Only a Dream Away

A troubling character

A slew of dreams last night:

ACT I

I experience a series of snippets of time spent with my friend K. It's as though I'm running fast forward through months of times spent together, all fairly mundane -- sitting next to each other, talking, laughing, smiling, hugging -- but all pleasant. In all of these instances I feel my love and affection for him.

ACT II

K has flown in for a visit and I go to meet him. Only, it isn't him. This man *says* that he is K, and acts as though everything is normal. But he's sharp and rude and calculating. Despite the fact that a) he doesn't look like the K I know at all, and b) he doesn't act like the K I know at all -- I participate in the illusion and just go with it, thinking, somehow, that he is the same person, that I have forgotten what K is really like because he lives so far away. This man looks like your typical obnoxious slick '90s businessman, with the slick haircut, suit and tie and briefcase and impatient look.

Somehow I find myself having sex with this "stranger" and going though the motions, doing the dance, acting like I'm into it. It feels like he's using me. I let it happen, under the notion that this is K, and it is fine, and it is a person I know and trust. But I know deep down that something is not right.

At the end of his stay, I go with this man to the airport to see him off. We are waiting for his plane. I am having a conversation with him and he is being disrespectful, rude, offensive actually. He hardly looks up from his phone to talk to me except to give me a dirty look with some sarcastic comment.

Finally, I have had enough, and I say, "OK, what's going on here? You're not really K, are you?" 

And he says, "What are you talking about? Of course I am!" 

"I know you're not him. Tell me who you are."

"I don't know what you're talking about. Look at me! Why would you think I'm not him?"

"You don't look like him and you don't remember any of the other times we have spent together. I knew it all the time and I can't believe I had sex with you." I begin to walk away.

He rushes after me and says, "OK, OK. I'm not him. Look." He pulls out his wallet, and from his wallet a business card with K's picture on it. The card has some kind of a nature/rainbow theme -- not at all the sort of business card K would have in real life. The card shows K under a different name with an executive position. "That was his old job," the impostor says, stuffing the card and wallet back into his pocket. "Friends do this for me all the time," he continues. "I sent K out here to check you out and see what kind of a girl you are and get you ready for me."

This segment of the dream closes with me feeling ambivalence and betrayal about K, whom I loved and thought I knew, but who is apparently an agent for some lascivious jerk. Also troubling is that I didn't even know K's real name (as shown on his business card).

ACT III

I am in the airport again. I am telling some friends (not sure who these are) about the incident but somehow things have gotten better because the real K is returning. I lie on the floor in the middle of one of the main arteries of the airport and start rolling around and stretching. Out of the corner of my eye I see K -- the real one -- also on the floor, "swimming" toward me. He is wearing a shirt with tiny blue and green triangles on a bright white field.

We reach each other and I look into his smiling face -- yes, it is unmistakably him -- and I feel a great comfort and affection for him. We hug and cuddle. I tell him all about the other man, and I confess to him that I don't know why I still love him so much, considering the fact that he would do such a thing to me, be part of such a deception. He provides no explanation. The dream returns to a scene that could have been part of Act I, where we are sitting in a beautiful outdoor setting, the sun is soft, the air is warm, and we are enjoying each other's company.

(I have to admit, this dream is very disturbing. There is a double illusion going on here and I am knowingly participating in my own betrayal. In the end the most honest man is the jerk. This one is going to take a lot of processing.)

OTHER SNIPPETS:

I am a kid again (I think) and it is night time. I am on a steamboat on a river in deep woods. We are gliding toward what appears to be a giant door somehow spanning the entire width of the river. There are three boats, and I am on one. I can see the reflection of the lights on the top of the boats dimly reflected in the door's wooden surface as we near.

Next, I find myself off the boat and sitting on a bank watching some kind of entertainment by torchlight. It's very strange to have this voyage and gathering in the pitch dark night.

Then I find myself running deep into the forest with two other friends. Under a yew I find my 3rd-grade best friend Regina, who is weepily telling us about a dream she had (about her mother?) and how blessed she is to have such a dream. She is lying on her back under the low branches of this yew, and I can only see her from the shoulders up. The rest of her is in the dark of the deep forest. I have a sense that we will leave her there.

Unrelated to the above: I am in a garden tending a low growing plant with blue buds. An older woman who appears to be the owner of the garden/teacher is standing above me, talking to others. I ask her if I should snip the buds off. She says yes, and demonstrates by pinching them off with her hands, explaining that that is how she keeps the plant going all through the season.

R O S E

In my dream, I am sleeping. I awaken, opening my left eye only, to find myself sitting in the empty classroom at my school with my  head on my arms. 

I go back to sleep.

