• Category Archives Dreams

  • Two Masks

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                          Passover Moon

    Due to the mechanics of posting the post below precedes this one conceptually. Just sayin.

    1012718_3234944448291_1047543642_n
    first row, second from the right

    I’ve discovered two more masks: the unhappy 10 year old bucket schlepper and the 17 year old grieving his dead mother and trying to manage his fear of the future.

    Here’s how I discovered the first mask. As I’m trying to go to sleep, my mind serves up memories and feelings designed (I think.) to prevent sleep’s arrival, a habit of some years. No notion as to why. Anyhow the other night a stream of memories crossed my going to sleep threshold and tightened my gut, gave me a small ping in the lower left abdomen and tensed up my legs. I’m familiar, very familiar, with this particular sequence of muscle contractions, but this time I decided to suss out the mask I wear when they appear.

    It didn’t take me long to find it. This was the 17 year old boy who lost his mother suddenly over a period of 7 days. A stroke. After her death, with no real help in grasping what it meant and how it could be coped with in a healthy way, he began to scan the future, to look for other catastrophes. Perhaps if he was very, very careful he could spot them in advance and prevent them. After developing fully, this defensive strategy would become a generalized anxiety disorder. Not hard to see why.

    second row, second from the right. 17
    second row, second from the right. 17 note the hair

    Now I know that the onset of anxiety symptoms, even the jaw muscles that grip harder than they need to on occasion, carry that 17 year old’s deep uncertainties and fears right into the present. If I looked in a mirror, I’d probably see a kid with deep brown eyes, a full head of hair and a queasy look on his face. Perhaps now I can take off this mask, give the 17 year old back to his own time and put on the mask of the experienced adult who knows this, whatever it is, will not last, the experienced adult who knows death is not the enemy, but our friend, a part of every life.

    What’s behind mask number two? Yesterday afternoon I sat down in my leather chair and realized I was tired, real tired. Exhausted. Yet the exhaustion seemed far out of proportion to the demands of the day. Was I wearing a mask that might explain the exhaustion? I felt my way inside and there it was.

    Grandpa mask
    Grandpa mask

    Mask number two is the face of a twelve year old boy carrying buckets of water up from a basement, tossing them out the backdoor, and going back down for another one. When we moved to Canal Street in Alexandria, a bigger house, one we owned, Dad didn’t know that the basement flooded. Indiana is in the humid east, not the arid west. Big storms and heavy rains were common. When they came, our basement would fill up with water and I had to help Dad bail it out. This was often late at night. I was tired and wanted to sleep, but no. I had to carry buckets.

    Dad was not happy about it either and took it out on me, grousing about my unwillingness, my reluctance. I know this sounds like whining, but I’ve long ago moved past this in almost all aspects of my life though it did occur to me later that Dad could have invested in a sump pump.

    Copper piping here had sprung another leak. My exhaustion was not from finding a plumber, or from diagnosing the leak, not even from the hassle all this entails up here in the mountains. No, the exhaustion was my body revisiting those nights of carrying water up from the basement and throwing it out the backdoor while I was sleepy.

    This was a leak. It involved water and our basement. The result? A twelve year old’s frustration and powerlessness returned for a visit. Once I realized this, named it, saw the mask for what it was, my exhaustion lifted.


    Aging Dreams Faith and Spirituality Family Feelings Judaism Memories Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Third Phase

  • Underground Family

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                                          Anniversary Moon

    Dream last night. Once again in Oklahoma or its inner equivalent, a home place for the Ellises. This time Dad was there, having moved to a house in a city (Oklahoma City?). It was an old house, but well-maintained, with lots of wood detailing, cool even in the summer. It had older, abandoned houses around it though they were undergoing renovation. Dad was cool to me, tolerated me being there, but not much else.

    He wanted to move, abandon this house, which I thought was wonderful and would increase greatly in value once the housing around was updated. I expressed my feelings, but he was determined to move.

    I cleaned up the downstairs of the house, hoping he would stay.

