Only a Dream Away

Losing my shoes at the Indian dance

The flood of dreams has returned, after a dearth brought about by too much study and stress. The past few nights I have dreamed almost all night long, different scenarios flowing seamlessly into the next, dozens of them in a night, so many I can't remember all but a few aspects the following morning.

The night before last, a few snippets remain: looking at Dulac-style children's book illustrations, woodcuts maybe, and reading some illuminated caption about bees, which had to do with the illustration. The more I tried to focus on what I was reading as the words appeared before me, the more I tried to be lucid so as to remember it, the more the words would slip away. It turns out Dulac did an illustration for Shakespeare's the Tempest called "Ariel and the Bee" and also did woodcuts for Yeats' "A Vision,"(see left) neither of which I knew about before (consciously anyway). Interestingly, just before bed that night I was meditating in a milk and honey bath about Yeats' gyres and the lemniscate of the Mellisae tradition.

All I remember from last night was going to an East Indian party. When I arrived, dozens and dozens of women were outside and had arranged themselves to a do a complicated dance. They were all wearing saris but not the sort that were glamorous or of very high quality; it seemed to be a village folk dance, and they were common women gathering for a festival. I looked down at myself and was dressed similarly. I took off my shoes and put them with the others off to the side. We were in a semi-enclosed stone courtyard. It was daylight and warm. Yes, probably in India. Some of the women looked at me like I didn't belong, and I felt like I didn't quite belong either, but they went on with their dancing. 

I went inside where there was food and some friends of mine (whom I do not recognize) were helping to set up and keep the food coming out. I was in a large 'kitchen' -- nothing indicated that it was a kitchen except for a large refrigerator which wouldn't always close properly. I remember volunteering to take some things out of the freezer to help it seal. The room was sunny, lots of big windows, warm, not air-conditioned, and was carpeted. The main party was going on in some other place but I never went there.

At the end of the evening I went back to retrieve my low-heeled shoes -- which were a curious yellow color, not something I'd ever wear, and I couldn't find them. There was one pair of shoes left that resembled mine but I was entirely sure they were mine. I put them on, and they did fit, so I took them.

Russia, India: tenderness when things are not quite right

Last night:

I am a man, and I understand that I am in Russia and I am a prisoner of war. I am being led out of a dark room into another room where people are assembled -- men and women, but they are relaxed. I'm scared, and I'm standing in a doorway. I know I'm going to some kind of judgment.

Before I can cross the room to the waiting people, I have to go by several tables on which are arranged baskets of herbs, baskets of bottles, beakers, burners and other lab/medicine-making supplies. I walk forward from the people who are holding me and run my fingers over the herbs, look at the assortment of amber bottles and jars, and other instruments I do not understand. What are they doing here? I feel a tenderness for these plants, and I am drawn to the table almost desperately, like remembering something long forgotten but suddenly and profoundly remembered.

My captors, who had let me walk freely in my sadness toward the tables, take hold of me again and lead me to the group of people who are seated in chairs by some windows. They don't look like a judgment committee at all. Many of them are corpulent women, who look like grade school teachers, just chatting. I am confused. The unseen people who are handling me push me down and make me sit on the floor. 

I feel something small and wet on my partially bare lower leg (I'm wearing tatters). I turn and see what looks like a paintbrush just leaving a bluish viscous daub of something there. I suddenly notice that I am not alone -- there are many other prisoners also on the floor, and they have all been touched with the swab. I ask what is going on and they tell me: "This solution is poison. Slowly, your heart and breathing will stop and you will be dead."

It flickers through my mind that that is probably what they have been preparing with the plants. This seems perverse and grotesque, because my memory of plants is that they are used to heal, not to kill.

I begin to launch toward panic for a few seconds but I know there is nothing I can do. I calm down and consider trying something -- anything -- magic, meditation -- to stop the absorption of the deadly poison into my system, but I give up even on that. 

I don't know what to do with my last few moments. I get up and walk into another room. They do not stop me. It is a small apothecary. I look at the bottles and jars and begin to feel a tremendous sadness over the doom I am helpless to prevent.