I wake up again, opening both eyes this time, and I see that just out of the field of vision of my left eye is Althea, writing on the board. I am surprised to see her there. She has written on the board:

          R

E                 O

          S

And she is arranging the letters with a line through them so that the line ends up in the center. It reminded me of the Tarot/Rota on the Wheel of Fortune card -- you can read it in any direction, except I sense there was a fifth letter in the center. In my dream I understood the word to be "ROSE" but seeing it in waking life now I see "EROS"!

Seeking out the Sting

Another night of non-stop dreams last night, but only a few remain:

ACT I

I am in an upstairs room, maybe a cozy finished attic with pitched ceilings, with my mentor Althea. I say to her, "It's so nice for us to have time like this. We never do anything, just the two of us." She agrees, and I take off my top and lie face down on a blanket. She begins to give me a therapeutic massage. After a little while someone comes in (another mystery schooler -- Linda perhaps) and Althea sends me away to a private room with something in my hands. I can't remember what I was holding, but I am to go into a smaller, curtained room while she deals with the other person.

ACT II

Althea, I, and a handful of herb students are at a book signing. There is something to do with horticulture and herbs at this event but the author is -- get this -- the Queen of England! None of us is dressed appropriately for her arrival, which is announced and we are all to move to the sides of the wide carpet she is to walk as she approaches a table at the front of the room. We are all dressed as though we are going to do bodywork or are on an outing doing herb harvesting in the woods.

Queen Elizabeth II processes down, wearing one of her famous matching suits and hats and handbags. She takes her seat at the table and looks frankly rather annoyed. The lining up and signing begins, lots of hullabaloo, and I stay off to the side and just watch her to see how she behaves. Two teenaged girls come up and make small talk with her; she leans forward with a sparkle in her eye and says something that makes them laugh. I respect her grace and cleverness, and the way she interacts.

At the end of the signing, my classmate Claudia has hauled a large bag of elderberry powder onto the table. It's about the size of a bag of potting soil. It is open and I can see the purple powder inside. Althea says something about wanting a drink, and I get her one, but her drink comes as a strange viscous periwinkle substance... it has the consistency of face cream. And the only way I can serve it to her is to  use the scoop from the elderberry powder bag. I ask her if it's OK if there's elderberry powder in her 'drink,' and she says it's fine.

ACT III

This is the dream that I remember the most vividly emotionally but I don't have many more details than that. Basically, throughout different scenarios, private, not private, indoor, outdoor, clothed, unclothed, I am waiting for a honeybee to come and sting me. In this segment of the dreamtime I am quite literally obsessed with the idea and am waiting for a bee that never comes. I understand it to be an initiation of sorts, and while I want it to happen, I'm also scared about how much it will hurt and what my reaction will be (I have never been stung in real life).

Babaji

Here is an abbreviated version of the dream as I wrote it to my teacher:

I dreamed last night that Babaji died. 

 

Wherever I was, throngs of people came around a mountain while I photographed a gigantic, dead, but very fragrant tree stump. Where I could pick the bark off it smelled spicy and perfumed. I chewed on some of the bark.

 

You appeared in the crowd of people, who were all shouting and making their way to the funeral, and I felt as if I hadn't seen you in years. We found each other and embraced for a long time.

 

Then we followed the crowd and attended a celebration for Babaji -- lots of garlands of flowers and petals falling from the sky and white animals running through narrow streets, all laden with flowers around their necks and on their backs and in their mouths.

----------------

After the funeral celebration, I walked around the city. It was strewn with performers -- they all looked like Commedia dell Arte performers, but in ghoulish renditions of their usual costumes. They leered and laughed as I poassed by but it didn't seem unsettling -- just part of a carnival atmosphere. Tombstones littered the streets.

One performer took advantage of a slab of concrete missing from the sidewalk to lie down in the gravel, imitating a corpse in a fresh, shallow grave. He was masked as a bishop -- his whole head and mitre were made of a very old, grey, mostly flat piece of would with holes for the eyes. His robes, however, were shroud-like -- grey, dirty, close and not very stately at all. I asked if I could step over him, with one foot on each side of his torso, and take a photo. And he said no -- he did not want me to accidentally step on his clothes. I honored his request and took my photo from the side.

The setting changed and I was in an all-girls home. Something not modern. Someone was with me -- not sure who, a girl/woman -- and I found a tiny adorable pink and grey kitten sleeping on a cushion. Again I tried to capture this sight with my camera. The kitten awakened and hissed, and that was the shot I took. I noticed that it was a Scotch Fold kitten. I moved elsewhere in the room and found another cat, a bigger one, also a Scotch Fold, sleeping between chair cushions. This time I approached it and pet it so as not to take it by surprise. All was fine.

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.

