a dream quest

up at dybdahl's house john is getting ready to go hunting in an area near the distant small town of wall.  young zelah wants to join him,  but i would have to go and pick her up later. i decide after consulting a map, that i will head there on skis. the skis are old, made from a log cut in half, so the are rounded on the bottom and flat on top, with some sort of metal and leather bindings. and some kind of decorative covering at the front point, which i remember thinking would be marketable. i am skiing happily along, and it seems my father is with me, giving me advice.  good thing too, because the terrain is very rugged and steep. my father yells at me to stop just before i was about to ski off the edge of a cliff. he says "i told you to always check out the terrain before you ski down it!" he was right. it was very treacherous.  then i decide to follow some railroad tracks that seem to follow a safer route, but he is still chastising me. he is right, again it is very steep and i am wondering how the trains are able to make it down these crazy tracks, but i proceed carefully and it turns out ok. the tracks lead me into a small town, and the snow starts to become thinner and sparser, so i take off the skis and i am carefully climbing on very wet long grass, using egg beater sticks as walking sticks?  there are streams of melting snow and children are playing here. one child is swimming and playing in the water and i warn him that the stream is very cold and fast and dangerous for him to play in.  my father does not seem to be with me now, i think he did not want to risk the steep slope. (funny because he is a far better skier than i) i go into the town, still following the train tracks, and they seem to lead right inside a house. i apologize to the people for walking right in, and ask them if i am headed the right direction to wall. they are nice enough, and direct me through a strange little door in the wall. there are a couple of small doors, ostensibly to keep the cold out.  i ask if they can close the door behind me, as it has two sliding panels, and my hands are full with my pack and skis as i crawl out through the tiny opening.  i go to another building, and here we are building a fire with tiny sticks to keep warm. hope is there with her beautiful blue twinkling eyes, and heather with her baby. some one asks when they will be allowed to play the game_____? (i hope i will remember what it was called.) the answer was, when they were 13 and in the presence of a yak in some place. disappointed, we traveled on (seemed to have a different companion now, can't recall whom.) in the next town there was a yak, and some code was spoken, and i had been given two sticks from the previous place, and now it seemed we would begin to play this strange game, we were very excited! (then i woke up.  i very much wanted to go back to sleep and continue this strange quest. i did dream a bit more, but cannot recall any details.  this dream was very surreal and compelling.  it is relevant that my father was warning me of dangers, because he is someone i would often turn to for advice in the past, and he is no longer in that role. perhaps that is why i traveled on alone. hope and heather are two women that i admire a lot, and do seem to have a whimsical, magical comic side about them, so interesting that they seemed to hold the mystery of the game. also interesting that i was traveling to the town of wall, since boundaries and permeability have been a theme lately. also funny that i was going to pick up zelah, yet i did not bring my car. )

how to look at dreams...