I begin to walk out of the apothecary when a small, thin woman with short dark hair and sharp features appears in the doorway. I don't know if she seems short because I am a tall man or of she is really short. Somehow I know this is my real-life teacher Althea. We look at each other for a moment and I begin to cry. We embrace tightly and both of us are wracked with sobs.

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Here is my dream from June 18, the night of some uncommonly strong storms in my area. It is about a man whom I have never met in person:

There is no vision, no kinetic sense or physicality to the first section of this dream. It is just a 'knowing.'

I know that am with my friend M, and we are listening to ragas, reading and writing Sanskrit. This part of the dream seems to go on not for just hours, but for years; probably lifetimes. There is a cyclic sense to it. Just unending learning and activity, very safe, sheltered even. I can hear the music, I have a sense of the mystery and the meditation of it, there is a strange sense of very relaxed yet focused and continuous study. There is also a youthful sense to it, many childhoods and young adulthoods, and a feeling of "this is just what you do," no desire for anything else or any other experience. Like we didn't know there was anything else to life.

There is a color: It is a light gold/pink. There is a sense of sunlight. There is a sense of deeply dyed Gujarati mirrored fabrics. But no forms whatsoever.

Most pronounced is an aroma: Sandalwood and saffron incense. Very heady and very strong throughout the whole dream.

Just the sound, the 'knowing,' the color and the scent, and the years rolling by -- that's all there was to this section, and it is the first time I've ever had a dream like that.

But then all of a sudden, I feel that I have a form -- I am curled in a fetal position, sleeping. I awaken and when I open my eyes, there is M, in the same position, next to me, facing me. His eyes are closed. We seemed to be in some kind of womb-like enclosure. The gold/pink light was still there but had shifted to a pinker hue, darker.

And when I awoke in the dream, I had a sense that something had gone 'wrong' -- that our interpretation of the scripture and music had bifurcated. To my mind, M had begun interpreting our time and our texts as something personally romantic (I'm not sure how else to put it here), and it seemed to detract from the Work I thought we were doing. I told him this was not right, that this was not what I wanted. His eyes stayed closed, though he responded that he understood and that he could hear me.

I wondered why he did not open his eyes.

Then the aroma of the sandalwood and saffron changed -- it became sickly sweet, almost overwhelmingly so. And I looked at M and somehow knew he was sick, or getting sick, and I immediately felt horrible for admonishing him. I was thinking how bad I felt, and what to say next, when --

A peal of thunder and flash of lightning woke me up for real. I jumped out of bed and ran around closing all the windows in the house as the rain blew in, all the while feeling quite distressed about the dream.

Psychedelic Jail Cell/ Sleeping Car

Lots of big dreams over the past couple of weeks that should have been recorded but alas, were not. I can't ignore this one because this morning I received an e-mail from my teacher about his life in the late '60s that dovetails neatly with the subject matter. This is my dream from last night:

I am discussing with a fellow herb classmate, Mary, an herb event taking place somewhere out of state. She is showing me a program, or perhaps it was a train schedule. I understand that one of my teachers (Michael) will be at this event, so I decide to go.

The scene changes and I am standing on a train platform -- an oversized one high above the street. It is a sunny day and I know that I will be taking this train to the herb event. The wind is blowing and I notice I am alone. Where is everyone? Isn't anyone else getting on this train?

Scene jumps again -- I did not see the train actually pull up but now I have just stepped into a train car and the door, which takes up a whole wall, is slid shut behind me with a loud metallic clang. I feel as though I have been pushed in, or tripped in, right off the platform (not off a main aisle in a larger train car; this seems like a whole car unto itself, though it is very small, about 9x9').

I go straight to a very small square window opposite the door. It is placed too high on the wall and I have to get on tiptoe to see out of it. I see another train going by, and faces of strangers inside. They are going in the opposite direction. I think about Michael and wherever it is that I'm going.

I back away from the window and look at the room for the first time. How odd; it is painted in bright, psychedelic colors -- the floor and some of the walls are bright orange and lilac. I look down at myself and I'm wearing knee-high boots and a fluttery chiffon pleated mini-dress in a lemon color, with angel-wing sleeves. My lucid self pops in and wonders why I'm wearing something so outdated and  inappropriate for traveling.

