards, faster and faster, slipping into the left lane.
I panic, stab wildly around with my foot, can't find the brakes.
Cars fly past on both sides. I slide out of control,
can't even steer into my own lane. Finally,
I find the brake, pump it enough to slow the car, and start
back up the long hill toward my mother's death.
I am afraid I'll be late. She'll already be gone
and all my love and goodbyes will stay unspoken,
sticking in the throat of my heart like tears.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
081107-1225-1b; 081107-1st

This is a dream I had this morning. To honor the dream and request further dreams, I have made it into a poem.

When I write my dreams down, I do it in the first person present. By doing so, I discover things about myself and my current situation. For example:

I want to say goodbye to my mother. I am afraid I won't get to say goodbye. My mother died in January 2007. I was not with her when she died. I feel sad about this. I cried about it a little this morning. I think every time I revisit it, and cry a little, I am healed a little.

I am out of control. I can't find the brakes. My life often, if not always feels out of control. I think this is my addictions speaking through me. My ADHD makes me always behind on everything, all the time. I feel overwhelmed on the best of days.

I am afraid I will be late: I try really hard not to be late, and sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don't. ADHD again.

I am sliding backwards. Backsliding. I am gaining weight again and the holidays are approaching. I need to get my eating under control before the holidays get here!!!

I am going the wrong way. I am in the wrong place. This is certainly true because I am gaining weight, I also need to look at other ways where I am in the wrong place at the wrong time. I want to get myself headed int he right direction.

I believe dream messages mean more than one thing--it's the subconscious's way of communicating with the conscious mind. I believe we can heal and grow by paying attention to our dreams. And I want to heal and grow. Writing a poem from my dream is one way of dealing with it. Doing art is another.

Mom, I love you and miss you! Goodbye, beloved Mom, Godspeed on your soul journey. Say hi to Pa! I love you, Miss you! Goodbye!

OK, what is the right place? Where do I want to be? I want to turn it over, and listen for instructions. Meanwhile, here is where I think I want to be:

lean and healthy and addition free (one day at a time)
happy and cheerful, enthusiastic, loving, engaged
in the bosom of my nuclear family and with friends
be creative
working on my writing and art projects in an organized way so that I can bring them to fruition: Geraldine, Sissy, The woman who loved weeds etc.
Moving toward being organized and tidy (reasonably so)
continue on my healing journey toward radiant good heal inside and out. LOL!
find a balance that pleases me. Release being such a taskmaster to myself!

What steps to I need to take to get there? One day at a time, easy does it.

get back on track with my eating
get enough sleep (order a blue light, stop staying up late!)
make a friend locally. Nurture love and family, friends.
continue working on my creative projects, but don't overdo it on any one day.
avoid switching projects until one is complete, if possible! (Also hard for me)
Work out an organizational plan that will work for me. (This has proved very hard.)
work on Twelve &, wings challenges etc. (get into schedule/routine.)
Try to relax a little about all this. Work at it EASY DOES IT, ONE DAY AT A TIME!

I'm feeling guilty writing all this because I have so much else to DO!!! DANG! OK, enough for now!

Out of Control

2008-11-07T09:00:00.001-05:00

Out of Control

Today, my mother is scheduled to die from a lethal dose
of poison. Her begging for death has finally paid off.
I want to get to the nursing home before she goes
to say goodbye, to say I love you. But the roads are snowy
and slick. As I turn to the left, up a long hill, the car slides
backwards, faster and faster, slipping into the left lane.
I panic, stab around with my toe, can't find the brakes.
Cars fly past on both sides. I can't even steer
into my own lane. I slide out of control. Finally,
I find the brake, pump it enough to slow the car, and start
back up the long hill toward my mother's death.
I am afraid I'll be late; she'll already be gone
and I won't get to say goodbye.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
081107-1st

I want to say goodbye to my mother.
I am out of control.
I am sliding backwards. Backsliding.
I am going the wrong way.
I am in the wrong place.
I can't find the brakes.
I am afraid I will be late
I am afraid I won't get to say goodbye.
I am worried about my mother's death.

The Uncrossable Bridge

2008-10-01T17:59:00.002-04:00

I had years of uncrossable bridge dreams., where the bridge just ended, but I haven't had any for a while. At least not that I remember. (This picture was taken at the Dodge Poetry Festival. Click the image to view it larger.)

Bridges often relate to decisions which are emotionally difficult to make. The bridge may symbolizes the finality of this decision. An interrupted or broken bridge may mean that the dreamer, in this case, me, is having difficulty moving forward with a difficult decision, or moving on with life.

When I was trying to move to Detroit, bridges at both ends were under construction. When bridges at both ends were finished, I decided it was time to complete the move, and did.

The Studio and Storage Rooms

2008-09-13T09:48:00.004-04:00

I dream I am wandering around our house and find three hidden rooms. One, in the basement, is very large. It has white walls, black and white checkered floors, and an attached bathroom. Another is on the mezzanine level. I am angry at Keith for not telling me about these rooms.

When he comes home, I confront him (in the dream), and ask him why he never told me about these rooms. I am eager to make one into a studio, one into an office and one into a storage area and move all my boxes there. Keith laughs at me and asks me where these rooms are. This infuriates me. "One in the basement, one in the mezzanine." He starts laughing again, and I realize it was a dream (inside the dream.) I say, "It was a dream, so stop laughing." I am annoyed at him because he doesn't understand how important it is to find a solution to the problem. I tell him I think he doesn't care. I am very sad, and at the same time, still eager to move the boxes.

* * * *

I wake up feeling even sadder. It seems that no solution to the problems is forthcoming. I need to figure out a way to get the boxes out of the living room and other living spaces, get them unpacked, get my studio stuff into an appropriate space, and have sufficient work space.

Buying a house seems like the best solution, in a way, because it would provide storage space, an office space, a studio space and guest rooms. But I don't want Keith spending all his spare time painting and working. I worry about theft and loss of wiring, pipes etc, I worry about taxes and the expense. Mowing the lawn, not having an air conditioner. I like the fact that in theory, at least, we could recoup the cost of the house in the end. Buying a camp would also be cool, because it would give us a place to go, but then I worry about travel, separation (if I spend time there working), and the safety of the camp and its contents when we're not there. There would also still be the issue of expense, taxes, and Keith's time spent working.
Building an addition might work to some extent if we made the addition into a FAMILY room and I could have the current whole office area for myself. It would not provide storage space or guest rooms, however. I worry about putting a studio in the addition because it would be accessible to guests and guaranteed to always be messy. I would like to have the downstairs cleaned up!
Raising the garage, or building a new bigger one would provide studio and guest room, but would be a struggle getting it passed by the city and might fail.
buying a new bigger house for all of us, or a more efficiently planned house, would be the best solution is some ways, but it would be a huge hassle moving. The house would be more expensive, the taxes would be higher, but if we found the right house, it could provide all our needs.

The fact that I am dreaming about this means it is weighing heavily on me. Maybe I should do like Tom and start digging--dig a new underground basement for the boxes. If the living room could be made comfortable, maybe I could use the office. But that would only solve part of the problem.

September 13, 2008 The image is a fractal I created with help from Apophysis (not right out of the box, manipulated. Apophysis is a free download.) The image represents the feeling of joy I would have if I could solve the problems presented in this dream--if I had a nice studio space and the boxes were gone, etc.

Ruins at Three Rivers

2008-08-31T14:38:00.001-04:00

I was looking for the ruins fo the Global Trading center which were
more like my dream, but couldn't find them, so here's this. My dream
ruins were clsoed in and darker than these, but otherwise similar.

Doublebooked in the Huge Ruins

2008-08-31T13:54:00.001-04:00

Somehow, I have managed to double-book my time. Two sets of people arrive. They are Hal and another man I know in the dream but now don't know who it is, and Sara and Erin. Hal and X are there for a meeting about something that is clear in the dream but gone now. Whatever it is, it is important to me. And the girls are there for family time and they are important to me. I am embarrassed and mortified that I have double-booked and am suggesting things we could all do together (go to the movies) and seeing myself that none of them will work well and feeling terrible because I want both the meeting and the time with the girls. At one point I tell the girls and other assembled people who Hal is, flashing up an image of him as a kid (as if they'd have known him then) and they are all astounded. (It's as if the girls are at once my daughters and my compatriots.) At this point, X is lying on the floor falling asleep with boredom. AK! (I feel bad and guilty, especially since I also want to do whatever it was we were going to do.)

This is part of the same dream and all woven together with it:

I am living in a HUGE old mansion/house/ruins that I have often dreamed about before. It has many floors. It is made out of stone and concrete and the upper floors int his dream are like the ruins of an old factory. Somewhere there is a room with the animals in it and I need to feed them but can't find them. I keep going up and up and wandering around looking for the right stairway and being frustrated. Eventually, I finally find it on the opposite side of this huge warehouse-like structure and it's actually an extra floor up than I thought (the fourth rather than the third). Because I was talking to all my guests and wasn't prepared I don't have the cat food with me and am upset. (It's so far back to get it and I AM not find the place again). I am pleased that the tadpoles are still alive. I have dogs, cats, and other animals in this huge floor. I am talking to my guests who are also wandering around, telling them about the tunnel under the road/river (in some dreams, it goes under a river, but in this dream it seems to go under a road.). The place is dangerous, and Anne La Forest has appeared (she wasn't there earlier and is hopping down from one layer to another while a vast open area is right beside her so one false move and she'd be a goner. The girls have found a whole floor of attic stuff from the past and are happily examining and talking about their finds and showing them to each other and me. There are photographs and objects/artifacts, clothes on hangers , etc, all from their childhood and very interesting to all of us.

I live in these ruins, and they are very familiar, shifting, and unfamiliar. At some points, I am almost lucid. I seem to know I am dreaming and that this is a partially recurring dream or dream location. It seems that this dream locale is also the one that has Aunty Ann's bedroom tucked away in some mezzanine layer with hidden staircases, though that was not in this dream. The lower part of the building is more like a regular house and is neat and "clean" (in the dream), but there are many levels both above and below that are in various states of ruin and dangerous and strange. In this dream, we went up, but the past was up there in an attic-like way. I know sometimes attics represent the future and basements the past, but here, there was a level that clearly represented the past. Even inside the dream, I knew that. Also, there were more levels that the "physical" structure would seem to indicate or support.

1)I am worrying about accomplishing multiple goals in one time frame where they don't work well together, in both the dream and phenomenal life, and no answer is given. I am having trouble balancing multiple priorities and goals. Not all my goals are being achieved. This worries and upsets me.
2)My house (body, self) is multi-layered and partly in ruins, constantly shifting, and dangerous. No solution is given. I am overwhelmed and a little confused--in the dream and in waking (phenomenal) life.
3) am concerned about the loss of various aspects of my mind/memories/past/life. My whole life, in fact.
4)I am concerned about the balance of my "work" and family.

These are all true, but I don't know how to solve them. It is easy to say "simplify," but much harder to do. 8-31-08

Attack!

2008-04-09T10:21:00.003-04:00

Mountain Lion! I hear a growling and look up to see a mountain lion crouched on a slanted beam above me. I am alone in the room. The growling escalates. I know if I run, the mountain lion will attack. Keeping the beam between me and the mountain lion, I back toward the bed and clutching a pencil in my teeth to keep it at bay, I cover myself with a quilt. The lion leaps down from the beam and onto me. I grab it by the jaw and several teeth go through my hand. I can feel the long sharp claws in my skin. I want to scream for help, but Sara and Erin are in the house, and if I call them in, they would be in danger. Not knowing what else to do, I holler help, but hardly any sound comes out. I yell help over and over, but I know no one can hear me. Finally, I muster all my energy and yell help at the top of my lungs. I wake myself up, yelling out loud in real life. My heart is beating like mad. I am terrified. I listen to see if I've wakened Graham, but hear nothing. But I can't get my breath and my heart is beating and I am genuinely afraid. It's before 6 AM, but I never go back to sleep. Hours later, I still feel breathless and afraid. At one point, I finally start slipping back to sleep. I have a hypnogogic or early dream that everything is collapsing in different directions and immediately wake back up, upset and frightened. I try again to sleep but cannot.

A nightmare is defined as a disturbing, frightening dream that is so upsetting as to wake you from sleep. This was clearly a nightmare., although woke myself, I did it screaming for help. Because I still feel breathless and tight-chested, I am guessing I may have had an apnea event (severe? by my continuing tightness of chest and sense of fear?), although the dream was not about smothering or drowning. It is interesting that I grabbed the mountain lion by the jaw. This is the same thing I did in an earlier dream (last week) about the dire wolf. It doesn't seem to smart to grab a predator with a mount full of sharp teeth by the jaw with a hand over the teeth (unless wearing very strong gloves! perhaps over the top of the snout or under the lower jaw? I worry that being attacked twice in about a week by a large, deadly predator may not be Shamanism but a warning of some danger. :-( Health issues? Impending danger of some kind? Risk on motorcycle or dangerous driving? Heart attack, stroke, apnea death? The fact that I have a sense of tension in my chest is bothersome and scary. Is it just fear from the dream or is something wrong? Is it a warning I should do some of that doctoring I've been postponing (gyn, mammogram? etc). If it is another spirit guide, is it my old mountain lion upset with me because I'm ignoring it? Could that be the same with the dire wolf? Rather than two new spirit guides, could the old ones be trying to get my attention? Or could it be both of these things? Both danger and Shamanism? I am convinced that dreams can and often are multilayered and multi-messaged.

Could this dream really happen? Yes, it could, but it seems pretty unlikely. We were at some sort of camp with large, loglike beams. Sara and Erin were there too. There was nothing in the dream that couldn't happen, although in real life, it seems unlikely that I would clutch a pencil in my teeth to keep a mountain lion at bay. There are three questions one is supposed to ask of every dream, but I can't think what they are. One is, could this dream really happen, in case it's a prophetic dream. To prepare yourself to watch for it and make ready. I can't remember the other two. I want to go look for my books and notes on dreaming, but I don't know where anything is.

OK, mountain lion, who are you? Are you a daymare, a threat in real life, or a spirit guide? Or both? Please answer.

I am strength and power. I am threat. I can consume you. It will not be fun.

But you weren't, you didn't. I called for help many times, and you could have killed me duringt hat time, and you did not.

I am/was playing with you. Cat and mouse. I want/ed to you suffer.

Really? Who is saying this? You or me? If you really do want me to suffer, what is it that I am being punished for? Why do you want me to suffer?

Well, I could name a lot of reasons. Look at you, just look. I could do that if that's what you want to hear. Want me to name all the reasons why you ought to suffer?

