Knocking at the Door

I’m in my office when my mom comes in talk to me. I close the door. We’re trying to have a conversation when suddenly the door opens and someone just barges in.

“I’m in the middle of a conversation,” I say, annoyed.

The person just keeps talking as if she doesn’t get it.

“You need to leave for a few minutes,” I say, being blunt because she is so obviously clueless. “I am in the middle of something. Go wait outside.”

She is still talking.  I go to the door and encroach on her personal space, pushing her back in the hall.

“Wait here,” I say, more forcefully. I shut the door in her face while she is still talking.

“See what I have to put up with?” I ask my mom as I sit back down.

Mom no sooner starts talking, and I’ll be damned if someone else doesn’t barge in and do the same damn thing. I chase them out again, slamming the door.

It happens again.

And again.

And again.

The next time it happens I roar and chase the person out in the hall. There are a good twenty people in the hallway, swarming like a mess of angry bees.

“LISTEN UP!!!” I yell. “I AM IN A MEETING. DO NOT WALK INTO MY OFFICE UNINVITED WHEN THE DOOR IS CLOSED. LINE UP HERE IN THE HALLWAY AND WHEN I AM READY FOR YOU I WILL COME OUT AND CALL YOUR NAME. AND KEEP YOUR VOICES DOWN. YOU ARE TOO NOISY.”

They continue to snarl and carp.

“SHUT UP!!!” I roar. Finally, they get quiet.

“I am in a meeting with (I say her given name).” I draw it out, saying the syllables slowly as if they are slow. “When I am done with her, I will deal with you. I will call you by name. Now settle down.”

I shut the door and lock it.

“What’s it come to, “ I say to my mom, “that I have to lock my office door because people are too damn clueless to know that they are supposed to wait until you answer the door before they come in.”

We talk for a few minutes (I don’t remember what about) when there is a knock at the door.

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE” I scream, jumping up. Were they eavesdropping at the door? Papers fly off my desk. My mom is just shaking her head. I stalk over to the door and open it. Someone better be bleeding, I think.

I open the door, and I see no one. Then I hear a noise and look down.

There is a little person there. He is wearing a black suit and a white ceramic mask. The mask has a comic book caricature face drawn on it in heavy black lines—it is an angry face. It makes me think of the Weeping Angels in full attack mode.  He is being very aggressive and pushy, waiving a piece of paper in my face and spouting gibberish. Somehow I know he is a spy. I am now absolutely enraged.

The nasty little spy seems to realize that intimidation is not going to work. Suddenly he morphs into a math teacher. I don’t know this person, I just know he is a math teacher, and his name is Tom, but I don’t know any math teachers named Tom.  Tom is waiving this paper in my face now, since he is considerably bigger than the little guy. The paper is a math quiz of some girl I don’t know. He tells me I need to recalculate her grade.

“I’m not her teacher, “ I say, exasperated.  Why do these people always try to make me responsible for things I am not responsible for?

“But I just want you to check the math,” he reiterates, sticking the paper in my face. The red numbers on the paper are only a fraction of an inch from my nose. I’m going cross-eyed trying to focus, and then get mad again. Why am I trying to read this damn quiz? I am not this girl’s teacher.

“This is not my problem,” I say. “Her teacher is responsible for calculating her score.”

“She wants you to add it up again,” he says. Then he launches into the regular bs kids say to teachers all the time—their lives will be ruined! their parents will hate you! But this guy is the teacher. What the hell is his problem?

“I am not her teacher,” I say again, slowly, emphasizing each word. “But if that is her score, then that is what she earned,” I say, furious. I slam the door in his face.

I stand there shaking, so angry I can barely think. I am so sick of people trying to manipulate me to get what they want. Boundaries, damn it! Consequences for actions, damn it!

Then I wake up.

I go into the bathroom, for the usual morning routine.  I look into the mirror as I am brushing my teeth.  There is a huge red welt on my neck.

It is a spider bite.

The damn spider is back.

Now the dream is starting to make sense. People pretending to be what they aren’t, wearing masks, threatening me, and trying to guilt me.  It may have been over a year, but their tactics haven’t changed.

Obviously, I have.

Later, I am waiting in the drive through at Starbucks on my breakfast. Out of nowhere, a spider web filament appears and flies into window, attaching itself to my hand. I try to swat it away, but it is stubborn. I reach over and grab a tissue, grab the filament and tear it away, throwing it in the trash.

Not this time.

Something big must be happening, or on the verge of happening. These things don’t happen in the dreamtime unless there is. These things used to scare me. They used to intimidate me. I used to fret over whether I was doing the right thing, more concerned with whether other people got hurt no matter the cost to me.

Not any more.

Now they give me hope.

Now I know I’m on the right path. I know someone or something is trying to steer me away. They’re trying to scare me. They think if they make things hard, harass me, throw up roadblocks, that I’ll give up, surrender my power, think it’s not meant to be.