The car has no furniture, just a fold-down bunk on the right side, attached to the wall. I lie on it and it is extremely uncomfortable, hurting my spine. The mattress is old and thin, with little substance. I ease off the bed and look under the mattress, which seems light as a feather. Someone has shoved corrugated cardboard under there, presumably to protect their back from the bars and springs of the black bedframe. I adjust the location of the cardboard to where my lower back meets the bed.

I stand back and think, "Huh. This is more like a jail cell than a sleeping car," and wonder about the garish colors, which give one the impression of cheer but are so incongruous with the space. I have no access to other passengers, nor do I know if there even *are* any on this train, and I cannot open my own door.

The end.

Englishwoman in the mirror, diagnosis via Tarot

Two dreams from the last week or so:

Last Sunday:

I am meandering through a mansion in the English countryside. Room after room, floor after floor, all lavishly decorated in a style not of recent decades. My husband is with me sometimes, and sometimes he is not.

The first clear memory I have is after having been in many rooms on other floors, I am in some part of the house that has a huge skylight -- it is almost like a solarium but it is positioned in the center of the mansion (or at least, that is the feeling). Sunlight floods in from the ceiling and from avenues that lead out behind me, to my right and to my left. It feels like a greenhouse, very warm and humid, though I don't particularly remember many plants. I get the sense of them but I don't remember seeing them. The floor under my feet is concrete.

The strange thing is, before me, up a few steps, there is a structure with many panes of what I think are mirrors. I see "myself" in them and as I move the reflection shows me the exact same movements, I realize that it is not me as I am but a very tall English woman (don't ask me how I know, I just know she is English, just like I know the setting is in England). As I move to the left, so does she. To the right, so does she. She mirrors my movements exactly but seems unaware of me.

She is wearing a powder blue straight, drop-waist shift with a jacket and matching cloche hat. The jacket sleeves seem a bit short for her long arms. She wears sensible heels, a taupe color. It strikes me as not a particularly fashionable outfit but something more practical, and she strikes me as a practical person, Athena kind of energy, engaged in intellectual affairs. She isn't particularly glamorous or beautiful either; "handsome" would be a more accurate word. She has medium brown hair; I can't tell if it is short and curled or long and pinned up under the hat.

As I move out of the mindset that she is me but not me, she begins to move of her own accord and the mirrors become panes of glass. She is speaking to either a servant, assistant or some other inferior, and they are working at something on a table before them which I cannot see. I get the feeling that it has to do with plants and we are indeed in a greenhouse and I am looking in at a scene in a workroom.

I move on and deeper inside the mansion I enter a room with dark rose wall paper. It is carpeted. A big window lets sunshine in. I am immediately drawn to a low wide shelf against a wall upon which are very old porcelain floral teacups and saucers. Inside one of these teacups are some earrings and perhaps a ring. There is emerald (this I remember distinctly, I comment explicitly on the emeralds in the dream) and perhaps pearl in them but I don't remember the exact design. I know they are mine, even though I am in this strange house. I just... know it. It is a very strong feeling. I hold them in my hand and try to remember how it is exactly that they are mine. My husband looks on, somewhat quizzical but also not questioning this immediate connection I have with these jewels which I have never owned (in this life anyway).

Looking further amongst the teacups I find a pair of earrings which I do recognize -- these are gold rosettes with amethyst in the center given me at my birth by my maternal grandmother. I wonder how they got there.

Suddenly a petite woman with shoulder-length dark hair appears behind us. She has big nervous eyes. She appears to be of this century. She is not the owner of the mansion but some kind of caretaker... or perhaps the best description I can think to give her is "tour guide." She seems to have appeared because she is concerned that someone (myself) has gotten into the private rooms and is handling valuable objects. She doesn't say this out loud, of course, but hovers closely and offers her "help." I have a sense that I should ignore her, and while I acknowledge her politely I don't give her much attention. I continue to gaze at the jewelry, trying to make sense of it.

She gets more agitated and begins to chirp nervously, so I put the jewelry back in the cups, not feeling particularly regretful about it, and leave the room with my husband. She follows close behind, and as we pick up speed so does she, talking and talking and generally regarding us with suspicion. Through the halls of the mansion, down ruby-carpeted wide stairs we go, until we are back in the solarium/greenhouse and I mention to her my experience of the woman in blue. I don't know why I am compelled to tell her, but I do, and it feels like it validates my presence here. This really sets her off, and either she tells us point blank to get off the property immediately, or it is a sense we get from her (I can't remember exactly).