    Before finding Dad in this house, I had discovered a vast underground series of rooms, all devoted to the Ellis clan in Oklahoma. There were lots of people in them, moving around, conducting business (ranching type business), hanging out. I felt uncomfortable down there, though I was also impressed with the size and scope of these various rooms. My discomfort was minimal, but there. I wandered among the rooms for a long time.


    Dreams Myth and Story

  • Hello, Darkness

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule                                                                           Christmas Moon

    “Hello, darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.”

    I’m writing this as the long night continues here on Shadow Mountain. Black Mountain is still invisible though it looms less than a mile away. These two great slabs of rock get their names from the dimming of the light. On them, this solstice night, we celebrate the darkness, our old friend.

    An article I urge you to read, Why We Need The Winter Solstice, argues that darkness is the norm in the universe. “The stars are an anomaly in the face of it, the planets an accident.”

    The tree we purchased in Evergreen yesterday and the lights that go on it are pagan reminders of eternal life and the hope that ancient humans required to make it through the apparent dying of the sun. Eternal life could stave off the encroaching darkness of death and the lights a world with no vegetation, which could seem inevitable as the nights of winter went on and on. The cold reminded our ancestors of what it would be like if the sun went down for the last time.

    With our lamps and chandeliers, our bedside lights and even our candles we defy the daily change from light to dark. And lose something precious as we do. Darkness is fecund. It encourages an inward turn toward dreams and the deep wells of our souls. But when we turn on the TV, check our e-mail or texts, even when we open a book under our favorite light, we defend ourselves against the unsettling, Self challenging dark.

    We don’t need to throw the switch on decades of artificial illumination, however. What we need is to restore at least some of the experience of the dark. Celebrating the Winter Solstice helps me stay in touch with the power, the spiritual nurture of darkness. Go outside in the night, hopefully away from city lights and look up at the stars. Then, in the way of appreciating sculpture, look not at the stars, but at the spaces between the stars, the much larger enveloping darkness, at the negative space of the universe itself.

    Or, perhaps, turn off the lights in the living room every once in awhile and just sit there, in the darkness, neither doing anything or needing to do anything. Compost grows nutrient rich in the darkness. The decay and redistribution of organic matter in the forest happens in the dark. We grow in the wet darkness of the womb and return to the long night of death. The darkness is no aberration. It is the context of life, the mother of our light driven vitality. And this is its holiday.


    Dreams Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • Aesthetic Comfort Food

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                                                     College Moon

    Again, the quiet. I haven’t put a full push on with the Latin before today, but I could see the end of the Apollo and Daphne story and wanted to get there. So, I’m mentally fatigued, ready for some deep sleep, maybe some interesting chunks of rem.

    Book illustrations, especially 19th century illustrations, give me a warm feeling. If they’re good. Sort of aesthetic comfort food. Not great in large doses, but every once in a while, just what’s needed.

     


    Art and Culture Dreams Latin Translating Metamorphoses

  • Nocturne

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                            New (Lughnasa) Moon

    It’s not a new idea, I know, but tonight I’m feeling the truth of each day as a microcosm of a life. We wake to begin our day from a state of unconsciousness, born anew into a world that has no mark on it. Our life goes on with or with out loved ones, with or with out work, with or with out health, just as a new born babies must.

    It’s that element of being thrown into the world (I love this idea of Heidegger’s.) that gets repeated each day. The wonder and the vibrancy of life comes from just that unpredictability. What will this day bring? What will this life bring?

    As the day goes on, our efforts are strong and effective or not, are loving and compassionate or not, are creative and exciting or not. And as night falls, our body grows weary and demands sleep.

    Just as it will do one day for the last time. And on that day, it will have been a day just like any other. Except, as far as we know, we’ll not be thrown into this world again. Mayhap another. Or not.

    It is now the end of this day, of this smaller life, this 26th of July in the year 2014 by Western reckoning. My body needs to rest. And so I shall. Good night.


