Tag Archives: dreams

recalibration

graffiti: blue sun with an eye at the heart of it, green grass underneath, In my dream, everything vibrated when it was time for me to get hurt — like there was a recalibration going on, like the movie was changing, and instead of the truck I was driving flipping over, I dipped into the dangerous gravel patch, still couldn’t make the truck slow down, but wasn’t going to die.

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One of the prompts I wanted to offer during the Writing Transitions workshop (which I’m going to offer again later this year) had to do with presencing both what’s joyous and what’s difficult about change, at the same time.

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the most audacious thing of all

stencil graffiti: a woman with her head thrown back, laughing or yelling with joy, and the words "je joue oui"Last night, my friend said, Whatever you want, you deserve it.

Do you ever sink into that belief, even just sometimes? And then let yourself want big? Like, quietly, when no one’s looking, do you think, I really want to live in Paris for a year: and then let yourself experience the possibility for a moment, fully, before the naysaying editor voices jump in and stomp all over it?

This morning, in my notebook writing, I made a list of the things I want — and, as I read through it, felt: why not?

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using what’s gone fallow inside her

photo of poppies by a wall, their shadows collaborating with the graffiti there.I missed you yesterday! After a gorgeous and intense workshop on Monday night, I wasn’t able to get up as early as I’d wanted — not til 7, which gave me enough time to do my morning three pages in my notebook but not enough time before leaving for work to do the blog. Thought I might do it from work, but work was, you know, work. Busy. And most days when I get home from work (since I spend all day on a computer), I don’t turn the computer on. Last night I got to have a quiet meal at home (miracle) with my honey, and then we spent a little time in the back art cottage, getting table and art supplies set up (finally), moving the storage around, bringing candle and incense and images for the walls, bringing a radio and red wine and human scent, so that the little visitors who maybe have been spending time there in that space know that they’re about to have some company. Felt very good.

Once I was done hanging pictures and consolodating boxes, I sat in the rocking chair and imagined myself working in that space. Then I picked up the copy of Jack Kornfeld’s  The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, a book my mom lent to me when I was in Omaha the last time. After this weekend’s body mindfulness workshop, I was grateful to read and think more about the idea of mindfulness, and how constant and deep-veined busy-ness is the opposite of mindfulness (isn’t it?). I let myself just notice the places I was tense and achy, just notice, and maybe breathe into them a little bit, like Alex would suggest. I’m grateful for her guidance and leadership and friendship.

Last night I dreamed about my mother and sister and stepfather, again. Do you have those recurring, themed dreams? In this one, I was throwing things at him, feeling so strong, hating him cleanly, not pretending like everything was ok. At the end, my mother said she was going to leave him, but she was Bruce Willis (but only when she said that part) in the dream.  Maybe that was the persona she’d have needed to be able to go — I could analyze that further, but I just want to leave it alone.

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how it went

old Omaha advertising graffiti -- near the old market

(click on the image for more Omaha photographs)

In my dream, I’m in Omaha and it’s then. I’ve gone to a party with friends (and at the party, it’s now — then all the times converge). I’ve gone to a party and had a couple of drinks and maybe I danced. Then I came home. Later Mom and les and Sarah get home, they are angry with me. I can’t remember if I was already prepared for them to be angry with me, but in the dream it’s the way it was then: Sarah letting me know I’m in trouble, then Mom talking to me. I can’t remember how it all went, and I’m frustrated, because it’s an important dream. Mom is angry, angry that I went to the party and had drinks and then drove. I  begin to shout back at her, and I explain about the amount of time I was there, about the dancing; I know she isn’t worried about me, it’s more that I went to the party at all that les would be upset about, and so that’s what she’s upset about. I think I start shouting at her about les. We start upstairs, or on the stairs, on the way down to the living room or kitchen.

Was I already packing, even before they came home? I decide I’ve had it, I have to leave, I shout at them, I break things. This is the last straw. I wish I could tell you how it all went because it’s important, how it happened: I’m yelling at les, and then mom intervenes, and she’s on my side. This is important. This never happened. While I’m yelling I’m trying to think about where I could go. There’s nowhere I can go: I don’t have friends whose houses I can stay at, I don’t have any money. There’s sharp plastic crunching, glass breaking. les is going to be the one who has to leave so I can stay, is that how it went? In the dream, I’m fighting back. I’m opening my mouth and letting the words fly out, I’m acting on impulse and winning. The upstairs bedroom is still my bedroom (so it’s before he moved us downstairs to be further away from his bedroom with mom), and there are clothes everywhere, a suitcase or duffel bag — maybe I’m late for a flight. Earlier in the dream, or in another dream, I was traveling — I was going to London or somewhere else very far for only a couple of days.

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shaking off as much sand as we can before we get in

puppy graffitihttp://www.flickr.com/photos/44124436774@N01/82179210The alarm goes off and I wake up with the feeling like I’m on the edge of the world, like I’m in a void, like nothing’s happened or about to happen, just my heart is pounding.