I want to understand. I want to know why you came to me. Are you related to the dire wolf? Are you warning me? Are you my spirit guide Mt. Lion? Are you a prophecy? Are you prophetic about a real mountain lion or death in some other form? Or what? All of the above? Some of the above? None of the above? Are you related to the tension in my chest? Or are you really hear to punish me for some wrong I did or some character flaw? Or what? That's a lot of possibilities. You're not being very helpful. And you don't like it one bit! Nope, I don't. I'm getting annoyed with you for not answering me better. This could be a matetr of life and death. You're gonna die. Yup, I know that, but I'm NOT in a rush, to say the least. Are you killing me soon? IS there something I need to do or change now? Lots of things. Yes, I know this, but are YOU trying to tell ME something SPECIFIC?

Do I have a daymare that is anywhere near as terrifying as this? Not one I can think of. I'm worried about unsafe driving and scary driving, about sleep apnea (and dying from it--that's pretty scary!) I'm worried about death and suffering sometimes, but most of my other worries and concerns aren't TERRIFYING to me.

from Dr. Dream:

So What do I do with My Nightmare?

In the day world:

Identify the Day-mare that is the trigger for the nightmare
Invent alternatives that might help resolve the day-mare.
What can you change in the day world that will resolve the day-mare?
Confront the daymare and change something
In the dream world:
Invent alternative ways to engage the nightmare.
Call for friends to come and help you.
Confront the nightmare.
Take a different tack. Do it differently.

Being chased by a monster is a classic nightmare. It is universal. Every country and culture reports the nightmare of "being chased by a monster." It is probably linked to a very primitive survival tactic. Makes good sense. The idea in dream work is to switch ground on the nightmare.

Ask the monster if it likes ice cream or it is frightened of you.
Ask if it has a mask on.
Is or is standing in for something else.
Ask the monster if it has bunions. I've pulled a lot of thorns out of Lion's paws...
The idea is to try the nightmare a different way. The idea is to open a new relationship where you don't do the old thing anymore.

So Lion, are you male or female, do you have a name? Are you a Lioness with cubs, like my earlier Lion?

You don't remember my name, do you?

Nope. Sorry! :-( WAHN! I'm feeling stupid. Do you like ice cream?

No, I like pronghorn antelopes, deer, and people.

do you have a thorn in your foot? No.

Are you standing in for someone else? Are you wearing a mask?

Sometimes. And you know who. I am you, I am God. I am a spirit messenger, and a messenger from your unconscious mind.

What good are you if you won't tell me why you came?

You need to pay attention. You always forget.

I do forget. I have ADHD, I am distractable.

You use that as an excuse.

It's true, I am infinitely distractable. And I don't always know what's important.

I'm important.

I don't know who or what you are or why you came or WHY or HOW you're important, and I don't seem to be getting anywhere. And I have other things to do.

Then why are you still here?

Because you frightened me and I am worried. If you are really trying to tell me something, I want to know what it is. But I guess I am giving up for now. I don't even see how I could write a poem about you. If you want me to write a poem about me, I need something to go with. I can't write Tyger Tyger burning bright. You're not a Tiger and someone else already said that, though, that seems like a suitable kind of thing, a sort of celebration of fear. And I can't write rage rage rage against the coming of the night, cause someone already said that, too, and that seems like something appropriate, too--fear of death. I thought you were going to KILL ME, and do it painfully and horribly, on top of that. Fear, and death and attack. Attack? Heart attack? I am being attacked? How am I being attacked? How do I attack myself? I notice that you are inside the "house" or building, and not out in the forest or cliffs, though in that mini journey we took together (that I did not write down), you took me to a cliff. High up. I had a good view of mountains, and rolling hills, kind of purple. And we were cleaved. Are you wearing my face or BB's or both? Or neither? The face of death itself? I'm confused. I also notice that you were growling, but half hidden on the back of the beam, I could hardly see you. What is it in my life that is threatening me that I can barely see? Some warning I am ignorning? (chest tension, heart attack?) What? What am I to do? Speak to me.

Attack!

A warning growl alerts me. Mountain Lion, hidden on an overhanging beam.
The throaty growl intensifies. If I run, she will leap. Keeping the beam between us,
I back away, pencil clutched in my teeth to hold it at bay. I slide under a quilt for cover.
Puny protection when she jumps down and long claws gash my flesh through the fabric.
I am afraid to call for help. If my daughters come, the lion might hurt them.
I grab her jaw. Teeth pierce my hand, like nails. In spite of the pain, I hold on.
And cry out. I try to scream, say help. Help. Help! Still worrying about the girls.
I try to scream, but my voice whispers. Weak, nearly inaudible. No sounds of rescue,
only silence. I try again, and again fail. I suck in air, gather my strength, shout,
HELP aloud and loud, and wake myself in another bed in another room in another world.
My heart crashes, and panting, I listen. Have I wakened my son yelling? No sound.
Catching my breath, flexing my injured hand, I lie still while dream fragments
fall away around me. But another shell of tenacious dream encloses me.
I push out again, and yet again, but am surrounded. In here with me,
a lion still sits on my chest sheathing and unsheathing its claws.

Mary Stebbins Taitt 080409

Lost Rose, Found Star

2008-04-05T12:40:00.001-04:00

We peel the plastic lid from the cold, forgotten coffee can.
It was delivered earlier from Ann, my aunt, in the heat
of a summer afternoon. Inside, we find ice-cube thank yous,
mostly melted shards floating in a sea of lemonade. I pull
out the largest to study it: a disk-shape. A pink rose
dribbles between a dripping green Thank and an oozing green you.
Flavors, tasted from the tip of a finger, lemon, lime and strawberry,
run, mingle and melt into each other. Although she sent one
for each of us, three rapidly shrinking disks and slivers
are all that remain. If we'd only opened them sooner;
if it could only be undone. But it cannot. Inside the frame
of the disk melting between my fingers: crystals of ice,
joined at the center, a many-pointed star. Shining. Blazing
radiates all of the sun's light and maybe more. My Aunt's love!
Such surprising brilliance! Such luminance and beauty!
I want to capture and keep it in a picture, but is melts,
crumbles and is gone before I can get my camera. I'm sad
until I realize we have her love. She may have melted
between our fingers and disappeared, but her love is with us.
And that star? Snared in my memory, and still intact.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Ann Ciaranello
080405a

Star Crystal Thank You and Missing BB

2008-04-05T11:09:00.003-04:00

Melting Star Crystal Thank You The Thank you from Aunty Ann to "the Kids and us" arrives in a large coffee can but is left unopened a while--when we open it, we discover that the thank yous are painted on disk shaped ice cubes a little smaller in diameter and thicker than a hockey puck. The paint is running but we can still read the thank you (in green) and maybe with pink flowers. They may have been edible. Only three are left unmelted and they are mostly melted, there were obviously more, the can was full of them). I feel guilty for not opening them sooner. But the part that thrills me the most is that as the ice cubes melted, they formed a gorgeous delicate star inside. This awakens me (internally, inside the dream, not lucidly, but excites and thrills me and fills me with wonder and joy. But then I want to photograph it, obstacles arise and I am unable to. This upsets me.

When I wake up, I wonder if I could paint it, and realize, 1)I don't have the skill, probably, and 2)photographs are a better way to record something really unusual, because (at least in the old days) they are less likely to be faked. A poem might work if one could earn the epiphany, but it's sort of a surprise, a gift. Although the dreamer may not have earned it (I may not have), the poet still must, at least in the preparation. They cannot be photographed but shine inside the heart.

At the party without BB I am at a party without BB who is busy somewhere else. I am feeling lonely and missing him badly. I miss his company, his companionship, his wit and his touch. The party is busy, lots of people and stuff going on. But I feel out of place without him. Then some guys start hitting on me. I am very sad and upset struggling with this, and I miss BB sexually and for his protectiveness, as well.

I spent the last two evenings away from Keith and felt it at the poetry reading and at the DIA, where he often (usually?) accompanies me.

I had a lot of dreams last night, but the rest seem to have slipped away and each of these two dreams have more parts.

False Accusations and the Dire Wolf

2008-03-21T14:21:00.001-04:00

False Accusations and the Dire Wolf

I am at a camp with many people around me engaged in some activity when "Yolanda," a very large black woman with wide waxy features, is sitting on the ground hollering that I hit her. I am 20-25 feet away with another group of people engaged in some activity, but I go running over to Yolanda, whom people are helping up, and say, "I did not hit you, I was nowhere near you, I was way over there and I have witnesses." She takes me by the hand and leads me to a window where trophies are displayed. Among some that I have made is one that us clearly manufactured and she says, "You spelled the name wrong. It is a black trophy that says "Micaelson's." Clearly, it is not one of the ones I made and the name is spelled correctly in this instance (this Micaelson's has no "h"). I try to explain to Yolanda that it wasn't a trophy I made and that the name is actually spelled correctly. I ask her for a hug, but she's not sure she wants to give me one. (She's a friend of mine).

While she is vacillating, I notice out of the corner of my eye some movement and turn to look and see an extremely large dark (black?) wolf charging down the road, moving like a freight train, powerful and threatening. I step between Yolanda and the oncoming wolf, tackle the wolf as it arrives, throw it down, grab it by the jaw, put my knee on it's chest, and subdue it. I am feeling very powerful. I tell Yolanda that I am a Shaman and I can do this. The Wolf is gnawing my fingers some and I have a moment of doubt where I become nearly lucid and am wondering if I can really do this and am I doing it right, but I succeed and the wolf shrinks from a HUGE wolf to a very small fox. I point down the road past the building with the trophies and say, "Go," loudly, and in my firmest voice. The little fox gets up and starts slinking away with its tail between it's legs and I say, "Go," again. It goes slowly a little farther and I have a sudden realization. "It wants to be my spirit guide," I say to Yolanda, who still standing there watching. "Okay, come on," I say and the little fox turns, gallops back and leaps onto my shoulders, curling around my neck (like a fur cape or like the daemons in the Phillip Pullman books (e.g.: The Golden Compass, Amber Spyglass, etc).

My two other Wolf spirit guides are jealous and one begins attacking the fox. "No, play nice," I say, forcing the attacking wolf's head down repeatedly. The other two seem to accept a suspicious truce with the newcomer.

When I wake up, my first thought is that if this new wolf-fox is a spirit guide, perhaps I should not have "vanquished" it and diminished it, for it would be more powerful if it were larger (perhaps). I am not sure I did the right thing. It seems as if needs to be in possession of its full spirit.

It is not clear to me now who it was attacking. I thought, in the dream, that it was attacking "us," Yolanda and me. Not her, not me, but us. I thought I was protecting her with my Shaman powers. I was protecting her in spite of the fact that she had twice falsely accused me because she was my friend (and because she was a person.)

The wolf was also the third attack.

This reminds me of the whole thing with Rita where I feel as if I am being falsely accused and falsely demonized for something I did not do.

The three wolves also remind me of three children ("play nice"), though none of my other children are attacking Graham. But if the two wolves are my brothers, the one attacking could be Rita standing in for Tom, rightly or wrongly. Dunno.

Perhaps the dream is telling me that when someone falsely accuses me, I should not attack with full artillery and diminish or vanquish the attacker, though in the dream I was being very reasonable in spite of Yolanda's unreasonableness and totally false accusations. OR perhaps the dream is saying exactly the opposite, that I tend to hang back and try to smooth things over and I should show my inner strength and fortitude. (Now I am thinking of a specific incident where I was falsely accused of turning a glass upside down on the counter and making a wet spot when I did not do that. And several other incidents I won't revisit. Things like that utterly INFURIATE ME!) Because I appeared to have been attacked twice by Yolanda and once by the wolf and I handled the attacks differently. With Yolanda, I was more than reasonable, but I vanquished the wolf.

There also remains the possibility that the wolf in this case was bad or evil. But since I was a Shaman and since it wanted to be a spirit guide, I think not. (But I am not sure.) I still feel that if the Wolf/Fox is a spirit guide, it may need to be released to be as powerful as it needs to be. (Maybe I need to be released to be as powerful as I need to be and at the same time, given my freedom to be powerful, rein myself in a little.)

Black Wolf/Red Fox, who are you?

I am Loqi, Lord Loqi, Wolf King of the Southern Red Tribes, and I am Little Loqi, Fox Master of Cunning and Trickery. And I am Large Loqi, the Dire Wolf. We are here to help fill your complement of power. You have a high Northern (Arctic) Wolf, a mid northern Grey wolf, and me. We are of one clan, yet my coming deepens your strength and power. Embrace me.

Should I free you to be large again?

NO. You needn't. You have done what a Shaman must do, shown your power, but you have not vanquished me. I am more powerful than you can know. I am god. I can be big in the blink of an eye. I can be Maha Kali. It is kind of you to be concerned, even if your concern is actually for yourself, but you needn't worry. I am power, even as Little Loqi. And I am with you.

Is this just wishful thinking of some kind?

Of course it is. Yes--and no. It is as you make it. As you accept it. As you honor it and make it yours. We are yours. You are ours. We exist on the imaginal plane, you know that, but it doesn't make us less real or less powerful, remember that in the face of doubt.

What about Yolanda?

Speak to Yolanda.

Yolanda, who are you?

I am your self doubts and your obstacles. But you know the saying, "make your stumbling blocks into stepping stones." I can be your ally too.

Really? I can use all the help I can get, how can you help me?

Notice how I look like wax? I am a candle-torch to light the way. I can show you how to overcome your self doubts and use your stumbling blocks as stepping stones.

Really, how?

Just ask--the LISTEN! Call me, say YO, Yolanda? And I will come.

YO-Yolanda, what about the false accusation thing? Why am I being falsely accused and what should I do about it and how can I reweave the fabric of the family?

Tough questions. Very tough. Not all the accusations are false.

HUH?

Well, you do favor your own children. "Even the tax collectors love their children."

Well, yeah, I'm human. Like everyone else. Often all too human.

Remember that. So are your accusers.

But how can I fix things? I want to fix things!

Keep your nose clean. Be unceasingly honorable.

What does that mean? What can I DO? And how can I do it, being as imperfect as I am and being sick and tired and not sleeping well.

Call on Loqi and your other spirit guides, call on me, call on Jesus and Buddha, do you best. Use you power, but use it wisely.

These are all nice things to say but not very specific. Kind of wise generalizations. Can you tell me something specific?

Seek balance. Keep on keeping on.

More pap, generalizations. Nice but is it helpful? WAHN! I need HELP!

I did not hit Yolanda, but I did hit the wolf--two approaches to attack. One to verbal attack and one to physical attack. To verbal attack, I tried a verbal response--to physical attack, a physical response. Neither result was exactly what I wanted--with Yolanda, I wanted to restore peace. The wolf was more successful, I guess--first I wanted to protect Yolanda and myself from attack, then to vanquish it, then to accept it, and I succeeded at each of these, but the final result was uncertain.

Yolanda doesn't want to give me a hug after explain how it is she who is wrong and not me--even though I am right and she is wrong and I just want to be friends. I never want to hug anyone who tells me (how) I am wrong, either.

In this dream, I am right in both cases with Yolanda and I am powerful with the wolf, but being right and being powerful does not necessarily get me the results I want or need--that is, doesn't give me the best outcome. I have a flaw in a sense. I am so attached to being right (when I believe I truly am) that I will give up being happy for being right, which is not necessarily the best choice.