    Aging Dreams Faith and Spirituality Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • Theogony

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                             Most Heat Moon

    “Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
    murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
    hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
    great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
    feasts for the dogs and birds,
    and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.”      Iliad opening lines, Fagles translation 1990

    Let’s see. What I was trying to say in the post below was this: political life and our opinions, our proclivities do not have to be all one thing or another. We confuse ourselves and others if we pretend it is ever other.

    We make a similar error with individuals (and with ourselves). We define people based on what we see of them, usually just a small slice, and that is true of even our closest friends. We imagine that the clues, the defining moments we know of, adhere in a package that makes some sort of sense.

    No. People are not one thing or another. They are as Walt Whitman observed of himself, “multitudes.” To say it philosophically we are one, we are many. I’m not identifying a psychological pathology here, rather stating that even the most rule bound of us violate our own rules and sense of duty, probably daily. The least rule bound among us may stagger through life from one interest to another, one opinion or another, one activity to another. And all this is usual, normal.

    Coherence is a naive tool for understanding. We have our reasons, yes, we do, but our reasons often contradict each other. We know this when we are honest with ourselves. And our emotions. Well, they come unbidden, sometimes riding us like storms, other times calming us in periods of upheaval. Notice, too, that we try to guide ourselves both by reason and by emotion, when in fact these two faculties are not two, but one, or if not exactly one, then inextricably woven together, woven so closely that we cannot without great effort separate one from the other.

    It is no wonder, when we consider these complexities that there is the saying, African I believe, that when a person dies, so does a universe. What I take from all this is to be easy with myself, forgiving, since the universe that I am does contain multitudes and at times this version of the universe holds sway, at other times this one.

    It may be, probably is, that such an observation reveals the origin of the gods. There are those within us, anger for example and its more intense cousin, rage, that can take control of us, organize our lives in ways surprising to ourselves and to others. (see the opening lines of the Iliad above.) Or, grief. Or, love. Or, fear. Or, vengeance. Or, delight. Or, abandon. Or, control. Or, poetry. Or, thought. To go against Hillman I would say not that we meet our gods in our pathologies, but in our inner selves.

    (Banquet of the Gods, Frans Floris)

    In Voudoun the practitioners talk of being ridden by the god, an enraptured state brought on by intoxication and dance and openness. I say we are ridden by gods and goddesses all the time. To our great joy and our great sorrow.

    To paraphrase Whitman, “I contain within me many gods, I am a pantheon.”

     


    Commentary on Religion Dreams Faith and Spirituality Feelings Humanities Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • The Demi-Monde

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                                   Most Heat Moon

    Yesterday I did an experiment in sleep deprivation. Not intentionally, of course. As I gained back an hour to an hour and a half at a time over the day-necessary because of the sleep lost that night-my mind began to lose track of the sleeping/waking distinction. I would wake up, still clinging to the dream state and still tired enough to be only partially awake. Then, tiredness would take over and push me back to bed, the waking state only partially realized while I was up.

    Sundowning.  In a strange place like a hospital, how the elderly could enter a state like the one I experienced yesterday, the disoriented state called sundowning, became obvious to me, sleep disrupted and coming in uneven increments over a 24 hour period. Once untethered from the usual clear demarcation between awake and asleep it could be very difficult to find your way back to it.

    It was not unpleasant, at least for me, but if the outside world, the world outside my dreamy/semi-awake state, had demanded normal attention, I could easily have become agitated, unable to understand the expectations. Then, others would have become concerned about me. They would have wanted to “help” me return to the usual way of experiencing day and night. The harder they pressed, the more difficult it would become. At least I can see how that might happen.

    Remembering my father-in-law Merton as he neared death, he seemed to float in an idiosyncratic demi-monde most of the time. Near the end he reported angels descending, coming for him. This may well have been his reality, rather than a dreamy experience. Once in this place epistemology becomes untethered too and our ways of knowing enter a different metaphysical realm. In other words our reality becomes different from that of the consensus, though we don’t know that. At that moment we have passed through a portal, not to the Otherworld, but to an Otherworld.

