February 19th, 2014

I find myself at one of my old softball practices, but it isn't the actual field we would practice on. I'm standing in line with three other girls, and we take turns going up to the pitcher's mound and throwing down to the catcher, not pitching. I get to observe me as a child. I was slightly chubby, with an unflattering triangle-shaped haircut. I would be unremarkable if one didn't look directly at me. But as I came forward to the mound, I saw that I was very different and had a remarkable way for a girl of 10. I was very solemn. I moved slowly and had a look of deep pondering when I was not in action. My eyes were bright and made the heart ache without knowing really why. I felt very sad that this was the past, and in the course of events and choices through life, I had completely forgotten this girl. Young me wound up and threw, now moving quickly and with thoughtful intent, throwing harder and farther than the other girls had thrown, although it wasn't a perfectly straight throw... Later in dream, I am the only woman in a war regiment. I also have a son, whom I bring swaddled up and tucked in a carrier. We travel from camp to camp, coming closer and closer to the point of war. I drift away and back to this dream many times last night. It is a combination of the past and the present, we are dressed in old clothes and only have the comforts of the past, meaning very little, but the setting and the houses we pass are of the present. Now I am in a different dream and am in the near past. I have found an old dress, and I know it used to belong to a famous woman of the past. I travel down a winding green road towards the home of a historian who knows more about it. The road is beautiful and the trees just bow over with the heaviness of the verdancy, and the colors all around are bright and poignant like memories of summers in the past when the sun would slant and all felt so slow and simple, yet you knew that this would be a fleeting moment in time you would remember someday when looking through dust covered windows in an abandoned house. Back with my regiment again, and we are very close to the battle now. We have found shelter in a damp, dripping underground cavern with a stream running through it. We explore and have fun with what could be our last few days with each other and Earth. What an amazing place to be in the end... We smile and laugh with each other, and our hearts are surprisingly light. Someone is taking pictures of us, and I have the dress on from the previous part of my dreaming. I begin to take it off, and the men in the group are gathering around, as though they never really realized that I was a woman before. A picture is taken of me in a green, mossy, slick nook in the walls of the cave, halfway out of the white lace dress, some sunlight coming in from the nearby mouth, highlighting the the slick rock crags, the green of the moss and in my eyes, and the copper in my hair. I'm in the house I was traveling to get to before, and wearing the dress again as the request of the historian. She nods and looks at me intently. She says that this was the wedding dress of the old-time bank-robber's girl, who helped him jailbreak and was famous for her adventurous personality. We go to a cemetery, where the old historian woman points to the farthest row, farthest headstone to the north, a rose quartz slab laid flat on the ground, very unassuming. Though far from it, I sense that it says her real name instead of the name she went by in her life with the bankrobber, and that she is buried by her family, not him. Back with my regiment, we are going into battle tomorrow morning. We are camped beneath a huge willow tree, which offers meager shelter from a storm breaking overhead. The rain drips through the branches and saturates us through and through. My baby squirms in his carrier, and I feel how encumbered by wet swaddling he is. I loosen the fabric and pull him out of the carrier, letting him stand up and move around. He smiles big at me, and it cuts through the endless gray all around and straight into my heart.

December 23, 2013

Dream of a young horse learning a lesson, and I am learning with him, because I am there with him, inside his perspective, experiencing the myriad of feelings as they come through. He was running fearlessly, and slid down an icy mountain slope, and was just clinging to the edge of a cliff, with his front legs and hooves digging into the snowy ledge. He had to wrestle for a while before finally being able to hoist himself back up on the ledge… What was below? Maybe the fall wasn’t really the danger, but rather the fear of falling itself… Next dream: I am sitting on a riverside with a new mother, a very nature-hippy person in raggedy clothes. I ask? to hold the baby and she hands him over to me, and we just sit there chatting (can’t remember about what) for a long while. Eventually she takes him back. Next I am at a farmer’s market, and usually it’s pretty quiet, but I see tons of people coming in and setting up their booths. It’s gonna be a huge one! I’m super excited. I’m in a long canvas tent, open on the sides, and remember I have some jewelry in the car, and think, oh hey, I’ll go get it and set up my own booth! I make my way through to my truck, and some people are all ready to go, and are in front of their booths promoting their items. One guy has beautiful homemade cheeses, and I make a mental note to come back to him. I finally make it to my truck, and have to move it for reasons which don't make sense now. I do it, but then see I am wedged in behind another truck, a big red one. I figure it’ll be okay, and I can get out after they leave. I reach over for my bag of jewelry, and inside I just see a few pendants, and I say to myself that it’s not enough for a table…