Could this really happen--this dream as dreamed? Perhaps, but it is very unlikely. Both Yolanda and the Wolf were very large. It is more likely to be symbolic.

The dream still feels very powerful.

And it still feels somewhat unresolved.

Slogan(s): Things are not always what they seem. The right solution for the right problem, the right answer to the right question. Use power with discretion. Find balance. Turn stumbling bocks into stepping stones.

Question: What does the Wolf-Shaman portion of the dream have to do with the false accusation part of the dream, other than the fact that they are both attacks of sorts. How does the one shed light on the other? I can't exactly attack the false accuser, tackle them, hold them by the jaw and subdue them!!!

What would Jesus do? Well, Jesus overturned the tables of the money-changers! But how does one know where to use power and where to use diplomacy? I am not Jesus, not Buddha, not Maha Kali, not wise, and often stupid and foolish.

If my subconscious mind knows any answers to this dilemma, it, in the form of Yolanda and Loqi, is not spitting out any real substantive (specific) answers. I guess I need to dream on it/cogitate about it/journey about it some more.

Maybe the huge black wolf is symbolic of the giant rift forming in the family over the problems related to Mom's will etc.

My two spirit guide wolves who show up at the end, where were they when the dire wolf was attacking? I guess I had to prove my power unaided?

Title: False Accusations and the Dire Wolf

Once again, I have two parts which, when I think about a poem to honor the dream, don't necessarily seem to go together. I'm not sure what Yolanda and Loqi have to do with each other, other than the link of attack.

Perhaps the poem can be written in a "sonnet" form with two stanzas that seem unrelated but somehow shed light on each (just as the structure of the dream.)

False Accusations and the Dire Wolf

Yolanda unexpectedly tumbles. Her skirts fly. She lands akimbo
on the ground, disarrayed. Hollers "she hit me;" points at me.
Shakes her finger. I'm yards away. And innocent.
Indignant at the false accusation, I dash over to defend
myself as bystanders help her up. She leads me to a window display
of trophies, pointing to one that says "Micaelson's." "You spelled it wrong,"
she says, her voice rising with anger. "I didn't make that one," I explain.
I point to the trophies I made, hand-carved from wood, unvarnished.
The one she's pointing at is black, fancy, plastic and metal, manufactured.
"And anyway, Camp Micaelson's has no "h" even if I had
made it." I ask her to hug me, to heal this rift between us.
She wavers, withholding.

Down the road toward us, a wolf charges, huge, black, bent on attack.
Without hesitation, I step between the wolf and Yolanda. As it springs,
I tackle it, knocking it down, grabbing it by the jaw, putting a knee
on its chest. It gnaws my hand; we struggle. Breathlessly, I tell Yolanda
I am a Shaman and can subdue the wolf, but I am not so sure. The wolf
fights with power and strength. I wonder if I am I courageous
and tenacious or simply puny. I feel puny, but battle on and on
until the wolf shrinks to a small fox. "Go," I say pointing down the road.
It slinks away, tail between it's legs, then pauses, looking back.

"It wants to be my spirit guide," I tell Yolanda, "Come on," I call.
The small fox runs back. My other two wolves attack it. "Down," I say,
"play nice." The fox leaps to my shoulders, curls like a shawl
around my shoulders. Wolves on either side, fox on my shoulder,
I smile at Yolanda and say nothing more.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
080321-1416-1c

Now that I have written this as a poem, it seems like simple wishful thinking, that I could be powerful and make things right. Have powerful allies.

But, that's OK, I guess.

I still wish things would work themselves out the way I think the should be--the family in unity and close, but, I guess I don't necessarily get my wish.

Yolanda makes a couple of really weird, off the wall, totally inappropriate accusations, which, is what I feel the Rita is doing to me. I'm sure she feels differently, or she wouldn't do it. But I don't understand where she's coming from or if she in fact is truly behaving honorably.

Question: what is my part in this? If I can't change them, can I change ME? Perhaps, perhaps not. How MIGHT I change me to make things better? And would it be an APPROPRIATE, honorable, honest change?

The Dire WOLF is me when I feel that I've been falsely accused, LOL! (OK, not really funny.) I tend to have two modes, either attack back or placate. Is there a good middle ground? One that shows power, courage and honor? WHAT IS IT?

It occurs to me, after printing and rereading what I wrote above, that the trophies might also have some meaning. Trophies are wins. Victories. Victories could be good or bad. Trophy has a pejorative meaning when referring to people who kill and collect animal heads or women who collect rich men or men who collect pretty women. But a well-earned trophy can be a good thing.

Am I trying to win the wrong kind of trophy somehow? (Perhaps by being right instead of good?) [Subconsciously if not consciously?]

I guess it depends on how you define "winning." In my mind, a real win would be for the family to be close again. My fear is that will never happen now. The real trophy would be a happy loving family. If the dream is even about the rift--I am acting as if it is because it feels that way.

There is also the issue of Micaelson. I Google it and it's a real name. There is an Ingrid Micaelson who is a singer, And a whole slew of others. Dunno if there's a camp Micaelson. Didn't check that. I do. There are none listed. Interestingly, however, there is a Camp Michaelson: "Jordan had a great time at "camp michaelson" - and she is ready to enroll in another session." SO maybe someone DID spell it wrong (?)--why was I so sure Micaelson was correct in this case? [I surely was sure!] But I didn't make that trophy anyway. Or maybe my dream camp isn't lsited in google yet, LOL!

Maybe I do to the Wolf in the dream what some part of me wants to do to Yolanda. But I feel that we are friends and I want that friendship to survive, rekindle. Maybe the dream is a simple expression of the ambivalence that accompanies all relationships and their struggles and issues.

In the dream, Yolanda was a friend and coworker, but I don't work at a camp and have no friends or coworkers who look or act like Yolanda in the dream. The closest person to how she looks is a poet named Evie, but Yolanda really didn't look like Evie, she was bigger, had a flatter face (as if perhaps she was half Asian?) and was waxy looking.

The Obstacle Course to doing my pract...

2008-03-18T11:11:00.001-04:00

The Obstacle Course to doing my practicing

We drive and drive down many roads, trying to get to E's school. Finally, we arrive, after being lost for a long time. E shows and guides me about. She takes me to a room where there is a piano so I can do my practicing, but the route through the buildings is a series of obstacle courses. We have to walk through classrooms of busy kids (running around with lively activities) and climb over and under desks and tables that have been pushed into the pathway and get tripped up by rolling balls. It's one thing after another. When we finally get to the practice room where there is a piano I can use, a rehearsal is going on in the room. I want to do my practicing anyway, but E steers me back out of the room and down the hall again. She is not going to allow me to possibly disrupt the rehearsal. On the way back down the hall, a woman and a small boy stand in the room with the balls where other kids are playing and having fun. They want to play and are very sad because they are not allowed to (the boy is too young). (He feels as I feel--sad not to be allowed to play [in my case, the piano]!!!) I have a recital this evening (or sometime soon, and need to work through some knotty phrases. How will I accomplish this if I cannot practice! I feel tense.

This dream is interesting to me, because I do not play the piano. I have often wished I did, wanted to. But I don't.

Either I still want to, or I am worried about Graham's practicing or I am worried about my own "practicing" of some other skill and feeling thwarted in that (or all of the above.)

Could this happen as dreamed? It could, but seems very unlikely. It was quite realistic. But I think it is more likely to represent my concerns over my painting or poetry practice, my longing to be able to make music, my concerns over Graham's practicing.

"I am sad not to be allowed to play the piano." Who disallows me? I do. I don't want to start learning ANOTHER new skill when I am already feeling overwhelmed by everything I am wanting to do and accomplish (my novels, my poetry manuscripts, photography, art, illustration, children's picture books, cleaning the house, sorting stuff, etc etc. Would I have time to practice? Would I make a fool of myself? Be bad at it? Progress unbearably slowly? Would it interfere with my writing?

What obstacles prevent me from:

practicing?
playing music?
playing and having fun?
excelling at my endeavors

In most cases, the obstacles are self-generated, though there are also external obstacles--my health, limits to the amount of available time and energy, other commitments.

It is interesting that in this dream, my child plays the roll of guide and "parent." [This is sort of scary and reminds me of the issue of aging and having to be a mother of sorts to my mother before she died.] Not sure how to include that in the poem below, though. It's an extra layer of complication, which seems to require its own separate exploration. OR DOES IT RELATE to the problem at hand somehow? Is E or a "parental figure/guide" or child somehow preventing me from practicing, playing, making music, accomplishing my goals? Or is it E's goals I am worried about? WOW! Very complex. Or is E a teacher here? My child and my guide/teacher? Confusing. Or is she representing the inner parental self? Or--all of the above?

The Obstacle Course

I clamber over a desk shoved into the hallway,
crawl under another piled too high with books
and equipment to climb over, a over third
and under a fourth. My daughter steers me.
We trip on rolling balls, dodge running children.
Down one hall and another, though endless
buildings we walk and walk and walk. The school
is huge, the practice room and piano at the far end
of campus. I am eager to work through knotty phrases
and tight places for my recital tonight. But when we finally
find the practice room, a rehearsal is going on. I want
to practice, to run my fingers over the keys, to pound
and linger, to pump the pedals, but I cannot.
I clutch my hands together, moaning in frustration
as my daughter pushes me away. Back
in the room with the balls, a small boy
stands watching, weeping because he cannot play.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
080318-1058-1

Potatoes and onions

2008-03-12T10:08:00.001-04:00

Potatoes and onions

We are in a large grocery warehouse area taking pictures of potatoes and onions when we are given a big paper sack and asked to transfer some of the onions into the sack. We begin doing that. At the bottom, we discover some that are growing in a slimy mess. (AS usual, there wa smuch more to the dream, but this is all I can clearly remember.)

We are painting stained glass windows. (I want to make glass prints. Try it).

The cactus Hat

2008-03-11T08:20:00.001-04:00

The cactus Hat

We are in a hallway of a dormitory or other similar building and a cheerful man is running around going into people's room showing them his cactus pants. They are small pants for three-year old maybe in white, red and blue with circular spots. They don't look like cacti.

Or, he says, you can wear them as a hat. He puts it on his head and it transforms to a hat. It's an interesting colorful hat and I admire it teasingly and half-seriously to him.

There was more to this dream, but this is all I remember at the moment

hair plugs

2008-02-28T07:53:00.001-05:00

hair plugs

an Asian woman has three hair plugs in the top of her forehead. She's annoyed because they didn't finish the job. They look terrible. Three round plugs in her forehead. It was the style.

Thinner! (milk?)

2008-02-11T09:04:00.000-05:00

Thinner! (Milk?)

I dream that I am visibly thinner. Not thin, but clearly thinner than I am now. I am deeply pleased with this. At one point in the dream, I seem to be seeing myself from the back.

I dream I am drinking a large glass of milk and suddenly become aware of this and worried about it, since I am allergic to milk. I am also telling myself it doesn't taste good, but I am not entirely convinced of this. I seem unsure if it is good or not.

Waking up: Chapter 6: What the Rose Said and What the Fish Said

2008-02-01T17:30:00.001-05:00

Chapter 6: What the Rose Said and What the Fish Said

    "Hey! We're inside the book! I was thinking we'd go someplace. Look, we're black and white, like a drawing," Tammy said, staring at Matt.
    "And flat," Matt added, rubbing his flat hands down his totally flat body and laughing.
    "Let's look around. This asteroid isn't very big.   If the Rose is still here, it shouldn't take long to find it."
    "There it is!"
    They ran over and knelt down beside the Rose. She was not inside her glass jar, which was laying on its side next to her. There were no caterpillars on her. She seemed to be smiling. "Hello, Rose," Tammy said, "You're still here."
    "Of course I am still here. And very well, I thank you."
    "I'm so glad. Did the Little Prince come back?"
    "He came back many times. He was here this morning in fact. Picked off the caterpillars for me. Gave me a little drink. Told me his latest adventures. And was off again."
    "When will he be back?"
    "I never know. I just wait. Love is the most important thing. More important than anything. Love and patience. I have a nice view here. I can see the asteroid with the man counting his money and the asteroid where the King sits {Get the details here}. Sometimes, far off, I see the earth where the Little Prince once went. And all the stars. And the pretty planets. It's a very nice view. But the view I like best is the Little Prince coming back to me. Love is everything. It is all there is. Friendship is love you know," she added, looking at the two of them coyly. "Friendship a special kind of love. Love is not just hugs and kisses. Love is being kind to someone, looking out for them, picking off their caterpillars, putting them under a jar to protect them. Helping them when they need help. But you already know what, right?"
    "Um, . . . ah . . ., yeah, sort of, of course," Tammy said, looking out of the corner of her eye at Matt. He was turning the sole of his sneaker sideways and dragging it on the ground to make a little mark. "Of course friendship is a kind of love." Tammy added, more confidently.
    "And love," repeated the Rose, "is the most important thing."
    "Love," said Tammy, repeating it so that she would be sure to remember, "is the most important thing."
    "Bonjour," said a little voice. The Little Prince had arrived. He was a small child, smaller than Tammy expected he would be. She had been wondering if he would have grown up. He was sort of like Peter Pan, she guessed. He looked just like he did in the book. But, that wasn't surprising, since they were in the book.
    "Bonjour, Petite Prince," Tammy said. "Do you understand English?"
    "Oh yes. I'm in translation. Anyway, I could always speak English. It's a natural talent."
    "We came to see if you were still alive."
    "Here I am. I live inside this book. I am always alive inside the book."
    "Yes, but did you make it back to the Rose in the end?"
    "The end has not arrived. But I know, outside this book, my father Antoine died when his plane went down. That was on Earth. Here, he still visits sometimes, and says hello."
    "Are you alive? Are you alive now?"
    "Are you a real boy?" another voice asked. Everyone looked up. It was Pinocchio. He was not flat, and not black and white, but full color. Something swept over them, like a hand passing over, and everyone went from black and white to color. The little Prince and the Rose were still rather flat and looked like the color illustration of the book instead of like the inside pages. But gradually, they became rounder and fuller. "Are you a real boy?" Pinocchio repeated.
    "Oh, no," Tammy said, "this is my fault. I keep worrying about what is real and what isn't. I think that the 'waking word' is real and the 'dream world' is not. People are real and books are not. But books are so real that I was worried about what happened to you after you got bitten by the snake," she said to The Little Prince. "Is all this in my head? Just in my head?"
    "It's in my head too," Matt said.
    "And mine," said the Rose. "What is real is not the important thing. Love is the important thing."
    "If you want to know what's important," said the Little Prince, gravely, read the rest of my book. Read about the roses on earth, and the fox and the children looking out the train window. Read everything."
    "What's important," said Pinocchio, "is the truth. Take it from me, you have to tell the truth."
    "That's exactly what I was worried about," said Tammy, "isn't what's real the same what's true? Aieee--I'm confused."
    "What is Truth?" Matt asked. he reached into the air and plucked out a dictionary. "Let me see here, t, t-r, here it is, 'truth, the actual state of matter, conforming with fact or reality, verified, an idea or fundamental reality apart from perceived experience."
    "See truth's tied to matter and reality."
    "What about that second part, 'an idea apart from perceived experience?" Matt asked.
    "This is perceived experience. Dreams and books are perceived experiences."
    "Everything we experience is perceived. But, that doesn't make it not real. Or not truthful. One of the definitions hadn't gotten to is honesty, integrity. I think that realness and truth have to do with honesty and integrity."
    "This is boring," said the Rose. I already explained it all. Love is the important thing. If you have love, you have honesty and integrity and you are truthful and real. Period. Get on with it."
    "I think she's right," said the Little Prince.
    "Me, too, said Pinocchio.
    "Me three," said Matt.
    "I guess so," said Tammy.
    "We gotta go," said Matt, "Thank you all for your help. Goodbye."
    "Bye, bye, bye, bye."
    The Farnsworth Chapel loomed over them. "I've got to dash, Tammy, each of us has work to do together, and work to do apart, if we're to solve this puzzle, and it is time for some solo work. Your dreams will lead you where you need to go." Before Tammy could protest, he was gone.