        you can look at dreams like your own little movies.  you are the star, you may play the hero, the victim, or the villain. your subconscious mind is the director, imagination is the writer. the set can be anywhere in the universe,  the plot line is surreal, but the special effects are so fantastic you find yourself wrapped up in the story, believing that almost anything is possible.  when you wake up, it is like the credits are rolling. normal consciousness slowly returns and you think to yourself "man, that seemed so real". often there is thankfulness that it was not real, as the images can be quite disturbing.  Sometimes there is the wish, "If only that had been real..."  If only we could bring the treasures we find in dreams into our waking lives.  in a way, it is possible.
        By exploring the images we observe through dream analysis, we gain the valuable treasure of understanding the secret messages that this other world experience is trying to communicate to our awake self. the best time to look at your dreams is on a sleepy sunday morning, or anytime you have a chance to awaken slowly and really examine the images and themes from your night's adventuring.
        If we think about our dreams in a visual sense, we first notice that it is interesting that we can "see" with our eyes closed. try it now... it is not blackness that you see, but often colors. the red color is the most common, and has a simple scientific explanation, you are seeing the light shining through the tiny blood vessels in our eyelids.  you may even find that you can see the shapes of these capillaries, and their tiny pulsing movements.  that yellow shade could easily be the sunlight filtering through. but how can we explain the swirling colors and geometric patterns we see when the eyes are closed? the shapes of letters, words and symbols that a writer might see, or wasn't that the face of aunt mildred, who died long ago?  science falls short when we discuss the powers of the imagination.
the "eyes" we are seeing with now are not the physical eyes at all, but the mind's eye.
       throughout history, in all cultures, back to the dawn of time, humans have experienced dreams, visions, and altered states of consciousness.  just as long, we have tried to decipher the meaning behind these experiences, often looking to spiritual or supernatural explanations, in fact, these visionary experiences may well be said to be the source of all spiritual inquiry and religion!  many places and times would have burned the heretic who suggested that god, angels, ghosts, the devil and his minions were all nothing but images from the imagination and dreams, yet we find these symbols to be nearly universally occurring in dreams. i however, do not propose  that this makes these concepts false, no, to the contrary i would avow the radical notion that dreams themselves are as real as our waking life.
        just as descartes asked how we know what is real and what is a dream, i would turn that inside out and ask how do we know that our dream life is not real?  most humans spend eight out of every twenty four hours in sleep, that is one third of our lives!  if a person lives to be 75, they have spent 25 years asleep, and newer research tells us that much of this time is spent in dreams. yet, many people have no memory of their dreams at all.  this situation can be improved if a person chooses to devote time, effort and study to remembering and understanding dreams.  solving this puzzle can truly help a person comprehend the inner workings of their mind and psychology.  it can improve relationships, it can help us understand the nature of existence.  many grand inspirations have come through dreams, and many scientific problems have been solved, including the discovery of atoms and molecules. some dreams have even predicted future events. with all these possibilities, it would be foolish to leave this rich ground untilled.
        when examining symbols in dreams, it can be useful to use a good book, for much has been written on the subject.  a good book to look at is 20,000 dreams, by theresa francis-cheung,
 which i have paraphrased a bit in this writing.  of course freud and jung also have much to say on the subject, but aside from what you can learn from books, i encourage you to observe your dreams in detail.  writing down everything you can remember.  then really think about those images and details.  freud was big on using free association, jung spoke of archetypes, but your own intuition is often the best guide.  what did aunt mildred mean to you? when you saw the snake eating the apple, did you think of eve? when your cousin held the dog turd to her mouth like a cigar, what did that mean? the images can be quite bizarre, but they often hold some metaphor for a circumstance in life. my cousin was really talking some crap last time i saw her. maybe i should call her and see if she is doing ok?  when the car is spinning out of control and there are no breaks, does this mean that my life is out of control?  when  i ran over the pedestrian and she died, did it foretell that i would witness a terrible accident 3 days later?  many times the images will fill your head with these types of questions, and life will sometimes gradually sort them out for you. was the dream trying to tell me to pay more attention when i am driving? maybe i could have avoided that fender bender. also when you see someone you know in a dream, it is often important that you tell them the dream. you may have an important message that they need to hear.  another way of looking at dream characters is to consider if they may represent aspects of yourself that you should take a look at.
        no matter how you look at it, dreams are a fountain of information about your inner life.  by looking at dreams, you cannot help but get to know yourself better, and by understanding ourselves, perhaps we can better understand our world. keep dreaming!

Francis-Cheung, Theresa. The Element Encyclopedia of 20,000 Dreams: The Ultimate A-Z to Interpret the Secrets of Your Dreams. London: HarperElement, 2006. Print.

lucid dream

was lucid dreaming this morning between snooze alarm beeps. canoeing up the front of gigantic waves crying out oh $#!+ then down the other side. and i mean impossibly gigantic. i found i could control the size, temperature, and intensity with my mind.  thinking this next waves is going to be a nice warm gentle splash in the face. ( this shows that when circumstance thows big scary obstacles in our path, we can control how they effect us by our attitudes. coming on shore i thought to myself now there will be a nice freshwater lake to wash the salt off me and then there was. the next part was deeper and i lost the lucidity, it involved the yard flooding and children swimming and playing in the mud. must type more later...gotta get ta work...

the dream

childlike, broken open
the dream comes again
guilt anger pain
i want to do things differently
go back in time
in the dream
the house still sits
empty
waiting
and you are still alive
i advocate for your return
reading old love letters
written on scraps of paper
glued together from your collection
explain to liz how my mom did you wrong
years later another breakdown
i wake and worry
don't let me be next.

vermicular parasites.

Have been having parasite dreams again this week. last night we were on a bus, with z and my ma. people were setting up booths and selling things. we were looking at some bags and a jacket that imani was making, checking out her handywork, and z was interested in buying a bag to carry books, but i wasn't quite sure the design was rights for books and suggested maybe she could get something customized.  firewalker was there and when i asked how he was doing he said not well at all, as he still had vermicular parasites, in fact he was looking thin and pasty white.  hmmm.

homeland security

was training for some position vital to national security, did not follow the rules and got in BIG TROUBLE! go figure....

bobcat and piano

haven't been keeping up with my dreams lately, need to get back in the habit of writing them every morning.  when i work on it i usually remember them every night, when i let it slide they drift away.  however, i did see a bobcat in my dream last night. also, recently have been playing piano in my dreams, and i can remember seeing the music in detail and figuring out the notes. also need to get back in the habit of regular piano practice. so many hobbies... so many jobbies!