It takes  a little bit of being up before I can remember my dreams, some big performance I’m supposed to be mc-ing, with or at the CSC, it’s supposed to be like one we’ve done there before but now Robert wants it to be different, only now I can’t remember exactly how.  The first one had had a couple hundred attendees, and now we have maybe 20 or so. It was only 18 minutes past when the show was about to start — more people were probably on their way.  I was trying to get us all to move outside from this big room we were in, so that the show could start — earlier in the dream, I think it was earlier, I was taking an exam, an english test, like reading comprehension, only I started the test late because I was looking for something, like I didn’t have the right exam booklet or something else.  I was cocky about the test, I didn’t really think I needed that much time for it because it would be so easy for me, but then I ran out of time and was going to have to start making educated guesses.  it was a multiple choice exam, and I was trying to remember the rules about educated guessing, like you have to do on the SAT sometimes.

This whole year has seemed like fall, like we moved from winter-rainy season (finally, in May, we moved out of it), into this thick warmish early fall, where the chill’s always just around the corner. Does it seem that way to you?  We’re starting to cook fall things — I’m ready for apple dishes, soup.

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I could take one small step that helped me feel more sane

protein for everyone: beans, lentils and peas in small paper bags...It’s nearly 7. My alarm went off, first, at 5:24. Fresh! said, “I think you should go in there and tell them, ‘Good morning, world.  I slept in.'”

So, yeah.  What he said.  Good morning — and happy Monday!

I don’t remember my dreams last night. I do remember that at one point this weekend I was dreaming about my sister and her boyfriend and we were in a library (the library of a university that I have visited a bunch of times during dreams), and then later I was off on my own in the library, heading for the HQs, while my sister and her boyfriend found us a table. There, just before the HQs, was a certain movie star, looking for something, or having found it, and talking with me about why he was in that section of the library. It was a little odd that this movie star was in my dreams, until I was telling Fresh! about the dream later, and I said his name (Michael Cera), and I heard the pun there — I thought about Lacan, about the subconscious as a language, about the metaphors and puns and slips of Real in through our every day speech.  Maybe the whole dream was about me and my sister (Sarah).

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you can see the light and dark of us

Six Persimmons, 13th century ink painting by Mu Ch'i

"Six Persimmons," Mu Ch'i (image from nidrayoga.com/)

In my dream, we’re driving out in the country — maybe it’s Maine, maybe it’s here — and we’re with friends, or someone new. We’re showing people where we used to live. It could be backcountry Maine, or Nebraska.  It feels familiar.  Or maybe Fresh! wasn’t there at first, and I point out to a friend, there behind that poster/picture/board sign of a bear (?), we lived a few miles down that road.  She smiles, thinks it’s wonderful.  Then we’re out on that road, and another friend and I are driving up a dirt section, he wants to see something, we’re in a car; Fresh! says, Uh, Guys? like he’s trying to warn us about something, but we’re off, and it’s not til I get to the top of the road that I can see an enormous tornado off in the distance. I shout to my friend, who’s driving, I say Turn around, turn around, turn around, turn around, and yank at him and the car the way you would turn a horse.  We get back down the hill and Fresh! already has a little tornado on him — he’s turning around, keeping it to his back, then gets out a lighter, and puts the flame to the base of the tornado. The flame diminishes it, then it disappears. I feel proud, like, of course he knows what to do when he has a tornado on his back. Everyone is relieved, and we drive back to a big house fast to shutter it up before the enormous tornado gets to us.  We listen to weather reports on the radio, like at home, in NE. The house is a mess, and I have to shower.  Why?  I go in to the shower room, a huge bathroom that has a shower section on one side of a half-wall, with a break in the middle of it to walk through from one side to the other: bathroom side, shower side.  I take off my clothes and shower, then trade out with someone else. She has to shower, too.  I think we might have been washing something off, but I can’t remember.  We smile at each other, friendly, comfortable — not sexy. Then I go down to try and help clean up. Why was there mess everywhere? I have to close the big heavy doors on some of the larger rooms, they’re the double or more sets of doors that you pull out of slots in the wall, inside doors to close off a room from the rest of the house.  The rollers on the doors keep coming out of their tracks, and I can’t get them to close.  One of the rooms has two, then four or more doors to keep it shut. I can’t close it off. As I type this up, I see some metaphor in it.  The kitchen is filled with trash and mess, dirty dishes — is it our mess? I had thought about telling people to board up the windows, so that glass wouldn’t break all over us when the tornado hit, but then I thought it was sort of showing off to say that kind of thing, and anyway, we never boarded up our windows at home during tornado warnings — we just got into a safe place.

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sometimes professional isn’t what you need

I dreamed my sister had a black dog, like the one we had when we were younger, Katja.  I dreamed someone was getting married, a thin blonde white woman, she was in a stunning, cinched dress, material clinging and then cascading, her hair up in long tight ringlets, she was frustrated with how tight they still were, she wanted them to loosen, she bounded up to the window, the  mirror, she bounded up and then kept flipping her head over and back up,  over and back up, then she would shake her head in the mirror, she wanted the curls to come loose, not look so tight and obvious.  All the women around her wanted to help, but she was a whirlwind of energy all alone in the middle.  There was more to the dream.  Sarah wanted the dog to come sit with her — mom was there, too.  We were all staying someplace, like guests at a hotel or a rented house or someplace not our home.

I dreamed of a gathering of transfolks, like a community center sort of meeting, and Fresh and I were rushing through for something, we stopped to get water, during the meeting, and maybe Fresh had to check in with someone, and I was alone, the only cis person with there I think, during the drop in casual support space, and I was talking about how going to wedding is so frustrating because it’s broken down, split into genders, just 2, and I wanted that to change, to open.

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