December 22, 2013

Dream of driving down a rural road between towns with my young daughter. She is about 4 or 5 years old. Something about the sky catches my eye and looking up at it, I see a swirling ceiling of dark clouds, stretching from both directions as far as the eye can see, above the clear golden horizon. A point forms in the middle of my field of vision, and as the point pulls down further towards the earth, I realize I am witnessing the formation of a tornado. In all the pictures and videos I’ve seen growing up, I’ve never seen such a massive tornado; the entire storm system is being funneled down into this one funnel, forming a black upside down triangle against the bright yellow sky. I feel the ominosity and urgency to get to shelter immediately, and within moments of driving south we reach the edge of a small town. My dad appears and leads us to good hiding places. He goes into one, but it isn’t big enough for us. Holding my daughter’s hand, I pull her into a concrete spiral stairwell across the road from where my dad is. We sit there and wait, listening. There isn’t much to hear, just a feeling of heavy motion pressing down on us. Then all feels light again. I look at my phone, and on the screen I have a radar map; it shows a dot where the point of the cyclone is touching the earth, and I see that it has moved just past us. I know we’re safe to come out now.

December 20, 2013

I dream that my grandmother and I are on a long road-trip together, but it feels like we are heading home now, going north. It’s very late in the night. We are thinking about whether we should drive on through the night, but I really feel like stopping; more because I want to draw the trip out longer, and see more sights. From the passenger seat window I look out and see many smallish, bright red houses, all lit up warmly with white string lights underneath big homestead trees. I think, “What are the chances that this is an inn…” then my eyes make it to a sign and the words The ____ ____ Inn (Quiet Homestead?) (Little Red Homestead?) come out of the blur of letters. I convince her to stop here for the night. Inside, the scene becomes different. My grandmother is no longer there. Instead there is a somewhat large group of friends, and a few others whom I don’t know. My friend ______ is there, somehow I know it is him, but I don’t actually see him, because he’s having very loud sex with an unknown person in the adjoining room, and they seem to be synchronizing their act with a movie soundtrack playing loudly in their room. After they’re done, they come out and the night progresses on with everyone just hanging out. ______’s girlfriend asks us to change the channel on the TV so they can watch the movie they were just playing in their room. Others in the room acquiesce, but I speak out, feeling offended and weirded-out that they want to bridge their private life into our lives. I say, “I really don’t feel comfortable watching the movie you were just having sex to.” They turn it back to a football game, and I am grateful. ______’s girlfriend, a very young and pretty girl, with a kind of “valley-girl” way of speaking, comes over to my side, and we talk to each other about nothing in particular, and she says, “I really do want to finish that movie, though. I think it was really interesting.” I am about to say “If you must,” but then a realization comes to me, and I say, “Was it really interesting, or did you just have the hots for the lead guy?” She laughed, and said, “I think you might be right…”