So now we're half running and she is trailing us all the way, when finally just as I am emerging from the mansion into the gardens she is at my side, pursuing me now, and she has actually turned into a monster -- a hydra-like being! I pay her no mind and know that as soon as I get up the ivy-trailed steps and onto the lawn, there is a 'secret' path off the property into the woods, and she will be no problem.

Marty is already waiting for me when I get onto the path, which comes off the main lawn and down through some bushes onto a dirt road leading into the forest.

Either attached to this dream sequence or else separately but related, we are helping three little boys "escape" the mansion via the secret path into the woods as well. I'm not sure what exactly is in the forest but two of the little boys know to keep running into it, while the third just stands there on the dirt path, looking as if he is waiting for something, staring into the distance, away from the forest. At once I know that he is waiting for something or someone to pick him up and take him to some sort of destiny. He knows he is not meant to go into the forest but to wait. He stands backlit by the soft sunshine streaming through the trees behind him, his curly red/brown hair a golden halo around his head. I have a sense that a rider will come and take him. It doesn't worry me; in fact I am impressed by his intuition and courage.

Last night:

Once again, I am at some kind of herb convention held in a hotel setting. It is the final night of the convention and there's a lot of weird energy, people milling about from room to room, things on the floor, halls filled with books people want to get rid of, offered for free.

I am in a crowded hotel room with a bunch of herbalists. My teacher Lesley and I are talking about something, and she says goodbye and leaves as the room gets more and more packed. When she is gone, her husband, my teacher Michael appears, and he is in teaching mode. I give him a hug and we seem to move as if on a gliding track through several rooms together.

All of a sudden the dream resets and he is entering the original room once more. Another teacher, Susan, passes through the room, stepping around people and junk on the floor. It is less crowded this time. Michael sits down on a cushioned chair before a small table. "I didn't sleep well last night," he says to me. "Oh, didn't you? I slept very well," I say. "Then that means you weren't praying to God," he says.

Then he proceeds to do a tarot spread for someone asking for an herbal consult. In this case he is performing the consult and assessment via tarot. As he reveals each card he states the physical problem and writes it down on a yellowed old piece of paper, in his usual narrow handwriting. I notice he is spelling some words strangely and making odd glyphs out of some letters.

I go to my room across the hall and start packing. I feel like I've only been there a few hours rather than a couple of days. Michael knocks on the door and appears at the threshold. The end.

Strange town, strange school, and the blue-headed child

I find myself the only adult sitting at a desk in a classroom full of children. It feels a bit back in time; earlier in the 20th century. BUT -- we are being shown DVDs. The teacher passes around red Netflix envelopes as she puts the DVD in the player. It is midday but the blinds are drawn. Shafts of sunlight sneak into the dimmed room. Everyone gets a red envelope but I get the DVD's actual sleeve with mine, so I know the title of the movie playing (and, I suppose, I have to return it!). The sleeve says something like "The Dark School" or "The Dark Classroom." The movie plays in black and white. The opening scene is of unifomed children in a classroom. I remember a little girl with fat blonde braids in ribbons. Strikes me as late 1950s to mid '60s.

The children, all about 9 or 10 years old, steal glances at me and seem bemused that I'm there. I feel welcome, if a little bit on display. They look at me like I'm some kind of curiosity, which I suppose I am. I rest my chin on my fists on the desks and relax completely, thinking how great it is to just sit quietly in a classroom and passively learn.

Then we are about to be dismissed. We all stand up in a crowd around the door. Something (I can't remember) is going on with the children. Nothing bad, but something needing adult intervention. I bend down and help out. The teacher appears from the hallway. I try to hide behind the door but she  points out that the door is frosted glass, so she can see me. It's all very gentle and relaxed, good-natured teasing.

I am going down the stairs out of the school and someone hands me a small sleeping child -- a baby even. Maybe no more than 2 or 3 years old. He is wrapped in a blanket. He is exotic-looking, dark olive-skinned, beautiful, also strange. His bald (or shaved) head is a sparkly green-blue color. He sleeps against my scarf, which happens to be the same color. His head against the scarf against my chest reinforces the memory of this color.