The things that are the most precious are the ones that we’ve had to strive for, to fight for, to work our fingers to the bone to achieve.

They can knock all they want. I know what they are now. I choose who to open the door to.

Battles

I am climbing some kind of steel structure like an old fashioned tv antenna tower, but the steel is shiny and new. The landscape doesn’t look old, however; it looks contemporary. Just a few feet above me, and on the other side of the tower, I see Eleven. He is hanging on with one arm while he is aiming his sonic screwdriver at flying Daleks. We seem to be under attack, yet despite the fact that we are in plain sight and unprotected, the Daleks don’t seem to know that we are there.

Then we both realize that there are thousands of Cybermen goosestepping down the street beneath us. Maybe the Daleks are more occupied with them than us.

The scene shifts, and the characters from Arrow are running around fighting the Daleks and the Cybermen. Suddenly, Slade walks up to me.  How this is possible whe I’m a good fifty feet off the ground is beyond me. He pulls out a metal box from inside his belly (like Cas hiding the Angel tablet in his body?) and hands it to me. This box is the key to killing both the Daleks and the Cybermen, he tells me. But I have to cut it in half with a sword. Then he runs away to fight the Daleks and the Cybermen with the rest of the Arrow characters.

The Doctor and I are looking at the box. The Doctor concludes that it will indeed kill all the Daleks and Cybermen, forever, but by cutting the box, it means Slade will die.

“We can’t kill Slade,” I say. It’s the Doctor. He’ll agree with me, right?

He just shakes his head.

He really wants me to do it.  He won’t do it though. I have to do it.

I hesitate. Can I really kill someone? Even if I have to to save others?

It’s as if my body is disassociated from my head. I am outside myself, and I see myself raise a huge sword over my head. It comes down with no effort on my part, but with tremendous force. It slices the metal box in two on a diagonal.  The Daleks and Cybermen disappear with thousands of poofs of smoke. Slade crumples to the ground.

The box looks like a guillotine, I think as I lower my sword to the ground. The diagonal slash looks razor sharp.

I expect to feel regret, but I don’t feel anything. I am oddly unattached, and am curious at this feeling of unattachment.

The scene changes. I am at a con. One of my friends from college and one from high school, neither of whom knows the other, are in a heated argument. I listen to them, as the people swirl around us. Two fire signs, in a fight. You can imagine. I decide not to get involved. I don’t know why they are both here, or even what they are fighting over.

Then I am back on the tower with the Doctor. I look down. The street is now cleared. It has morphed into the main street of an Old West town. My cousin is standing in the street, dressed as a cowgirl, with her hands on each gun as she walks, looking for all intents as if she is in a shootout.

Then she looks up at me. It is a challenge. Does she want to have a shootout with me? Does this have to do with the argument at the con? (the high school friend is a mutual friend). Is this something else? I look down at her. I don’t want to fight her. But if I have to, I will.

Then I wake up.

The House

I am going through a house with the agent.

This isn’t a house that fits into my plan. The one that I made, when I was a little girl. The one I saw in dreams, over and over, throughout my life. This house is nothing like the house I saw when I wove my little girl dreams of what my life would be like.

But the house feels oddly familiar nonetheless.

The agent is walking through the house with me, talking through the pros and cons. I feel oddly disconnected.

We walk up the stairs.

I know these stairs.

She’s gone ahead of me into the master bedroom. I’m only partially listening to her at this point. I’m trying to get a grasp of what is happening here. It’s as if this room exists in two places at once. It’s an odd feeling. The hairs on the nape of my neck stand on end. She goes into the ensuite. She’s talking, talking, talking . . . . .

I stand in front of their dresser. There is a mirror there. I see myself in it. I know that I am here, that I exist, yet I feel as if I am disintegrating. Everything is vibrating. Everything is alive, and buzzing, and in motion.

Without thinking, I turn to my left.

Walking through the door, there is you. You are sleepy, with your hair messy and a rumpled button down and baggy jeans. You have a baby on your hip. You both yawn at the same time. You are barefoot, and I feel the roughness of the carpet through your feet.

I know this is the one.

The agent comes out of the ensuite and distracts me.

I turn back to you when she is not looking.

You are gone. Yet in the carpet I can see faint indentations of your feet, walking all the way up to me.

Snippets

I’m walking through a house. I trip over my shoelaces and nearly trip in a hallway. I catch myself and push up from the floor.  To my right is a room, and there is what looks like a huge pinata hanging from the ceiling. It’s red paper mache and it’s two hearts (like Valentine’s hearts, not real ones) that are joined at the lobes.  My mom walks in and reaches into the connected part and pulls out a piece of candy!

I yell at her: “Leave it alone!”

“It’s Whitman’s” she says.  Someone has taken two Whitman Valentine’s Day samplers and put them in the pinata.  I’m still mad at her. The pinata is not hers, and she should not be messing with it.