December 18, 2013

Dream that I’m getting ready for a dance with my friend ------- from high school. She is lying on a couch, not putting much effort into getting ready, like she might just go as is. I am going all out, with a beautiful dress, hair straightened and curled, and am doing my makeup. My feeling is like this might be my last event like this, so go all out. I decide I need some better makeup, so I go to a really high-end store. It is devoted to skin products, and is all soft light and greens. In one section of shelves, or maybe it was drawers?, I see endless colors of eye shadow, the most beautiful colors I’ve ever seen, natural crushed minerals with a slight sparkle to them. They’re all in round crystal tubs. I see one in particular which I fall in love with, a deep rust/burgundy. The people working there wear lab coats; and as I’m walking around, one of them is a man who looks like a TV actor, one who I’ve always been attracted to. I suddenly just want him, and the dance feels trivial. I talk to him in my most sultry voice, my eyes looking up at him through my lashes, as I wind around the pillars and product columns. I say something very clear, like “Wouldn’t you just like to have sex with me instead?” He is following me and says, “Yes, but I (am supposed to be working)” but I see he is walking with me towards a door in the northeast corner of the store. I open the door into a very small, low-ceilinged room, which is comfortable, beautiful, clean, and has a low bed against the far wall that takes up the whole end of the small room, draped in soft sheets. There are a couple steps to descend fully into the room. He still is outside the door, and I sit on the bed and start undressing. When naked, I get into the bed and pull the sheets around me to frame my body. I am so hot and ready and hungry for him. I see the shadow of him taking his clothes off in the crack of the light under the door. Finally the door opens and it’s not him! It’s a woman. An older woman with dark red hair, taller than me. Inside it feels like a bucket of lukewarm water was poured down my belly. I think ok, what am I going to do… and I still have the aching need between my legs, and also I feel bad to have to tell her no now that she is here and ready. I picture just letting her do what she will with me, but I close my eyes and the dream changes In the same night, another dream is of me giving birth again. I am on a huge bed, my head tilted up, and the bed is on a platform in the middle of an otherwise empty, slate gray room, which feels like it is made of stone. A stark white light shines on the bed. The viewpoint switches back and forth between 1st perspective and a view from the perimeter of the room, circling the bed. I feel the pressure, though not the pain, and I begin pushing. The birth comes easily, and I reach down and cradle the baby in my arms, holding it blood-covered, slippery body to my heart. I don’t want it to feel the cold darkness of the room; I can’t imagine a transition that would be more of a shock, from the warm wet softness to a cold damp stone.

December 17, 2013

I am outside a large building; it feels like a college hall/dormitory. I look up at a window up a few stories and start climbing up the wall, and, seeing the room is empty, into the room. I then sneak out of that room into another room. I go on exploring, going from one room to another. There is a room which is like a huge conference room, decked out in dark, age-old wood, holding the feelings one would expect to feel in the hall of King Arthur’s Round Table. Some rooms open out into hallways, some just open up into another room. It is such a strange maze of doors. I am lucky to never get caught, for most rooms are empty, and in the ones’ which aren’t, I fortuitously enter the rooms at the perfect moment, and no one sees me. Until the final room, where I stop because it is just a tiny dorm room with two guys living in it. They see me, I’m caught. I smile and they smile back, knowingly. Without a moment’s thought or question, we begin caressing each other, and the dream turns into a sexual exploration between three strangers, a daze of intimacy where no real detail comes forward, and is just a lingering impression of casual joy and comfort.

December 16, 2013

I am in a makeshift hospital, the kind you imagine in a war zone, or in a third-world country. Around me is soft light radiating from the walls of the canvas tent. I feel just warm, calm, and protected, even though those around me seem to be concerned, fearful. I am pregnant, about to give birth, reclining in a bed up off the ground, swaddled cozily in white sheets. There is no one else there except nameless faces of the few doctors or nurses who come in to tend to me. I realize the moment has come, and I can feel the baby coming thru me.. I feel no pain at all; in fact, it feels really nice, like a long-awaited release. I give a push, and the next moment the child is out, and the nurse/doctor/my attendant says, “Oh, it’s already all done.” Then he/she swaddles him quickly and hands him to me. At first touch, I feel so completely overtaken with the enormity of preciousness in the small bundle of new life… I feel like I must devote every bit of my awareness and learning and ability to be able to make good on it’s choice to have me for a mother. The nurse puts the baby in my arms, and for a moment I awkwardly hug him to me, his relaxed body being so supple and floppy. But then I remember how to hold a baby… like a memory of motion returning.