Meeting bupleurum at Michael's house

A bunch of herb school classmates from Chicago and I are at a place I understand to be my teacher Michael's house. (I have never been in his home in real life.) It is a large and sprawling place. He is nowhere to be seen.

The house has many hallways, narrow ones, with hardwood-sided walls and floors. It reminds me of a Japanese house with sliding screen doors. I have a sense that just beyond any wall or door there is water.

I am standing at the threshold of a wide panel of glass sliding doors that look out into the 'backyard,' which looks more like a huge meadow with pathways and tall grass. It is raining softly and the clouds hang low. It is warm out and the air is still. I begin to step outside onto a gravel pathway to be out in it when someone behind me asks where I am going. "Outside," I say.

I come up to a plant on the path and "know" that it is bupleurum. (I have never seen bupleurum in real life either.) It is dry, yellow, feathery. It does in fact resemble the real bupleurum, as an image search reveals. The variety in my dream seemed to have a finer, more feathery quality, but perhaps it is because it was dry. I wondered why I didn't see my herb ally, white peony, instead.

I stand up from squatting before the plant and see that others have come out onto the paths.

Heading back to the house, Michael appears. He doesn't say anything and neither do I, but he smiles warmly and takes me by the arm and we begin to walk briskly toward the house. I pass my teacher Althea and his wife Lesley, who seem to be selling earthenware on the path (?). They smile as we hurry past but they are very engaged in whatever it is they are doing.

Inside the house, Michael is leading me swiftly through the maze of hallways. "Where are we going?" I ask, mostly unconcerned and actually getting giddy at the speed at which we are moving and the unpredictable twists and turns in the narrow passageways.

At a rare wide 'T' in the hallway layout we appear to be coming close to our destination when we hear a voice coming from around a sunlit corner. Michael hurries me toward a terminus in the hall. I look behind me to see my classmate Mary Anne coming around the corner and calling my name. Michael pulls me inside a door and as I look up I see it is the men's room! He slides into a stall, and I slide into a stall a few feet from his, lock the door and stand on the toilet so my feet can't be seen. Someone comes into the washroom and leaves.

We leave shortly after that and a man outside the men's room looks at me funny. "I accidentally went into the men's room instead of the women's," I say to him. I look back and see that the women's room is directly across the hall from the men's. An easy enough mistake. It doesn't really explain my teacher, who once again has my arm and is leading me somewhere, so I say, "I really  had to go, so I just followed him in there and didn't realize there was a separate room for women." There, that makes sense!

As we begin to walk down the hall away from the restrooms I see a little black cat with a tiny fleck of white fur at its throat sitting along the wall under a chair. I bend down and begin to summon the cat. I wake up knowing that this is a form of my totem animal (as mentioned in the previous post).

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.

The Troublesome Imbolc Ritual(s) plus a cameo by Michael

ACT I

I am in the main classroom at school and my Mystery School friends have gathered for our Imbolc ritual. The altar is set, and the room is wavering somewhere between its mundane self and some other place, sometimes smaller, sometimes larger, sometimes with other furniture (and, curiously, a big stereo system), and sometimes without.

Althea is not there and I am to lead the ritual. We gather around the altar, the room candlelit. Facing South, I look at the altar. Directly before me is a special Imbolc candle -- like one I remember my mother had from childhood, decorated with an ornate Celtic design. It is already about halfway used and is sitting in a holder. To the left of it, lying on the altar, is an identical candle, except brand new, with a long wick. I light the halfway-used candle. Elsewhere all over the altar are several other candles, all of different shapes, sizes, degrees of use and colors, and I know these are all the candles of my fellow Mystery Schoolers which we will light later in the ritual. There is also a jack-o-lantern on the altar. "Who put this here?" I ask. One of my fellow Mystery Schoolers, Chris, says that she put it there. "But why?" I ask. No answer. My friend HT goes to light the new Imbolc candle. "Hang on a second," I say, producing a pair of scissors from out of nowhere. I trim the wick down to a manageable size and hand the candle back to him.

The altar is set back too close to the bookshelves on the North end. "Hey guys, let's move this forward a little so we can stand around the altar and give the quarter officers room to walk around." We pull the whole production South a few feet. "Quarter officers?" I ask, and volunteers speak up.

I ask everyone to ground out and do the Kabbalistic cross. Some people seem distracted. In particular, someone who I know is interested in joining us in real life but is not yet part of our group, a very nice woman named Rebecca, is talking in the background, giggling, lots of movement. I try to let the core group lead by example, and begin.

"Before we call in the elements, I'd like to tell the story of Water," I say. (Which is an odd deviation from standard procedure -- this is the sort of thing we'd usually save until AFTER the room has been blessed.)