    Tammy didn't want to stand at the edge of the graveyard too long. Without Matt, it seemed really spooky and scary. It seemed as if there was something she should be doing, but first, she wanted to locate her copy of The Little Prince. She was pretty sure it was at her Grandmother's house, on a shelf in the old playroom where she still stayed when she went to visit. If it was there, she'd get it over the weekend if she could. She wanted to reread it.
    Her grandmother's house was dark, which wasn't surprising since it was now the wee hours of night. She walked right through the wall into the playroom as if it were a bead curtain. That was easy, she thought.
    Right beside the wall where the came through was the dresser with the dark aquariums on top and her emergency clothes inside. The book case with all the books Grandma kept there for her was beside the window. Moonlight and street lamplight streamed through the window making two overlapping squares, one a weird pinkish color and one more whitish, and the place where they overlapped seemed painfully bright. Tammy knelt on the floor in front of the bookcase and began looking for The Little Prince on the shelf of taller thinner books. Kid books. It was right where she thought it would be, next to Piggy Wiglet on one side and Goodnight Moon on the other. But The Little Prince was a different kind of book. It wasn't really a little kid book.
    She put her finger on the book and drew it down the spine. She could feel the little creases in the paper cover from all the times she'd read the book. "This is a dream," she said, out loud. I'm awake, inside a dream. And I can feel things, not just see them.
    Something seemed strange. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She turned around and saw fish, swimming in the air above the aquarium. Suddenly she remembered she had had this dream before, many times. The fish came out at night, swam above the aquarium and off into the world. They had to be back, she knew, before dawn. If not, they would fall from the air that was no longer thick like water, and die on the floor. Sometimes, Tammy had found their shrivelled bodies, all dried out, and stuck to the floor. The ones who hadn't made it back by down. Grandma said that they jumped out of the aquarium, but Tammy had found them in other rooms. And Grandma always smiled funny when she said that. A couple times, Tammy found fish on the floor early in the morning and they were still alive. She carefully picked them up with a wet cloth and returned them to the tank. Usually, they recovered. Sometimes, not.
    Tammy wondered where they went at night, and what they did. She went over to the tank and watched the incoming fish. Then she remembered she had to get back too. It was starting to get light out, and she had to get ready for school. She'd try to talk to the fish another day. Suddenly, it seemed there was a lot to do. She had to find out what the Baba Yaga had warned them about, and what she was supposed to do. So far, nothing seemed to be that helpful. Talking to a rose and the Little Prince and Pinocchio just didn't seem like the way to solve a world crisis. But then again, who was she to imagine she could do anything to save the world anyway.
    She stared at the fish as they came in from all directions. Some came through the wall, some down the hall. The hovered above the water briefly and then dove in. One of them, a large female guppy swerved from her path and hovered in front of Tammy. "You are needed," She spoke, not aloud, but into Tammy's mind. "You are necessary and important. We all are."
    The sun peeked up over the edge of the earth in a crack between two houses and shone through the window. The guppy wavered and started loosing altitude. Tammy quickly put a hand under the fish and eased it toward the tank. "Thanks," the fish said as it slid gratefully into the water.
    "Oboy," Tammy said, as she intended herself home. "Now I am talking to fish. Next I'll be stuck in a looney bin."
    "What did you say, honey?" her mother asked, as she walked by her open bedroom door.
    "Nothing, Mom, I was just dreaming."
    "I thought your said something about talking fish and going to a looney bin."
    "You've got a pretty vivid imagination, sweetheart," Dad said, walking down the hall the other way. He leaned down and kissed his wife on the mouth. "Have a good day," he called, as he quietly let himself out the garage door.
    "Want an omelet, Tam?"
    "Sure, Mom." Tammy sat up in bed rubbing her eyes. She felt as if she'd been awake all night, but was amazingly rested anyway. Weird.
    "Want a ride to school? I'm going over to take Grandma to the doctor. I took the morning off from work."
    "That'd be great, Mom. Say, Mom, could you please pick of the Little Prince book for me. It's the third book over and the third shelf int he bookcase in Grandma's playroom. Is Grandma okay?"
    "Little prince, third book on the third shelf--boy you sure have a good memory. She's fine. Just a test that requires her to have a driver. Eyedrops is all.
    "Phew! I was worried for a sec."
    "Nothing to worry about," Mom reassured her.
    Except some world crisis, Tammy thought, and a soul-eating witchy woman in a house with a chicken leg.
    "Did you say something?" Mom said, poking her head back in the door.
    "Not a word."
    "Hmmm. Thought I heard something about world crisis and witchy women."
    Weird. Tammy would have sworn she had been utterly silent.
    "What's that rock on your dresser. It looks strange. Kind of metallic, like an asteroid."
    Tammy picked it up. It was small, angular, and amazingly heavy. "Something I need to take to Mr. Sorenson," Tammy said.

Waking Up, Spies in the Land of Dreams; Chapter 5: The Underground Sun and a Trip to the Moon

2008-02-01T10:36:00.001-05:00

Chapter 5: The Underground Sun and a Trip to the Moon

    Tammy was wandering in the dark, wandering for hours. She knew she was supposed to be somewhere, and it was important, urgent maybe. She had to remember what it was. She had to think. There was something in her hands, and she looked down. She was clutching a paper rose in her hand. Her hands looked so--real--so there, so alive. A paper rose. Matt, midnight. She looked at her watch. 11:55. She was wide awake. She looked around. She was in some dark alley. But she had to get toFarnsworth Chapel in five minutes. She ran to the end of the alley. There was a long hill with a trail leading up, and trees on either side of the trail. It was the path up toFarnsworth Chapel. She headed up it. The trees seemed fluid and their shadows long and dim and eerie. She ran up the hill. The light was oddly green,a greenish yellow, like the light before a really bad thunderstorm.
    At the top of the hill, she could see the chapel. Behind it was a weird black sky. It looked like the beginning of a very scary movie. Or the cover of a very scary book. She slowed down and walked toward the gate. No one was there. No Matt. She slowed down and looked at her watch. Eleven fifty-nine and fifty-nine second. Poof, there was Matt at the stroke of midnight. A shiver ran down Tammy's spine.
    Matt waved. He smiled. "Hi Tammy!" Suddenly, it was much brighter. Almost like daylight. The light was still greenish, but only faintly so.
    "Why's the light so green?" Tammy asked Matt. "Hi," she added, as an afterthought. He looked completely normal. Not scary at all.
    "I call it the 'Underground Sun.'" Matt said.
    "But Farnsworth Chapel isn't underground, it's on the top of a hill."
    "It's a reference to the underworld. Hades and Persephone. It's an analogy for dreams."
    "My dreams don't usually look this way, they just look normal--either dark for chasing dreams, or bright (blue maybe), for falling dreams."
    "That's why I say there is more than one dream world. They're all layered together and you can move freely between them. This is the Hades Underground, this world."
    Tammy looked down at her hands. It gave her another shiver. The paper rose was gone. "Hey, my rose is gone! It helped me find you, and now it's gone."
    "When you get home, you'll find it where you left it, and it will be useful next time, too."
    "I hate the way you say, 'quote unquote real world.' Can we just call it 'Solland' [SOHL-land] and Greenland? I know not all dreams are green, but we can agree that that term will apply to the land of dreams, with Mearddth being one of the worlds of the Universe of Greenland. Solland is just one of the worlds of the other world, but since we are unlikely to leave Earth in our quote unquote real life, Solland is all the land we will normally need to refer to and we can essentially use it to refer to the quote unquote real world from now on. Just to make it easier."
    "Okay, I guess, but it is sort of confusing, because Solland sounds like SOUL-LAND and SOUL-Land is closer to Dreamland. And Greenland sounds like a county in Solland."
    "You got a better idea?"
    Matt said he didn't and Tammy said they weren't likely to be referring to Greenland in their personal conversation, so in spite of the difficulties, they settled on Solland for their their linear waking or "real" world and Greenland for the dream Universe.
    "We night not be able to leave earth from Solland any time soon," Matt said. But we can go from anywhere in Greenland to Sol's universe and look around." Tammy was dubious, so Matt said he'd show her. "Let's go to the Moon, first," he said. "Intention," he repeated. "Hold hands so we won't get separated."
    "WOW! Look, there's the earth," Tammy said, pointing. The sky was black. "There's no air, how are we breathing?"
    "Our Sol bodies are home in bed breathing Solland air. Our dream bodies don't need air."
    "Oh yeah." They wandered around. It was as bright as day, though there was still a green tinge to the light. The ground just looked like dirt. Tammy leaned over and touched it. It felt like a mixture of gritty sand and dirt. There were rocks too. She picked one up and looked at it. It was angular and slightly bronze colored. She slipped it in her pocket.
    There were craters of all sizes overlapping each other. And hills. They walked up the nearest hill. They could see the curve of the moon falling away on all sides. The sky was black and full of stars, the blue earth a ball on the sky like a large blue moon.
    "A waxing gibbous earth," Tammy said, dreamily, imitating Laina. "A good sign." Mr. Sorenson had recently talked about phases of the moon and how they were lit by the sun. Laina, a girl who called herself a white witch, had dreamily instructed them on the Wiccan meanings of the moon. Tammy thought she remembered her saying that waxing moons were good luck, for growth and healing, whereas waning moons were good for losing weight and getting rid of bad habits. But not as 'propitious,' Laina had said, for starting new relationships or new ventures. Oddly, Mr. Sorenson had smiled tolerantly, and let her ramble. At the time, Tammy had thought that it was strange for a science teacher to let someone be so unscientific in class. Hmmmm . . . Tammy didn't believe in astrology or any of that other weird nonscientific stuff in Solland, but here in Greenland, it might have some function. Maybe.
    "What does 'propitious' mean," Tammy asked Matt. "Does it mean 'lucky?'"
    "Dunno," said Matt. We need a dictionary." One appeared in his hands and he opened it to p and handed it to Tammy.
    She read aloud, "One, presenting favorable conditions; favorable propitious weather: two, indicative of favor, auspicious: propitious omens; three favorably inclined; disposed to bestow favors or forgive: propitious gods." She turned to a. "Auspicious, promising success, favored by fortune. I think that waxing gibbous earth is propitious for an auspicious adventure saving the world. We'll be successful." She laughed. "Too bad we don't know what the problem is or what we have to do."
    "We'll find out," Matt said. "Soon."

    "Just think," he said, with a wave of his hand out toward the entire universe, "all this is underground."
    "And all this light," Tammy said, sweeping her arm over the brilliantly lit surface of the moon, "is inside the darkness of our sleep. Such luminance to be inside the darkness." Then, in a totally different tone of voice, like a little girl, she said, "do you think we could go to the Little Prince's asteroid? I want to see if he made it safely home to his Rose."
    "The Little Prince's Asteroid?"
    "It's probably in a different layer, a different dreamworld. But if we could come here, couldn't we go there too? I know if probably has nothing to do with our mission, but just a quick side trip? Five minutes? Would that be okay?"
    "Uh, are you talking about that book by what's his name, St. something or other--didn't he have an airplane and get lost at sea?"
    "Antoine St. Exupery! 'On ne voit bein qu'avec le couer. L'essentials est invisble pour les yeux.'" {check this for spelling etc.} It's the best book! Did you read it? My parents read it to me when I was younger, and then we read it in French, with Mde Gouet." (Use another name?)
    "I'm a year behind you in French, remember, because I didn't take AP French in 6th grade. I was afraid it would too hard. My parents wanted me to take it, but I thought they were just ebing mean and stupid. I took Life Skills instead. Let me see. Say that French phrase again. Let me see if I can figure it out."
    "'On ne voit bein qu'avec le couer. L'essentials est invisble pour les yeux.'" {Check this!}
    "One sees well only with the . . . the heart? The essentials are invisible for the eyes?"
    "Yup, that's it. Hey--if we can produce a dictionary and read it, can we produce 'Le Petite Prince?' Or "The Little Prince," maybe would be better. Quicker and easier for us since our language skills aren't that great."
    "Language skills are better in dreams, but try for the Little Prince. Intend for it to be in your hands."
    And there it was, The Little Prince, in Tammy's hands. "I don't get how you can look up a word in a dream that you don't know the meaning of and find out what it is. If you don't know it, how does the sleeping brain find the information if it doesn't have it?"
    "Maybe you really do know it. Or maybe you're tapping into the collective unconscious. Or maybe you are able to actually do dream detective work, somehow. Or all of the above. Or something else. I don't really know."
    "I thought you knew everything. Lol! OK," she said, flipping open the book, "I want to show you the Little Prince's Asteroid. And then, I want you to read this book, especially the part about the fox, and about looking out the train windows, and . . . well just read it all. I mean later, at home. Do read it, please? And let me know if you like it. Here, look, here he is on his asteroid, and here's his rose."
    "Okay, let's go there, now."