    It could be that death comes to us, probably does come to many of us, in a demi-monde of our own. It might come, in that case, in the cliched form of a beloved parent or other relative. Or, angels. Or, depending on your inner compass, a demon from the depths of your own hell. Me, I’m hoping for a slow stroll into Arcadian fields where, bounding toward me, are all the dogs I’ve ever loved.

     


    Aging Dreams Faith and Spirituality Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Third Phase

  • Sometimes, I Remember

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                              Summer Moon

    Dreams. A couple of nights ago. I had a staff and walked with it. Each time it struck the ground, always at an angle with the head of the staff facing forward, a message from the earth, from the ground of all being came to me. Unfortunately, I don’t remember what they were.

    Last night, a very peculiar dream. I lived near an ocean, had just moved there, and the news programs on tv had stories about the red sea. In my little community, a village similar to Conwy, Wales which I visited in 1995, the long time residents laughed. “Red sea. Nah. Red kelp.”

    When I went to the ocean to see for myself, the red in the water rippled and flowed in long wet strands of ocean plant life. A bronze colored kelp. When I went back inside a building near the water and climbed some narrow stairs to a room that looked out over the ocean and the swirling kelp, however, I got an ever bigger surprise. There was an eye. The kelp like strands were a body covering for some huge ocean creature. Not a whale. Unknown, but huge, larger than ocean-going cargo carrier and tucked in very close to shore.

    Running back downstairs, I moved out on a crumbling concrete path to a large rock that sat by the ocean. Up on it was Sam Eliot, the movie star. He just nodded toward the ocean and I went around the rock’s edge to look out over the water. I couldn’t see water, just the long strains of kelp-like body covering.

    Further on, down on a row of shore side businesses, sausage and lemonade stands, curio sellers, I found another vantage point from which to look out on the ocean.  From this angle I could see a head in blue and white, almost neon like, glows, and it was a huge human face, something like the drum major on the Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.

    I got the feeling that these two gigantic creatures, one human, one aquatic, were about to confront each other, though it didn’t feel like a battle. More like an important moment of contact between two modes of being.


    Dreams

  • Nocturnes

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                      Summer Moon

    Nocturnes. That’s how I think of these nighttime posts. They come from a desire to add closure to the day, to respond to the peace around me. If they were music, they would be raw jazz of the sort played by John Coltrane or Thelonious Monk. Not intended to express thought, but to evoke emotion.

    A sense of quiet elegy, the poetry of stars and high cirrus wispy among them, an owl in the distance. These are interiors, moments of the slow merging between consciousness and the inner world, when the dream songs begin to sing themselves into existence, waiting only for sleep.

    The passing between seasons, between waking and sleeping and sleeping and waking are fraught for me, at times with a simple longing to remain either awake or asleep, in winter or in fall; but, at other times with melancholy and the darkness, states that obscure the inner life, even cause it pain, or come from the pain it creates.

    Tonight the music plays low and sweet in the background, the lights are going down and the time for the set to finish has arrived. Good night.

    (Alphonse Osbert – Les chants de la nuit)


    Dreams

  • Manitou Spring

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                           Bee Hiving Moon

    Drove up to Manitou Spring. This a long, spaghetti like town winding along Colorado 24. Pikes Peak overlooks it and the Garden of the Gods sits just north of town. Over the years it has become a haven for certain kinds of seekers, some New Age, but others of the Buddhist and Christian persuasions.  The downtown has that headshop feel, scented with patchouli and Grateful Dead tunes playing everywhere. At least it felt like that.

    There are lots of different shops, inns, motels and hotels. Amazing to me, we happened on the Cliff House Inn. My jaw dropped. This very building featured itself in a dream of mine a year or so ago. In my dream the entire building was made of stone, instead of just the first story as here, but otherwise it fit.

    This was a strange moment, standing in a real place I’d never been, seeing a building I already knew. This is not deja vu, this was a memory, a dream memory. Very odd. But it felt good, as if I was supposed to see this now, for some reason.

    Kate and I drove back and are now about to take our regular afternoon nap.


    Dreams Travel