"In the beginning, all was darkness, and the breath of God moved across the Water," I intone, referring of course to Genesis, chapter one, verse one.

Rebecca is still chattering away in the back. "I'd like to tell the story of Water," I say to her. She looks up. I continue again. "In the beginning...."

And she gets up and walks to the door.

"Where are you going? We're in the middle of ritual, could you show a little respect?"

"I'm just going to get something to bring to the back room for the pot luck," she says.

I'm really getting steamed now. She closes the door behind her. All is quiet again, so I start once more:

"In the beginning, all was darkness and the breath of God moved across the Water. And then God separated Water from Water and created the Firmament."

At this point Rebecca comes walking back through the room with her treats in hand, singing in a mocking tone: "Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb..." (which is bizarrely appropriate actually, considering that Imbolc celebrates ewes going into milk for imminent lambing).

That's it. I'm out of patience. I catch up to her before she can reach the North door and grab her by her wrists.

"What's wrong with you? Can't you see we're conducting ritual here? This is important, you have to show some respect or else remove yourself from the rite." She's looking at me with a sneering smile. My hands go up to hold her face. "Maybe you don't respect me leading this but you have to respect the rite and what we're celebrating. Maybe you think Althea should be here or maybe you think you should have a greater role. Or is it because you think you deserve more recognition? Well guess what, I think you do. You're beautiful and talented and deserve the best, but you have to show respect first and do the work."

At this point she's crying and can't hold onto her mocking mask any longer. We hug a long hug while our classmates look on in a hush.

ACT II

Once again I am just about to start the same ritual. There is a big stereo by the side of the altar and it's playing music -- pleasant but not appropriate nor conducive for sacred space.

I walk to the stereo and turn it down.

I return to my spot and begin as described in Act 1.

By itself, the knob on the stereo turns clockwise, bringing up the volume. (This actually happened to me in real life in an apartment -- likely haunted -- that I had just after college. I actually had to fight with the thing to stop it from becoming deafening.)

I go over and turn it down. My group look bewildered -- how is that doing that by itself?!

The process repeats at least two more times.

There is no clear resolution to this except that in the next scene I am in the car with my husband and it is daytime, and we are on a 'break,' just out for a bit and then returning to finish the ritual. In the car we are driving past the downtown skyscrapers and I am going over what I want to say when we get back to school.

ACT III

Back at school in the same room as before, but it doesn't seem like it has anything to do with Imbolc. Actually it seems like the tail-end of some herb class-related event. Socializing, lots of people, lots of action.

Again I am standing by the north door, talking to one or two people. Behind me I hear my teacher Michael's voice, which is a surprise (partly because in real life I haven't talked to him in a long time, partly because he lives across the country). I hear him greeting someone, probably Althea. Out of my peripheral vision -- in this dream I never look directly at him -- I can see his black hair, his glasses, I can see him taking off his jacket and hanging it on a chair. I continue on with my conversation but am aware of his voice which is now to my right.

The people in the room shuffle around and finally he and I are standing side by side but facing opposite directions. His right arm grazes my right arm. We are both wearing short-sleeved shirts. I never look at him, nor he at me, we just continue having separate conversations, arms touching. Then our right arms become somewhat snakelike (this is a poor description I think) and twist around each other until we are holding hands. It is the only acknowledgement we give each other, never missing a beat in our separate conversations.

An Unrealistic Drill

Another classroom scene. This time it's high school, and again I am a student.

My friend Chris (a high school teacher in real life) is teaching the class. She is in front of one of the entrances to what we used to call, in grade school, the 'cloak room.'

As if in a scene from a horror film, a slat appears in the wall of the cloak room behind her and an ugly white man appears. I scream as he reaches out and grabs her by the waist, pulling her into the wall. Everyone else is just sitting there.

"Grab her hands!" I yell, rushing up to the front of the room where Chris is disappearing into the wall. An old classmate from grade school, just in front of me, catches Chris's hands. I pull on my classmate's waist and we get Chris back into the room.

Then Chris informs us that this was just a drill to see what we would do in a '9-1-1 situation,' and that now we must fill out evaluation forms on how the drill was conducted.

This makes me furious and I start shouting and cursing that our goodwill (and not to mention adrenaline) have been exploited! I resent the fact that I have been so frightened for no good reason; in what realistic situation will some demonic man emerge from a hidden opening in a wall and snatch one of us away? Stupid.

At the end of the dream it is after dark and we are still at school. Other students are handing in their evaluation forms, which for some reason are all wrapped in plastic. I had earlier decided not to fill one out because I thought it was ridiculous, but at this point in the dream I begin to tear open the plastic of a fresh form so that I can voice my complaints to the higher-ups, whoever they might be.