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 6: What the Rose Said

Waking Up, Spies in the Land of Dreams

2008-02-01T10:26:00.001-05:00

Chapter 4: Danger

    "Yeah, about that. Let's talk about the danger first. There is danger in the dream worlds and danger in the quote unquote real world. They're related."
    "What do you mean, 'the quote unquote real world?' The real world world is real and dreams are just the imagination, right? The sleeping and confused imagination? Fun, interesting, scary. Confusing. Perhaps enlightening, but not real. Right?"
    "Right. And wrong."
    "Okay, I'm confused. And we haven't even gotten to the part about danger and the Baba Yaga's message."
    "Well, when you are dreaming, your physical body stays home in bed, right?"
    "Or where you've left it when you go to sleep."
    "Assuming you left your body in a safe place, and no place is 100% safe, but that's a separate issue, assuming you body is safe, the first danger is to your mind, emotions and soul and their relationship to the body. The Baba Yaga is essentially a figment of your imagination--or ours. She is, in a sense, a creation of the the collective unconscious or the minds of all of men. But, while she may not be real in the phenomenal, consensual or the quote unquote real world, she is very real to the subconscious mind or dreaming mind. And while she cannot eat your physical body,she can eat your dream body, and by doing so, she could sever the connection between your mind and your body."
    "Good grief, Matt, you sound like a teacher, the annoying kind that uses too many big words."
    "I'm not sure of another way to say it. If I am not careful how I say it, you might misunderstand me."
    "You're saying that the Baba Yaga could make me crazy."
    "Yes, or even kill you, in the quote unquote real world."
    "Will you quit calling it "the quote unquote real world. You would be really dead."
    "If I call it the 'real world,' that implies dreams aren't real. But of course they are real. They exist in their own way and they affect us. Now, to continue about danger, I just need to warn you that the dream world is connected to the quote unquote real world, as I am sure you know. Suppose we were dream spies and decided to spy and Miss Wingsley? Suppose we went into her dreams, the way I entered your dream, to look around and see why she always acts like she has a corncob up her butt. Maybe there is one, in her dreams, and we want to yank it out of her dream butt so she won't be so . . . "
    "What the flip, Matt, you're being really rude," Tammy said, looking around to see if anyone was listening. "What if Ms. Window has this place bugged? Maybe she's a friend of Miss Wingsley and will tell her and then we'll be up the creek without a paddle."
    "That was what I was sort of getting around to, in a way, but I guess I was being a little crude. Miss Wingley bugs me, sorry. OK, for the sake of illustration only, let's just say that Miss Wingsley was a spy for, mmm, the Al Qaeda."
    "Yeah, that's almost about to happen . . . "
    "I said for the sake of illustration, I'm trying to communicate somethign to you here."
    "Okay, okay, continue."
    "All right, now suppose that we had reason to be suspicious of her, because she was such a . . . a . . . a grouch. And we decided to spy on her dreams to see if she's got Al Qaeda connections. And suppose we discovered she did, but we were spotted spying on her in her dreams by the Al Qaeda henchmen. What do you suppose they would do to use in quote unquote real life--in the phenomenal world--if they could find us?"
    "Kill us for real."
    "You bet!"
    "But I am just a teenage kid. I'm not a threat to Al-Qaeda or anyone else."
    "Not yet, you're not. Were you listening to what Baba Yaga said?"
    "Yeah, I heard her. I didn't understand her, but I heard what she said. And I have a pretty good memory, I think. She said, and I quote, 'Since there are two of you, and since each of you has passed a test of sorts, I will give you two answers. Three, really. What you need to know is that your Maya world is at a turning point and if it is not turned back, there will be no turning back and all will be lost. What you need to do is continue as you are, for the path before you is the answer to saving the world. And finally, If you don't leave immediately, I will eat you anyway. And next time, I may eat you without warning.'"
    "Wow! You really do have a good memory! Criminey!"
    "I was confused by what she said. She said Maya world. I thought Maya meant illusion and I looked it up, and it does, in Sanskrit. But she seemed to be talking about the real world."
    "Many people believe that what we call the quote unquote real world is simply illusion, or another dream. And since she lives in the dream world, it's not surprising she considers what we call the real world to be illusion."
    "You seem like you're talking in circles, but OK, she means that the real everyday world is in trouble of some kind. It's at a turning point, and if we keep going this way, whatever that means, we'll discover a way to save the world. Which way are we going and who's we?"
    "Where were we going when we met her?"
    "Into the dream world. We were exploring."
    "The imaginal or dream world, right, so whatever we were doing then we need to do more of. It will lead us to an answer. She was talking to us, you and me. We have to save the world. It is our task."
    "We, you and me, save the world? Yeah right. We're nobody. We're two wimpy bookish teenage kids in some backwater town in the middle of nowhere, and we are going to save the world when all the grownups and think tanks and presidents and college professors have failed. I probably couldn't fight my way out of a bowl of spaghetti, and you want me to fight Al Qaeda?"
    "Yup. More than Al Qaeda, though, that's just the tip of the iceberg."
    "You're completely crazy."
    "So can we count you in?"
    "We, who's we?"
    "Me and Ms Window and Mr. Beakley and Mr. Sorenson and Mr. Allen . . . "
    "Mr Allen too? I suppose Social Studies and History would be relevant here. Yup, I can see that. But not Miss Wingsley?"
    "I think she's gone over to the dark side."
    "You're getting carried away, Matt."
    "So will you?"
    "Do I have a choice?"
    "You always have a choice."
    "As long as I can back down later, sure. Why not. Now I gotta go. If I'm not there at 6, I'll get grounded."
    "Walk you home?"
    "No, it'd be better if you didn't, seriously. My folks might not understand."
    "OK, I'll just walk you half-way. But we've got a date?"
    "A date?"
    "For more lessons tonight. Meet me at the stroke of midnight at the Farnsworth Chapel."
    "My curfew is at 10:30."
    "In your dreambody, silly."
    "In your dreams!"
    "Yeah, that's it! Really."
    "How do I do that? I'm gonna be late."
    "Intention. You have to intend to. Before you sleep. Out this under your pillow, it will help you remember," Matt handed her a paper rose. It was the kind handed out by some organization looking for donations. "Take it with you into your dreams, look for it. Bye. See you at Midnight."

A Handful of Money

2008-01-30T08:02:00.001-05:00

A Handful of Money

I am at some sort of conference on scientific topics with workshops, movies etc. We discover in a back room that was not announced where I or anyone else heard it some food which is very poorly organized and mostly stuff I can't eat. There are baked beans and bean salads etc, but I find a box with some sandwich meat and bread that wasn't put out on the plates because there hadn't been room (meanwhile, what was put out is gone) and am able to make myself a sandwich (but with a white bread roll). I am with Keith, and have already participated in a number of activities and programs. There is a program tonight, and it comes free with something else, but not with the program I paid for. Keith and I are in another small building now, trying to make some other arrangements when I see a display tray of tickets and cards and metal buttons for the various events and no one is there guarding it. Several other people help themselves to tickets. I pick up a card that is good for several events, but that feels wrong to me, and I put it back. I am about to approach one of the workers at another table and explain that I was supposed to get a free program with another program I attended when I realize I have already had my free program last night. So I got to Keith and tell him I want to attend tonight's program and he gives me some money. I am headed over to buy the ticket legally (morally) when I wake up.

I can still feel the money in my hand when I wake up and have to rub my fingers together to double check that there is not actually any money in my hands. I am very relieved when I wake up that I did not steal the tickets card. I don't want to be dishonest, but then it occurs to me that there are still other ways that I am. This makes me feel heavy and sad.

Chapter 3: Persephone's, in Waking Up, Spies in the Land of Dreams

2008-01-28T11:50:00.000-05:00

Chapter 3: Persephone's

    "Are you allowed to go out for coffee or tea or something?" Matt asked. "We need to talk.
    "As long as my grades are good, yeah. Otherwise I'm grounded. That's why it's really important to do well in Math and not get on Miss Weinhart's bad side. But I have to be home for dinner at six, and that doesn't give us much time."
    "Persephone's is right around the corner--ever been there?" Tammy shook her head. "I know most kids prefer lattes at Starbucks, but I think you'll like Persephone's."
    Persephone's was down a dark, narrow twisting stairway under the Rite-Aid. They had to step over a homeless guy who was stretched out in the bushes next to the stairwell with his huge feet in black boots in the center of the path. He was clutching a brown paper bag with a bottle in it. The paper was tight around the bottle, so Tammy could see the shape of it. His eyes were closed and his eyelids were flickering furiously. There was a small sign on the concrete at the top, under the Rite-Aid sign, partially obscured by some yews with bright red berries, and a larger sign over the door downstairs that was not visible from the street level. No wonder Tammy had never noticed the place! Both signs showed a beautiful woman with long flowing wavy hair holding a pomegranate. Tammy recognized it right away, because they'd had pomegranates at Christmas every year since she was a small child. Her grandmother had taught her to eat them.
    Inside, Persephone's was the antithesis of Starbucks. It was dimly lit with small, flickering orangish lights on the walls that looked like torches. The walls looked as if they were made with blocks of marble. There were fireplaces around the perimeter of the room and one in the center with small fires flickering merrily. Old, well-worn couches and chairs sprawled aimlessly around the room. Flimsy wooden folding chairs were drawn around tables where various games were set up. And there was art. Large oil portraits filled the walls, as well as other kinds of paintings and sculptures. Something seemed very familiar about the art. Tammy wanted to examine them all, but Matt guided her to a small table in a dark corner. It had what appeared to be a game board, but it was a game Tammy didn't recognize.
    The had barely taken their seat when a woman emerged from behind a curtain. Tammy gasped. It was Ms. Window, her art teacher. No wonder the art looked familiar! Tammy had seen some similar but smaller pieces and some pencil sketches of the subjects of the large works in the classroom.
    "Two pomegranate grenadines and six seeds each," said Matt.
    "Ah," sighed Ms. Window, with a farawy look in her eyes, "Dreamers. Congratulations."
    After she had wandered off and disappeared again behind the curtain, Tammy asked what she had meant and how she had known.
    "The grenadine of course. Pomegranates are the fruit of the underworld, or the subsconscious, or the dreamworld. Sephee is another dream guide."
    "Her name is Persephone. This is her place. Who runs it during school?"
    "No one. It's only open after school, Saturdays, Sunday afternoons, and evenings. Whenever she has a class or doctor's appointment or something, she puts a sign up. People can still come in, she never locks the door, but they have to get their food and drinks out of the vending machines behind that curtain," Matt said, pointing to another curtain in a dark corner far across the room.
    "And no one robs the place?"
    "Why would they? Besides, one of the bicycle beat cops, Ares, is her brother. He keeps a close eye on it, as do all his other friends. And Mort, the homeless guy at the top of the stairs. He sleeps on that couch at night," Matt said, pointing again.
    "Ares? Persephone? Those are mythological names. Are they their real names?"
    "Dunno for sure, but Their mother's name is Demeter. She's from Greece."
    "Wait a minute, Greece, Rome . . . " Ms. Window came back out with a small red tray. It had two tall red glasses and two tiny red plates. On each plate were six red seeds. She set the glasses and plates in front of Matt and Tammy, and then withdrew a little package from her pocket and set it between them.   She bowed slightly and withdrew.
    "The fortune cookie," Matt said. "You open it."
    Tammy unwrapped the package.   It was too flat to be a Chinese fortune cookie. But it was a cookie, and oatmeal raisin cookie. Tammy looked puzzled.
    "Break it in half," Matt said.
    Inside was a small piece of folded aluminum foil and inside that, a tiny note. Tammy held it close to her face and read, "'Listen to the Baba Yaga. The world needs your help.' Well, I didn't understand what the Baba Yaga said, so how can I listen? And how did Ms. Window know?"
    "That's one of several things we need to talk about," Matt said. "As far as Ms. Window, she's a seer. A seer is a SEE-er. She sees things. She's also a dream spy. I think we need to be as well."
    "A dream spy? That sounds interesting, scary and dangerous."
    "All of the above and more. Danger is another thing we have to talk about. The danger is real. You need to know that."
    "You'd better explain."
    "Ok, I will." He took a sip of his grenadine and Tammy did the same. It tasted great, sweet and fruity. He gathered his six seeds and chewed them gently, closing his eyes and savoring them. Tammy followed suit. At least she knew how to eat pomegranates. Only normally, she ate a quarter of the pomegranate at a time, or even half.
    "Why six seeds? Why not more?"
    "It's a ritual and a message. Six, so we can go in and out, and return safely. Later we can eat more, if you'd like. If we ask for more, it will come on a yellow plate to counteract the red. Red for the underworld, yellow for the above world."
    "So, danger, and the Baba Yaga?"

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary

080128 free bird, weighing

2008-01-28T09:08:00.001-05:00

080128 free bird, weighing

1)Rocky the cockateil is flying free and I am so happy. He is free in the new house I purchased, which is full of boxes. (It is a house like the green one I wanted to buy, maybe the same one, maybe not.) I love the fact that Rocky can fly free and be him or her self.

2)Keith and I are on a trip. We stop at a roadside pull over where there are very fancy bathrooms on wheels. Before we start out to do what we are doing next, Keith says he wants to use the restroom and get weighed. I hadn't thought of that, but I decide to do it too, and I go in, use the bathroom, undress, and weigh myself. For some reason, I leave the bathroom naked with with all my clothes and belongings inside and someone else goes in and I can't leave to rejoin Keith until I get dressed. I've forgotten what I weighed and want to reweigh myself first. It starts turning into an upsetting ordeal because a woman with children is in where my clothes are and I can't get them because it is taking them so long.