Someone -- and older child? -- behind me is following, either related to him or...?

I get outside and don't know what to do with him or where I am or where I am going. Like the school and the children, I don't recognize the town either.

I set him down. He has transformed into a tiny, adorable dog! I look at this little black dog -- with white accents -- with complete wonder. He is still wrapped in the blanket. He's awake and smiling that dog-smile, looking at me with bright, eager eyes.

Then I am all of a sudden asking directions -- to a place I heard someone speaking of, though I don't know what is there. Home maybe. But I don't know this place and I don't know where 'home' is. I don't know where my family is. It's like I've literally materialized in another world.

"Which way is ________?" I ask a stranger. They point in a general direction.

I see some buses going by and figure if I just get on one it'll take me where I need to go. I search for a place to catch one. The layout is confusing. I have to go under a concrete bridge. I look at the digital signs on the buses to see if I might recognize a place name.

Finally I catch one and sit near the front. The bus is full of seated people. After riding for a while I get nervous; I really have NO idea where I'm supposed to get off or if I'm even on the right bus! So I turn around to see a middle-aged woman with grey short curls and a somewhat loud floral shift sitting there with her purse primly balanced on her lap. She looks like she's stepped out of a Beatles "Penny Lane" video. I'm surprised to see her and her friend already looking at me with expectant smiles. "Excuse me, do you know if this bus goes to ________?" I ask her. She nods and says yes, and keeps staring at me. "I'm a little lost," I say, apologetically.

And she says:

"Oh no, you're not. We all knew you were coming. I could feel your presence for a long time before you even got here."

Now THIS dream has really got me stumped.

Autumn Equinox Dream Recap, plus the vagabond magician

Toward the end of last week and over the weekend I dreamed several times of my friend Ben -- these concerned cooking, train stations, and lots of laughing. And making fun of TV shows with his friend Nick. I was delighted to find out that Ben's beautiful son was born Friday afternoon.

Saturday night I slept in the forest and dreamed that a woman was singing in my ear -- no words, just a melody. In the dream she was outside my tent, so I do not know what she looked like, or if she had a body at all.

That night I also dreamed that I woke up several times to open up my tent to find that it was raining outside; and that I was not in the forest but in Glastonbury or at least somewhere in the English countryside, as if the whole campground had been transported there. There were fewer trees, however, which strikes me as strange -- we seemed to be on some kind of slate or limestone plain with trees in the distance -- and the people with whom I was camping were different from the people around me in real life. That is, the same tents were there, but different people emerged from them. In the dream it was early morning, the sky was grey and the rain misty and soft. The ground ran with a fine ashy white silt.

The clearest memory of last night's dream is of a vagabond, dressed in tatters, a little crazy, roaming a picturesque little neighborhood square at night, enthusiastically thrusting a tarot card at random people he met, saying, "This is my card! This is your card!" They looked at him like he was crazy and pulled in tight to their loved ones and hurried away. I don't have a clear impression that he came up to me and offered me the card, but that he would, eventually, and I was ready, anxious to see the card. The card, obscured, had the sign of the planet Mercury at the top. (The Magician, Key 1, is ruled by Mercury.) I remember looking at this strange man and thinking, "The Magician is you?"

Lesley, Ben

Thursday night I dreamed that someone handed me a large hardcover book and told me it was about pregnancy. Expecting the usual "oh the beauty of babies and motherhood" fare, its pages revealed no text but full-color, full-page photographs of solitary figures (mostly women) in scrubby desert wilderness landscapes. On another page was a beautiful and haunting photo of my teacher Lesley. She was naked from the waist up, the picture cropped tight, and her entire body and face was painted in red, blue, white and orange. (I learned yesterday that she has led women on vision quests in the desert for five years, a fact I did not know before then.)

Last night I dreamed I was with my friend Ben. We were in some kind of casual classroom setting, much like the seminar we attend every year. As with many of my dreams about Ben, this dream included learning and a sibling affection between us. Much like the last dream I had about him which was set in an outdoor conference setting where our mutual mentor told us we looked like brother and sister, the energy was easy and the sharpest detail I remember was that we sat side by side with our arms around each other while interacting with a group of other students.