Dream about Peter and the DeVries

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

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)

 

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!

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

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

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

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

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

Dream Storm Farm

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

Flight

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

Goat Dream

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

 

floods, babies, bicycles

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

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

"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

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

The MOST Animals at Home

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

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

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

Merthiolate Blue

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.