And then I woke up, Chapter 2: Detention

2008-01-24T20:54:00.001-05:00

Chapter 2: Detention

    "Matt, check this one out," Tammy hissed across the table.
    Matt was standing up with his head twisted funny counting quietly to himself. "Wait a minute," he said, "I'm right in the middle of something, here, try this and then I'll see what you found." Tammy stood up and camer around the table. Matt didn't look at her. "Stare at this picture and count slowly to 60 and then stare at the white page next to it." The picture was of a green, orange and black flag. She started counting and staring, staring and counting. "Oh, WOW!" Matt breathed, "that's cool!"
    "I knew that's what would happen," Tammy said, after she finished her couldn't, I could tell becaese the colors were exactly opposite. Of course it would be red white and blue, what else would it be? But it it very cool. I can still see it on the wall and on the table."
    "Do you know why it happens?"
    "Your eyeballs get tired of looking at orange, green and black?"
    "That's pretty much it--you use up all the chemicals needed to see those colors so when you stop looking, you see the opposite. It's pretty cool."
    "It sure is, now check this one out." Matt came over and looked into Tammy's book.
    "Oh, cool, it's one of those magic eye things."
    "Yeah, but check it out, dude, it's not just any magic eye. This is really fun!"
    "I thought you said detention was not your ideas of fun! Sometimes I'm kinda slow at this."
    "I usually get them right away. Hey, I didn't know Mr. Sorensen and Mr. Beakley would give us such a fun project--and extra credit in both science and English. I didn't know what to expect. I've never been to detention before. Keep trying, this is the best one I've ever seen."
    "Never been to detention? That's because you're such a goody-goody."
    "Am not!"
    "Are, too! Oh! I got it. It's a mandala, a mandala within a mandala. I think it's a portal. Maybe we can use it to travel."
    "How?"
    Matt looked at his watch. Okay, we've got half an hour. First we need to prop the book up. OK, ready, hold my hand."
    "Here, in the library? We'll get in trouble."
    "Just do it." He snatched her hand. "OK, now we both unfocus and stare at it until it's in focus. Find the mandala and stare at the center. It's a portal, works sort of like a black hole, only gentler. I'm not sure where we're going to come out, so we should remember to look and see where the portal is on the other end. It may not even go Mearddth, and some of the other worlds having shifting topography. Even Mearddth does, sometimes. Oh, he said, here we are. It's a flower on this end, and it looks like all the other flowers. The others may be portals too, but may not take us back to the library."
    "Here, tie this ribbon around it carefully," Tammy said, pulling it out of her hair. Sheep and goats grazed on the far side of the field. "I hope none of them eats our portal," Tammy said, nervously, pointing. "Maybe we should just go back. We're going to get lost, or get in trouble."
    "Nah," Matt said, "Portals are just other entries into the dreamworld. Our bodies are back in the library staring at the book and if we don't show up, Sorensen or Beakley will just shake us gently and we'll wake up. We may be a little disoriented, but it'll be fine."
    The funnel-shaped flower with the deep purple center stood about ten feet from a tall pine. Beyond the pine, the ground sloped away to a meadow, and in the meadow was a small cabin. It looked deserted. "Let's go down there," Matt said, taking off at a run through the field. He lifted from the ground and began to fly, faster and faster, until he hovered right above the cabin. Laughing, Tammy followed him, leaping into the air and flying. It was such a rush of excitement to fly like that. She wanted to just fly and fly, over the hills and the distant peaks. Vaguely, she remembered that they had to go back. Besides, Matt seemed intent on something else. "Come here," he said, settling to the ground in front of the cabin. I want to show you something." With that, he stepped right through the cabin wall and disappeared. A moment later, he reappeared, coming through the wall in another place, as if it were made out of standing water, only he wasn't wet.
    Tammy walked up to the cabin wall and knocked on it hard. It was solid as a newly peeled log. Rock hard. She knocked again. "Yes?" a voice said, a high girlish voice that sounded like an old woman pretending to be a girl. "Who is it?"
    "Uh, it's me, Tammy Wilson, and Matt Martin is here, too. Who are you? Where are you?"
    "I'm in here of course. Come on in, but don't let the cat out." Matt walked back through the wall. Tammy went and opened the front door and stuck her foot in front of a cat that was trying to escape. The cat bit her foot and then leaped over it. Tammy grabbed it by the scruff of the neck. It hissed and spit and suddenly got huge. Tammy managed to slam the door with the cat inside. The cat almost filled the entire room. And it was not happy. Its eyes were a malevolent red and its teeth were needle sharp and it was looking hungrily at Tammy.
    It looked like it was now too big to get out the door. Tammy put her hand on the knob and carefully turned it. She zipped out and slammed the door. But the car shrunk to the size of a mouse and slipped under the bottom. Tammy snatched it and opened the door and went back in. An old lady sat in a rocker by the fire. She deposited the cat, now normal-sized, in her lap and sat down in another rocker by the fire. The cat leaped over, curled up in her lap and started purring. Tammy tentatively petted it. The purring grew to the size of a lion's roar.
    "I'm not sure I like this world," Tammy said. "It's too scary and unpredictable."
    Matt was rocking in the chair beside her. HE got up, and opened the curtain of the window beside the old woman. "Feel anything?" he asked. The whole house was shaking as if there were an earthquake or something.
    She looked out the window. Trees were bouncing past. "The house is moving," she observed, feeling stupid as she spoke for stating the obvious.
    "Chicken leg," Matt said, "that's my guess. I think we've just had the honor and privilege of stumbling into the lair of the Baba Yaga. Madam," he continued, turned to address the old woman. May I ask your name?"
    ""You may ask, but I may not answer. You may beg, but I may not spare you. First I will ask you a riddle. If you answer correctly, I will spare your lives this time. If not, I will eat you for dinner." She rubbed her hands together.
    "What is your riddle, Madam?" asked Matt, calmly.
    "What walks on four legs and then on two legs and then on three?"
    "Oh, that's an easy one, Madam. That's man, who crawls as a baby, walks on two legs and a man, and uses a cane as and old man. Now I get to ask you a question. What is the one thing that it is most important for us to know or do next?"
    "Since there are two of you, and since each of you has passed a test of sorts, I will give you two answers. Three, really. What you need to know is that your world is at a turning point and if it is not turned back, there will be no turning back and all will be lost. What you need to do is continue as you are, for the path before you is the answer to saving the world. And finally, If you don't leave immediately, I will eat you anyway. And next time, I may eat you without warning."
    Matt got up and calmly walked through the wall beside his chair. Tammy got up, set the cat on the Baba Yaga's lap and calmly walked into the wall and fell to the floor. She got up, and tried again and fell to the floor again.
    "It's like swimming," the Baba Yaga said, kindly. You know you can dive into the water and it will open to let you through. It is only your preconception that keeps you inside." She picked up a very large fork, dropped the cat to the floor and walked toward Tammy cackling madly.
    "Water," Tammy thought. "It's just like water." She squeezed through, but it didn't feel like water. It was more like disintegrating and reintegrating, like grinding through sand with all her molecules. Not that she knew what that felt like, really, but that's what she imagined.
    The cat squeezed through after her, its claws unsheathed and it's mouth open. Saliva dripped from its tongue. And the house hopped after her on one huge yellow scaly chicken leg.
    "Fly," screamed Matt, "fly!"
    Tammy flew. Matt flew beside her. The cat flew too, but after a little ways, it turned and flew back to the house and walked through the walls.
    "We're not where we started, how will we find our way back?"
    "There's the tree with the ribbon, way over there."
    "We didn't tie the ribbon on the tree. We tied it on the flower."
    "I know, but the mid is a very strange place. Let's go check it out."
    In an instant, they were there. "How'd we get here so fast?" Tammy asked.
    "Intention." In Mearddth, you don't really haev to walk or fly, you just arrive where you want to be. See, here's the flower, come on, let's go." In an isntant, he was gone.
    "Intention," Tammy repeated herself. And there she was, sitting on the seat staring at the magic eye mandala portal picture. The clock said the same time as when they'd left.
    "Did you intend that, too?" Tammy asked, pointing at the clock. "Of course. We need the extra credits in Science and English to help bring up the zero Miss Wingsley is going to give us in Math today. So quick, we've got a half hour, do you want to type or dictate?"
    "Let's take turns, 15 minutes each. But one thing, first. Can you die in a dream?"
    "Well, yeah, actually you can," Matt said, somewhat sheepishly. "I'll tell you about it later."

"You know what I hate, Tammy whispere...

2008-01-23T21:39:00.001-05:00

Prologue: "It was all a Dream"

    "You know what I hate?" Tammy whispered across the library table to Matt, "I hate it when you get to the end of the book and it says, 'and then they woke up and it was all a dream. That's so stupid."
    "I know it," Matt agreed. "It ruins the whole book. Why do they do that?"
    "I hate it when people tell me their dreams, too," Tammy said, with a faraway look in her eye, "They are so rambling and long and pointless."
    "Okay, I'll remember not to tell you my dreams," Matt said.
    "My dreams are pretty stupid. I'm either being chased through a long dark alley or falling through the sky. I always wake up just before i hit."
    "I can't tell you this, but I just fly. I love to fly, it's so much fun. But I won't tell you about my dreams, because you think they're boring. Only mine aren't. They are wonderful They are like continuing stories. Always an adventure. And I'm magic."
    "Magic. I don't believe in magic."
    "I don't believe in magic either. Not in real life. But dreams are dreams, they're not exactly real in the ordinary way. You can be magic in dreams, why not? You can do anything in a dream if you want to."
    "Anything?"
    "Sure, why not?"
    "Well, for one thing, I don't control my dreams. They just happen."
    "I let mine happen too, most of the time. It's more interesting and fun that way. But I pay attention, and any time I need to or want to, I can take charge and shape the dream."
    "You're full of bull dunky," Tammy said, a little too loudly.
    Mrs. Weinhart looked over her half glasses and frowned. She was pretty lenient most of the time, as long as kids didn't get carried away. Tammy poked her head back into her book, but Matt gave her a little kick. "I'll show you," he whispered extra quietly, "I'll take you to Mearddth."
    "Mearddth? Is that like laughter?"
    "LOL. Sometimes! No, it's a dream world, one of many. It's my favorite one. I'll come get you tonight. Wherever you are, I'll find you and show you. If it's okay, only if it's okay."
    "Well, I don't believe you a bit. I think you're teasing me. But if you can really take me someplace fun, that would be better than my stupid dreams. And then, we'll write a story about it."
    "Yeah, and at the end, we'll say, 'and then they woke up, and it was just a dream.' All the kids will hate us."
    "But it will be okay, because it was true." Tammy laughed out loud." Mrs. Weinhart looked over her glasses and down her nose at Tammy, who pretended to be reading her book. And then really was reading her book, until the bell rang. Matt winked at her.

1. The Thugs

    Tammy was running down a dark alley. She was out of breath, her legs hurt, and the two men chasing her were gaining on her. She tried to run faster but couldn't. On and on she ran, scared, with no real hope of escaping. She was close to tears.
    Suddenly, a boy dressed in a superhero suit jumped into the alley in front of her. "Halt," he said, handing her a sword.
    "They've got guns, Matt," she said. "You can't sue a sword against guns."
    "Sure you can," Matt said. "This one shoots rubber bullets. They hurt, but they don't kill anyone." He turned the sword sideways, sighted down lts length, and fired a couple or warning shots at the two thugs who had ducked behind a trash can."
    "A sword that shoots rubber bullets? What are you nuts?"
    "Sure I'm nuts, hadn't you noticed that before?" Matt strode toward the two men. "Who are you guys? Stand up and tell us who you are."
    The two men stood up and stepped out from behind the trash can. Tammy gasped, "Mr. Sorensen, Mr. Beakley, what are you doing here? Why are you chasing me? You've been chasing me for months. I was really scared of you. Why are you carrying guns?"
    Mr Sorensen lifted his gun, pointed it directly at Matt, and pulled the trigger. A stream of water hit Matt in the chest. Matt fell on the ground kicking his feet and laughing. Then he hopped back up. "These are spirit guides," he said, pointing to the two teachers. Science and English. They help navigate the dream world. You need good balance. You need to know black holes. And you need to understand poetry. They've been trying to tell you how to dream."
    "Black holes? POETRY? What are you talking about?"
    "Metaphor," said Mr. Beakley. "Dreams are the ultimate metaphor. Or, at least can be."
    "You guys aren't making any sense."
    "Who said we needed to make sense?" asked Mr. Sorensen. "Do black holes make sense? Do quarks?"
    "Look," said Mr. Beakly, pointing to a large puddle, an old Model T.
    Matt reached into the puddle and tugged on the car, pulling it out. It was old, dilapidated, rusty and looked as if it would soon collapse into a heap of rubble.
    "Our ride to Mearddth," Matt said, "We're going to Mearddth, want to come?"
    "Nah, we've got other fish to fry right now. We're going to see if we can catch some of your friends and if so, we'll bring them along later." said Mr. Sorensen.
    "I hope they aren't as slow--and fast--as you were, Tammy. We were getting worried."
    "come on, Tammy, get in," Matt said. "Let's get going,"
    Tammy looked skeptically at the old rust bucket, but it wasn't old any more, it was shiny and new and with fresh rubber on the tires and highly polished brass appointments. It wasn't a Model T any more, but a --- . She wasn't sure how she knew that, but decided not to worry about it. She opened the door on smooth well-oiled hinges and sat down on plush leather seats. Matt drove down through the alley, then pulled the gear shift hard toward him and the car took to the air. "Wheee," Tammy shouted, looking down as the alley and city building fell away. She was full of happiness and excitement, happier than she every felt before. They were going on an adventure. And it was fun.
    The city faded into the distance behind them and they flew for the simple joy of flying. "We don't really need the car," Matt said, "that was just to give you confidence." He dove out the door and flew along beside the car, which kept going. "Come on out, the air is fine." He took her by the hand and the car was gone. They were flying.
    "This is just like Peter Pan," Tammy said. The she looked down. She immediately began to fall, plummeting toward the ground.
    Matt tugged on her arm, "Fly!" he said.
    "I don't know how." The ground hurtled closer.
    "Come on, follow me." she continued to fall. He yanked a little folded piece of plastic out of his pocket and it inflated into a white life preserver. He handed it to Tammy.
    "Thanks," she said, floating skyward. "Phew. I was about to crash. You saved me. Again."
    "Again?"
    "Yeah, remember those thugs?"
    "Mr. Sorenson and Mr. Beakley? They're our teachers, remember?"
    "Only after you came. Before that, they were trying to kill me."
    "Not exactly. Listen, you need to learn to fly. It's an important skill. But I guess I was stupid to try to teach you way up here." They got back in the old car, which was suspended in space and had started to rust again and disintegrate. Immediately, the rust started fading and the paint got shinier and blacker. Matt drove it down to a grassy meadow full of wildflowers. There were snow-covered mountains around the sides of the meadow. A little stream wound through the meadow.
    "This place is totally perfect. Almost perfect. It'd be perfect if there was a little waterfall just there and a grove of trees just there." As she pointed, a waterfall appeared, a thin cascade with a long drop at the bottom. And beside it, a grove of baobabs. "Perfect," she said.
    "OK, look, we're going to fly just one foot off the ground, float. If you lose confidence, you can just drop down."
    "But how?"
    "Just step up. You just have to know you can do it, and you can." He held out his hand and she stepped into the air and floated. They floated over the grass and through the baobabs. The baobabs were full of monkeys who swung from branch to branch, following them. One held out a banana at the top of a tree and Tammy floated up and took it.
    "Can I eat it?" She asked.
    "Sure! What does it taste like?"
    "Rainbows. Sherbet. Lemon meringue pie. Like a symphony. Here, try it."
    "Hmmm, pumpkin pie. Chocolate milk. hey, it tastes like a banana, only sweeter. Don't look down."
    Tammy immediately looked down. They had drifted far above the baobabs, and Tammy began to fall toward their jagged branches.
    "Fly," Matt shouted, "Fly! Float. Let go, you can do it." But Tammy continued to fall. Matt flew below her and broke her fall with his arms, slowing her fall. The monkeys gathered in the branches below her and caught her as she fell, passing her from one to the next. Several of them tossed her into the air again. "Fly!" shouted Matt, and she did. She flew up and down and did a couple somersaults and loop-de-loops and back flips.
    "I think I've got it!"
    "Good, is it fun?"
    "Yeah, it's fabulous, never anything funner ever! Wheeeee!"
    Matt flew along beside her. "Remember what this feels like. Remember how fun it is. Remember how easy it is. One of the difficult things about Mearddth is remembering. It's hard to remember. You have to pay attention."
    "Yahoo, whooopeee!" shouted Tammy. "How could I forget this? It's the opposite of falling. Falling is scary and horrible. Flying is exhilarating and fun. Yahooooooooo!"

    "I thought you said dreams were boring and you didn't want to hear about them," Matt whispered to Tammy during Math. Miss. Wingsley was writing some algebraic formulas on the board. She had her back to them.
    "I just asked what you dreamed last night. I was wondering if you had the same dream I had."
    "About the flying car and the monkeys that tossed you out of the baobab?"
    "Yeah, that one, was it real?"
    "Real, what's real? Whadddya mean?"
    "I mean did you and I really have the same dream about flying and stuff."
    "I dreamed about you. And a field with mountains and a waterfall. Did you dream about me?"
    "Yeah, I think you were wearing a superman suit, at least in the beginning." When Tammy said the word "Superman," her voice squeaked incredulously and Miss Wingsley spun and winged her in the head with an eraser.
    "No talking--or squeaking--in class, Miss Wilson," she said to Tammy, as Tammy rubbed the spot on her head where the eraser had hit.   She was coughing in a cloud of chalk dust.
    "Yes Miss Wingsley, I'm sorry Miss Wingsley," Tammy said automatically.
    "Another peep out of you and you're going down to the office. Mr. Martin too."
    Miss Wingsley turned her back and began writing on the board again. "If Two a plus three b plus 4 c equals y, and y equals 2x divided by n, and n equals a plus b plus c and x equals . . . "
    "Peep!" Matt said is a high squeaky voice.

    "Matt!" Tammy said, "we're gonna get detention now!"
    "It's our ticket out of there," Matt said. "And besides, Sorenson and Beakley run detention. We might learn something. Come on, it'll be fun."
    "Detention is not my idea of fun."

Breast Reduction

2008-01-23T10:49:00.001-05:00

I dreamed I had breast reduction surgery and my breasts turned out small and pert like a young girl's, like mine were when I was 12 and a half. (Probably caused by the report of Heidi's surgery.)

LOST: Radiation without Protection

2008-01-22T09:05:00.001-05:00

LOST: Radiation without Protection

I am driving on my way to have radiation treatment for some condition I have. The radiation treatment is very narrow and specific, and the rest of me is going to be carefully protected with lead sheeting. I am driving in the countryside, out in farmlands and open fields, and cannot find the right turns. I end up driving into a cave, pushing my way through thick billows of plastic ballooning into the inner recesses of a cave where there is a radiation clinic, but it is the wrong one. They prepare me for treatment anyway, and I am sitting beside two men who are having treatment in their boxers--I'm in a gown. no lead sheeting is being used and the treatment seems generalized and the two men are sitting side by side. They keep getting surge after surge after surge of treatment. I am very frightened and go back and ask the nurse why no lead sheeting is being used. She says this is pert of the synergistic affects of their treatment. I want to escape, but I don't know where the woman has put my clothes. I am determined to escape, but feel as if I am held hostage. There is some flurry of confused activity and I seem to be escaping. I think I am driving away . . . but I wake up before any of this last part seems clear.

I think this dream is about my fears of having dental radiation and my desire to "escape" from doctor Jennings who wants to radiate me. Since Radiation might cause further growth of my tumor or more tumors, I don't want to risk it. There can be an inherited tendency to acquire Meningiomas with a sensitivity to X-rays and since my mother and I both have/had them, I worry that radiation (X-rays) might cause additional growth or new growths. I want to avoid X-rays AND anyone who wants to force them on me.

3 Dreams 080121: Rude Listener and untold story, Crossing the ra

2008-01-21T10:21:00.001-05:00

3 Dreams 080121

Rude Listener and untold story, Crossing the raging torrent, the girls

1)The Rude Listener(s) and the Untold Story

At a party, someone asks me to tell a story. Somehow, I can't remember exactly how now, he asks for a specific story, the story of the storm over the Hundred Acre Swamp. He seems to know something about the story, for as I begin to tell it and mistakenly say "thousand Acre Swamp," he corrects me just as I am correcting myself. He's heard the story before or was somehow involved. I am setting up the story:

I was a naturalist and camp counselor at Second Home Nature Center. I had 22 campers that session, twenty 4th and 5th grade boys, most of which had been there before and were itching for a change, one blind boy, Rin,and a girl from France who spoke almost no English. My assistant was a brand new totally green intern. During part of the week, I also had the assistance of a volunteer, Trudy, who knew some French and spent one-on-one time with the French girl helping her to understand what was going on. But Trudy had health issues and was unable to come on the Thursday adventure.

Garrett had dreamed up a new plan for this year. We would drive to the far side of the Hundred Acre Swamp in a park truck with the kids in the back, drop them off at one side with maps and compasses, and tell them some cockamamie story that induced them to find the tips of certain peninsulas that poked out into the swamp where there was buried treasure and clues to the next treasure but forced them to cross and recross the center of the swamp using the map and compass skills we had perfected in yesterday's Orienteering adventure. We would also be learning about the nature found in a swamp--water snakes, snapping turtles, duckweed, etc.

We had tested the hike with adult counselors and naturalists, and then taken several other groups out. This was the last group of the summer, and the worst, by far. And the biggest. Garrett had gone against his own rules and allowed extra kids to register. It took two trucks to cart us and our gear to the far side of the swamp. We tumbled out, with rubber bands around our pant cuffs to keep out the leeches and backpacks with lunches, supplies and first aid kits.

At this point, the person who had asked me to tell the story stood up, turned and headed toward the bathroom I stopped my story to wait for his return. The others on the couch with him and on chairs around the room look at me expectantly, as if they expect me to continue, but I think I should wait for the one who asked for the story. We wait a while. Everyone waits. But the guy doesn't return and after a while, the conversation turns elsewhere. Eventually, everyone gets up and leaves and I am sitting there with my untold story. I feel sad and slightly bereft and somewhat put out. Annoyed. We hadn't even gotten to the good part of the story yet, where the lightning struck and the trees fell down and the wind lashed and the rain fell.

I have inherited (in the dream) a really lot of money and have taken up the habit of giving small gifts of $500 out somewhat randomly. I had decided to give $500 to the man who asked me to tell the story, but he is gone and so is everyone else and I have given no one the $500. So I have two things to be sad and frustrated about.

This dream became semi-lucid near the end. And while I was dreaming it I was also remembering other related things and questioning my actions. But I did not get that lucid "rush" or take any control of the path of the dream.

I am not going to do any dreamwork at this point because I need to record the other dreams and have other things to do--but I believe that the messages of the dream are clear:

I need to tell that particular story (in a Sissy book and elsewhere)
I need to tell my stories in general before I die of old age. (Get my books written and out there)
I need to make charitable donations and take care of financial matters

2)Crossing the Raging Torrent:

I have lost some of this dream while recording the last.

We are walking somewhere we need to go on a path through the woods. We come upon a raging stream/creek--an uncrossable torrent where we expected an easy crossing. At this point I become semi lucid. We turn left and walk upstream. I am questioning if this is the right choice, especially since the land rises sharply and becomes rocky until the stream/creek is running through a deep gorge with cliffs on either side of the stream. At the top of one steep rise is a flat place with a log across the gorge. It is very teetery. We are going to cross it and are in the process of doing so when I wake up thinking we are making it safely across and disappointed not to see it happen and reach our goal.

I think this dream might be related to the last dream--the raging torrent is all of life's distractions that seem to build and build and keep me from accomplishing my goals. I need to concentrate and get to work!

3)The girls

OK, now I've forgotten this one entirely. All I remember is that it was about the girls [my daughters] (or they were in it) and there was at least some happiness in it.

Eating Rats

2007-12-22T08:10:00.001-05:00

We have three packages of meat, and we open eat the first one--it looks like a rat but it tastes okay and we eat it anyway. One is small and I tell Keith, poking at it, that I don't want to eat it because it looks like a mouse with the fur still on. The third package looks like a rat and still has its fur, but worst yet, it is still breathing. It is a very large Norway rat, except it also has some thick, soft--very soft, dense fur on it's tail. I pick it up and it come to. It jumps down and runs into the living room. I think it is hungry and grab a cheery tomato, which it begins to ravenously eat. I pick it and the tomato up and put them back on the table. I am wondering frantically what kind of container we can put the rat in until we decide what to do with it. Meanwhile, I suggest that the rat might like to eat the dead mouse. Keith starts throwing the mouse at the rat, not to hit it, but to make it available, but the rat is running around the table and Keith keeps missing. Keith seems to be a bit afraid of the rat, I wasn't at first and picked it up several times, but it is a very large rat and I start being afraid of it. I wonder if it was a wild rat. It looks like one!

12-22-07 No dreamwork right now, too much to do.

Dreaming about painting

2007-10-31T09:28:00.001-04:00

I keep dreaming about painting. I dreamed extensively about it last night and was very excited about my dream ideas when I woke up, but immediately forgot them--wahn. The night before last, I dreamed I was painting a water scene. There was a twisting bay or inlet with five rowboats arranged in the foreground in a slightly haphazard but pleasing way. Each boat had a man in it fishing--some were standing and some sitting, The boats were all white, but each had a different colored stripe just under the bow. The trees in the background were bright with autumn colors. (But in the dream, the colors of the boat stripes didn't really color coordinate with the scenery--one stripe was a sort of industrial pink and another a sort of industrial grey-blue.)

Fallen

2007-09-11T11:25:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, September 11, 2007 (911!)

Last night I dreamed:

We had a stained glass flower on the windowsill in the study. It was yellow, maybe a poppy but probably an evening primrose—primarily the blossom, little edges of the leaves. It has fallen down behind the desk and I am explaining to Biker Buddy that it was irretrievable, but hoping he can somehow rescue it.

I also dreamed that:

Biker Buddy had sex with another woman and is telling me about it as calmly, casually and enthusiastically as he talks about beer and other women’s breasts. I amwondering, in the dream, why I wasn’t planning on divorcing him immediately. In real life, I would! (And I know that in the dream!)

I woke up upset and scared.

and wrote this poem:

Fallen

Behind the massive, immovable desk, a stained
glass evening primrose falls, shining yellow, small
sun, falls from the windowsill and disappears.
Irretrievable, I say, hoping I am wrong and you
will somehow rescue it.

But you won’t listen,
telling me instead, with the same enthusiasm
you have for beer and other women’s breasts,
that you have betrayed me with another woman.
When a primrose falls, it shatters.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
For Biker Buddy, from a dream!
070911 (911!), 1st

Nested in a flower

2007-07-17T10:17:00.000-04:00

The Extra Genital

2007-07-17T09:58:00.001-04:00

Keith is naked and in a wheel chair. Steve and Sarah are there and upset and I finally see that there is a protrusion, a growth, in the center of his lower belly above his genitalia. I think at first it is his genitalia, before I look closely. A round ball of flesh with pointy protrusions tops a smooth column of flesh like a simple medieval mace (or a slightly overgrown fancy penis, thicker, rounder and pointier at the tip, but shorter than a normal penis). We are rushing Keith to the hospital, although it seems to me that this growth must have been there a long time, in spite of the fact I've never seen it before. It seems so smooth and perfect and well-developed and healthy. We reassure Keith as we rush him toward the hospital, and I am at once worried and calm because for some reason it doesn't seem like that big a deal (although when I wake up I feel a little upset).

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Dream about Peter and the DeVries

2007-04-22T09:06:00.001-04:00

I had a long, strange complcaited dream about you this morning, just before I woke. It was a very fluid ever-changing dream, but unfortunately, I now remember only small parts of it.

I dream that my family and I go to a restaurant where we'd never been before and are unlikely to go again, in some strange, faraway, out of the way place. They are having a special or something and we decide to stop. We get inside and lo and behold, who should we see but the entire DeVries family standing in line at the buffet. The line is long and stretches past a parge stone fireplace and you are all looking intently at something on the mantle. I shush my family and sneak over and place one hand on your shoulder (Peter) and one hand on Jonatha's shoulder (David is between you in line, Charlie behind Jonathan, your parents in front of you). You turn around to look at me and I laugh delightedly that we are all here in the same place together by some freak accident of fate. In this part of the dream, we are maybe me 12 or so?, you (Peter) a few years younger.

More stuff happens, I forget, exactly what, but at one point, I am am looking at you and you are standing alone in a blue shirt and khaki pants and look as if you are about 7 years old (younger than earlier). I feel a great fondness for you/attraction to you and feel strange about it, because you are so young.

I take my food and sit down at a table in a very large room where there is no one else. I am the first one into the room and choose a large table and am imagining that you and everyone will come sit with me, but the scene cuts to a few minutes later and you and David and Charlie and Jonathan are sitting with Bob and Tom at a table by another large stone fireplace, all the way acorss the room. As far away as you can get from me. I am deeply hurt and offended. It's a boys only table and there is no room at the table for me.

Then I am sitting with my friend Pam who is older than me in "real life" now. We are both "old ladies" but you are still a child (maybe about 12?). You are still at the boys table, far across the room, more people have filled the space between us. You are a boy, you are far away, and you are young and I am so old. There is this great gap between us that is too far to bridge. I wake up feeling sad, somewhat bereft.

The Ejection Seat

2007-04-18T09:15:00.000-04:00

Sara and Erwin are helping Keith and me chaperone a group of teenagers in a foreign country. Sara and Keith go to make some arrangements and are going to meet us back at the piazza, but the teens have a little rebellion and want to go back to the hotel after only a few minutes at the amusement park. Erwin and I agree to take them back but I am upset because I can't get a hold of Sara and Keith to let them know. Then we get lost on the way back to the hotel. I am riding in Erwin's car, which was sort of like his current car, but a convertible with the top down. Erwin pushes a button that activates an ejection seat and sends me catapulting through the air across a wall and into a mansion-like home on a hill. He takes off with the teens to go play. I am shaking hands with people and introducing myself in an embarassed way. None of the well-dressed people at the house seem surprised to see me. They are having a party, there are many guests and I am assumed ot be one of them. It is a huge mansion, though and so many hands to shake. I can't find my way out and had no idea how to get back to Keith and Sara to warn them not to go back to the piazza to meet us.

click image to view larger.

Don’t Read This Poem (An Invitation)

2007-02-06T10:54:00.000-05:00

Don't Read This Poem (An Invitation)

My daughter calls from the other room; she's found a family dead.

All dead, all but one small baby hidden among the bedding. A family

is dead in my room too, leaving another orphaned baby.

Don't read this poem. My teachers told me, don't say that.

Don't mention you're writing a poem. As if the reader,

dear reader, won't notice. And don't say anything weird.

Over the top, they would say. There are rules in poetry.

I always seem to break them. Perhaps I also shouldn't mention

that I am writing this on red

paper. Blood red. What I picked from the scrap bin, coincidence

or synchronicity. By the time you see this, though, the red

will have turned to white the way a face loses its color in death.

Two families dead, two orphaned babies. But they aren't people.

We're in the animal-care rooms in the museum's basement.

The babies are mice, one tan, one maroon, both just starting

on the first hint of hair, eyes sealed shut. Orphaned.

Of course, they will die without their mothers; we all know that.

They're not weaned. But I am, so why the fuss?

Okay, I'm an orphan. But, I'm also a mother. I put the babies

in my blouse to nurse from my own breasts. Could you just not

read this? I know you'll disapprove, but that's what I did.

It's sort of circular, really, since I'm the orphan now.

But I'm sixty, my parents both dead at eighty-three. No infant, I.

In the dream, the babies grow to the size and shape of ferrets

and move inside my silk blouse like snakes, undulating, sinuous.

In my black velvet skirt and blood-red jacket, I hide myself

from everyone so these babies can nurse and live.

I am the orphan baby. I am the snake maiden, I am the mother,

I am the grandmother. I am as tiny as a newborn mouse

and I am the crone slipping into the grave.

But you knew all that already, and knew the dual nature

of my Geminian twins, the yin and yang of me. Even,

perhaps, the strange depths to which I'd sink to survive this grief.

But did you remember that you had a breast and milk

you could offer an orphan? If you've gotten this far,

you could hold me.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

070206c, 1^st Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Here is the original dream:

Nursing Orphans and Outside Approval, Dream Sunday, February 04, 2007

Sara and I are in animal care and discover that in two cages of mice in two separate rooms, the mother mouse and all the babies but one (each) are dead. She discovers one in one room and I discover the other in the other room. The babies are very small. They've just begun growing hair. One is yellowish tan and the other sort of maroon-colored. I take them into my blouse to nurse them at my own breasts so that they won't die.

The scene cuts to a huge science fair. I am the head judge or some other very important person. I am wearing a wine-colored velvet jacket, a long black velvet skirt and a wine & black silk blouse. The baby mice have grown to the size and shape of young ferrets and are living inside my blouse, not weaned yet. They move sinuously, bulging the blouse oddly. I worry about offending people with the snake-like babies nursing inside my beautiful clothes. I worry about it so much that I find a private place to sit, assist the babies in their nursing, and worry about what I should do.

This is the second dream in two nights that involve nurturing young of other species.

The dream poem I wrote yesterday was made of dreams from two different night—the monkey dream and rose petal dream were originally two separate dreams.

I don't see much potential in this dream for a poem. If the monkey dream was weird, this one is weirder and more "unacceptable."

Witnessing an execution; a wish for peace!

2006-12-08T18:39:00.000-05:00

I am with a group of people, friends, and casual acquaintences. They are all people I care about, nice people, engaged friendly people. A sharp shooter steps up, takes aim, and kills one of my friends. I wake in a sweat, relieved it was "just a dream" or nightmare, a real dream, this morning. In some parts of the world, people, their friends, their relatives are killed regularly, by war, by genocide, and for them, it's like a nightmare, only real. Horrifyingly real.

I would like to join with Peter and other people supporting the idea of 2 minutes of peace at 8 PM on December 30, 2006. For more information, click here. Of course, I'd like more peace. Lots more.

Consider Peace. Consider the Alternative.

The Essences

2006-10-26T10:27:00.000-04:00

We are sitting around a fire, at night, a number of us. The priestess-teacher uses my black hat to capture essences escaping from the fire to show the group. The first essences cling to the outside of my hat, colored dewdrops in brilliant rainbow hues, sparkling in the darkness. The second essences are tiny butterflies that take wing from inside my hat. They fly through us, as if we were ghosts and not human and solid, and as they enter us, we light up, glowing in rainbow colors. We feel like rainbows, full of light, color and joy. Then they fly upward into the darkness, rising like smoke, twisting through the faint silhouettes of trees. But essences of the rainbow butterflies remain in our hearts. And rainbow dewdrops still sparkle on my hat, reminding us.

We sometimes need to be reminded.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
From a dream
For Keith and Robert Moss

Dreamdark Deer

2006-10-24T11:04:00.000-04:00

Dreamdark Deer, from a dream. By Mary Stebbins Taitt.

I apologize for posting the same picture in several places, but I had to put it in the dream blog, too!

Dreaming of the Honeymoon

2006-06-01T11:01:00.000-04:00

Dreaming of the Honeymoon, by Mary Stebbins. Click image to view larger.

My dream of a pleasant way to spend some honeymoon hours. Sunset in the dunes together! Photoart for Monday Artday.

The Birth of Flight II

2006-05-03T23:30:00.000-04:00

The Birth of Flight IID, dream version, by Mary Stebbins. Click on image to view larger.

Dream Storm Farm

2006-04-12T11:56:00.000-04:00

Dream Storm Farm by Mary Stebbins, click on image to see larger

Flight

2006-03-15T09:03:00.000-05:00

Flight, by Mary Stebbins. Click on image to see larger.

Goat Dream

2006-03-15T08:53:00.000-05:00

I dream I am at some man's farm and he says he will let me take a picture of one of his goats, a kid. It is white, with a few gold and grey spots and longish , coarse-looking hair. I want to hold it and tell him how I used to raise goats and how the walked with us and how we used to take them to bed with us (the kids, I explain, not the adults). I say the kid on its back and rub its belly--this seems to soothe it.

Besides the absurdity of taing the goats to bed and laying them on their back and rubbing their bellies, the one thing this makes me think of is working on my goat novel (totally unrelated).

Niagara at Night

2006-03-09T11:49:00.000-05:00

floods, babies, bicycles

2006-03-09T11:41:00.000-05:00

I had a restless night last night, lots of wakefulness, and lots of drems

1)dreamed that the levy was breached and dirty brown flood waters were flowing into the area where I was very rapidly. I had my car but decided it would be safer to clim up some steep rocky hills rather than try to drive. Pam was there and I was waiting for her, more and more scared as the waters appproached, torn between waiting for her and hurrying to save myself. We were bth slow climbing, but she was slower.

2)I dream Scott and I are riding bicycles through narrow curving alleys. There is more to this dream, but I can't grasp it

3)Babies. I am at Donna's and she has a new baby and I am holding it and it's blanket keeps falling off. I keep trying to wrap it up, worrying it will be cold. (I am cold, too). The baby is cute. It can already crawl, though it seems way too yound and small. Chucks baby appears briefly in the dream. When the baby messes its diapers, Donna seems to think I will change it but I don't want to. In the end, I'm on my way home and realize I have left my own baby alone at home, maybe too log. I am really worried.

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary

Graham, the "Coronet" and the Bundle of Thumbs

2005-12-23T08:11:00.000-05:00

Graham begs to take another instrument and we finally agree, only after getting him to agree that he will practice the piano first. We end up buying the other instrument and he must practice every night or no story. The instrument he has chosen is the coronet. He hasn't practiced and we've had not story, and it's late. He goes down to get his coronet and comes into our bedroom in the dark where we are lying in bed to practice. The coronet looks more like a recorder. He stands in a shadow in the corner with just a tiny bit of light on him paying his "coronet" recorder. He is doing this while clasping a bundle of thumbs. When I see the bundle of thumbs, I am curious and disturbed. He seems to be collecting them, and has maybe 15 of them tied with twine. I wake up.

It occurs to me that one obvious interpretation is that Graham is "all thumbs." The thumbs in the dream were not grisly and were quite matter of fact. But I'm not sure Graham is "all thumbs," especially about music. Curious.

It could also be about some child or other part of myself. I am "all thumbs" when it comes to music.

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary

Too Little Too Late

2005-12-21T09:35:00.000-05:00

"Lost and Late" or "Too Little Too Late"

Three of us are wandering around a huge underground complex of apartments built off underground passageways. There are many levels with both stairs and ramps leading to the lower levels, and some of the areas are arranged by interests or political alignment. We are looking for a woman "Kathy" who used to babysit for Erin and had a daughter in nursery school with Erin. This was many years ago, and we are all older, but she seems to have not aged much. When I talk to her on the phone to get the complex directions to her apartment, I can see a hologram of her face hovering in the air before me. She is pretty, freckled, has red hair and sort of pursed lips like a beauty model. She sort of glows a little. I write down the directions, but when I am in the tunnels with my companions, I don't seem to have them and keep thinking I should call on the cell phone and get them again. WE wander a long time and I don't call but I finally find the right passageway, a ramp leading down into the Democratic area. We find it OK, sort of psychically, and when we get there, a man comes to talk to us and we sit at the table and he gets out a bunch of papers from his briefcase and he says, "It's so late now we won't be able to get much done." I am wondering where Kathy is and who this man is and if he's her husband and thinking it's my fault we are late for not calling sooner. The man is very young and business like with black hair, white skin, glasses, lean. He looks sort of familiar. Who he looks like is at the edge of my mind, but apparently ungraspable. He begins to apprise us of the knowledge we need, but it is so "late" that I wake up.

I have dreamed before of underground passages with apartments, but this one is more posh than one of the others that really resonated for me. I think there might be systems for importing light and fresh air and views to the outside world. (?)

The too little too late thing resonates for me, as does the lost and late, both apply to this week with lost packages and delays.

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary

Dream Tree

2005-12-02T09:14:00.000-05:00

Dream Tree, photo and photoart by Mary Stebbins (Click on picture to see it larger)

The MOST Animals at Home

2005-12-02T08:57:00.000-05:00

The MOST animals need to be moved from one place to another, a whole menagerie of them. Instead of taking them right to the next location, I take them home first. Then I get busy and forget to take care of them. I look in a cage and discover some baby mice that are shriveling up and dying of thirst and starvation. There are a LOT of animals, including some strange and rare ones and I worry they may all be dying because I've forgotten to feed them. I am very upset. I want to take them back to the MOST where other people can help care for them, but I am so busy I don't have time. I am at work at the MOST and Steve is there and some animals are there, but I need to go home and get all the missing ones. He dismisses me to do that but I have so much to do I can't go. I feel frantic, worried and guilty. I feel like a bad person.

I wonder if there is something else in my life I'm neglecting and forgetting. AK!

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary

The Egg

2005-12-02T08:44:00.000-05:00

A hand holds out an egg that was partially wrapped in plastic or netting—the kind used for petticoats. This is wrapped around the egg in a fashion reminiscent of the pictures of a stork bringing a baby. They egg is a bright white, larger than a chicken egg, a little more pointy on the end than a chicken egg, and seemed to glow a little. The netting is a little misty looking, but the egg is sharp and clear, as is the hand holding it.

The feeling is positive and cheerful and good, also a little exciting.

There is a sense of hope and new beginnings.

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary

In Dreams of Flowers

2005-11-27T11:14:00.000-05:00

Dream Roses, photo by Mary Stebbins (click photo to see larger in this and other photos on this blog)

Merthiolate Blue

2005-11-27T09:55:00.000-05:00

Merthiolate Blue

I want to take a photograph with Merthiolate Blue, a beautiful species of flower. The flowers are shaped like an open 5-pointed star and come in white, pink, and pale blue, but because they are an indicator for the presence of the chemical, merthiolate blue, when that chemical is added to the soil in the right dilution and proportion, the plants grow thickly and abundantly and the flower turn bright, vivid, saturated blue. The blue is between turquoise and royal blue and very brilliantly saturated. The flowers are so thick and abundant that the leaves become invisible. I think the leaves are lanceolate or spatulate. I have a series of ideas for photos using the flower, merthiolate blue, which include placing a frame picture among them and rephotographing it and placing a valued object in the center of a ring of merthiolate blues. I don’t see what the object it, except that perhaps it is roundish and brownish and shiny as if varnished. I am trying to find the flowers and purchase them and locate a supply of the chemical, merthiolate blue and determine the proper dilution. This is a dream I have that repeats with variations at least three times during the night. At certain points, I seem to be succeeding in my efforts and am happy.

When I google merthiolate, I am reminded that it is a vivid pink, not blue. (Merthiolate (hot pink)) In the dream, it was clearly, vividly blue. Here’s one that mention blue: Merthiolate Memories. Graffiti. Donna breathed a lengthy sigh. ... she noticed the arteries in her hands seemed to be an unusually vivid color of blue. But I don’t think the blue here refers to the merthiolate.

Dreamscape 3

2005-11-08T00:17:00.000-05:00

Dreamscape 2, Photoart by Mary Stebbins. In many of my lucid dreams, the sky and the light was greenish and shadows were clearly evident.

Autumn at Loretto

2005-11-07T23:45:00.000-05:00

Autumn at Loretto, By Mary Stebbins. This is my Mom.

Read about the nightmare of dementia.

Dreamscape 2

2005-10-21T08:20:00.000-04:00

Dream Moth 3 with Swirls

2005-10-20T23:32:00.000-04:00

Deam Moth Revisted

2005-10-20T10:00:00.000-04:00

Dream Moth Revisted, by Mary Stebbins. This is an inversion and adjustment of the previous moth picture.

Hidden Rooms

Crow Man and Heidi

The green shirts

My Brother, his Novel, the Hidden Chair and the Security Unnecessary Guilt and False Accusations

An Impulsive Mistake

In the Looney Bin and Almost Lucid

Lessons

The Unconscious Boy, the unstuffed suitcase and the hissing boot

I'm Going to go Eat Worms

Missing the Train

Pursuit in Mortal Fear

The Boy with the Guns and the Burned-up Lady

One Ski, Friday, March 12, 2010

Runaway Car

Synchronicity

Erin's new old house (Dream) 090513

No Help for the Snake Bite (Rattlesna...

The Fallen Moon

Dream Poem "Backwards"

The Casks

Spring, Discovered!

Two Dreams in January

2 eggs and a scale

Snakes in the Water

The Broken Eggs

The Sinking Raft

Tantrum Dream

Two Dreams, Wrong Trail, Backing up the Dream

Out of Control Dream/Dreamwork

Out of Control

The Uncrossable Bridge

The Studio and Storage Rooms

Ruins at Three Rivers

Doublebooked in the Huge Ruins

Attack!

So What do I do with My Nightmare?

In the day world:

In the dream world:

Lost Rose, Found Star

Star Crystal Thank You and Missing BB

False Accusations and the Dire Wolf

The Obstacle Course to doing my pract...

Potatoes and onions

The cactus Hat

hair plugs

Thinner! (milk?)

Waking up: Chapter 6: What the Rose Said and What the Fish Said

Waking Up, Spies in the Land of Dreams; Chapter 5: The Underground Sun and a Trip to the Moon

Waking Up, Spies in the Land of Dreams

A Handful of Money

Chapter 3: Persephone's, in Waking Up, Spies in the Land of Dreams

080128 free bird, weighing

And then I woke up, Chapter 2: Detention

"You know what I hate, Tammy whispere...

Breast Reduction

LOST: Radiation without Protection

3 Dreams 080121: Rude Listener and untold story, Crossing the ra

Eating Rats

Dreaming about painting

Fallen

Nested in a flower

The Extra Genital

Dream about Peter and the DeVries

The Ejection Seat

Don’t Read This Poem (An Invitation)

Don't Read This Poem (An Invitation)

Nursing Orphans and Outside Approval, Dream Sunday, February 04, 2007

Witnessing an execution; a wish for peace!

The Essences

Dreamdark Deer

Dreaming of the Honeymoon

The Birth of Flight II

Dream Storm Farm

Flight

Goat Dream

Niagara at Night

floods, babies, bicycles

Graham, the "Coronet" and the Bundle of Thumbs

Too Little Too Late

Dream Tree