Then I am walking down another hallway and nearly trip again. As I catch myself, I blurt out “The Last of the Mohicans is my favorite movie!” which is odd since I’ve never seen it all the way through and haven’t bothered to read the novel. I’m more into British and French lit than American.  Then as I cross the threshold, I find myself in a workout room. There is a long line of treadmills facing a huge wall of windows, but before I can focus on what the vista is, I wake up.

Then I keep hearing two songs on loop:

First this one(I will wait)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGKfrgqWcv0

 

And then this one (“Ho Hey!)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvCBSSwgtg4

(Sorry, the URL link function isn’t working in Word Press)
Someone hands me a box. They tell me it’s already been scanned and x-rayed, so it should be safe to open.

There’s a teenage boy there. I get the sense that he is thinking about coming to our local college. I hand him the box, and he opens it. It’s filled with newspapers. He starts going through them. As he does, and he’s pointing out things on the page, certain columns get highlighted. It’s like on Dreamweaver when you highlight a column to change its properties, it gets outlined in red or yellow. I don’t remember what was in the highlighted columns, though. Maybe the point wasn’t the columns. Maybe the point was to make the Dreamweaver connection so that I would see this as code. But what is the code in old newspaper stories? Maybe that newspaper stories (of what happened in the past) can be rearranged and rewritten, just like code can be rewritten and generate a new template?

Anyway, the one story I do remember, right at the end of the dream, is a front page story of a blizzard. The boy is pointing out the picture of the blizzard that is on the front page, center column. I don’t remember what he is saying about it. I do remember thinking, “That is from several weeks ago. Why are these newspapers so old?”

Afterward, in waking life, every where I go I hear those two songs. On the radio, on Musak, on tv. Is it that those songs were there in the background and my subconscious just picked them up as a soundtrack for my dream? Or are they popping up as some kind of synchronicity, some kind of message?

I Choose Hope

Surrounded by naysayers
Preening and squawking
Strutting and pecking
Loudly proclaiming THEY KNOW EVERYTHING AND THEY ARE RIGHT
So determined to prove how superior they are
They think not about the delicate souls they crush
As they claw their way over the carcasses 
Of fallen rivals
Overwhelmed by the cacophony
Of the earsplitting crows of triumph.

I choose hope.

Hypocrites and conjurers
Smoke and mirrors
And truths that are only truth if they say they are truths
And evidence to the contrary
WELL YOU ARE WRONG!
They lure you in with the promise of knowledge
And then pick away at your soul, peck by peck,
Until nothing is left.
Hollow, despondent,
You surrender to their consumption
Their lip-smacking delight as they gobble you down.
Not even aware of how you've been played,
You disintegrate into the maw of their insatiable hunger.

Or else, lost in despair and fear
That what you believe is wrong,
Is madness, that love has been lost
Never to be reclaimed,
Or worse yet, love never was love,
You give up your power to them
Let them win, let them decide
What is real and what is not,
And having tossed away your birthright
Decide all is lost
And drown yourself in the green sea of despondency.

Oh, I understand these things well.
For years I believed in what was outside of me
Listened to the hucksters who knew better than me
Just what me I should be
And what I should say, and eat, and believe, 
And how and who I should love.
It's so easy to fall into that trap
To let another think for you.
And fall into that mindless numb place
Where there is no more responsibility
Your power not even stolen from you
But given up as a gift.

I have known this place too well.

But I choose hope.

I choose to believe that there are second chances
And third, and fourth, 
And infinite possibilities.

Think it through. If we have creation running through us,
How can we not create?
How can another make us believe it's not possible?
That we are toys of fate, chained to a destiny
We had no hand in.

No, I choose hope!

I have looked into the eyes of my beloved
And have seen all of time and space and creation.
I have held his hand and felt the power of the universe
Throb through his palm,
Rumble thunderously through his voice,
In the heartbeat of the stars.
I have held him in my arms and felt the world stop
And time stand still
In awe of our reunion.

I believe in miracles.
My miracle has found me.

And in this lifetime I vow that I refuse to allow
Anyone
Anyone
To convince me to throw it away.

So go ahead and preen and caw
About your esoteric galactic pedantry only you have
And peer disapprovingly over your spectacles
As I cavort in defiance of your edicts of doom and gloom.
I have found my beloved.
And in our love
Anything is possible.

25/03/2013

This was supposed to post on March 25. If you follow my tweets, 
you know there was some nasty negativity going around. Rather than engage, I decided to write defiant poetry instead  

Fire

Why are we at Boy Scout Camp? At least, it looks like Boy Scout Camp, a huge meeting room in a log cabin.  Through the big open windows, there are woods for as far as the eye can see.  You are sitting in the front of the room at a table with a huge woman. I mean, she is World Champion Weightlifting status huge. I swear to God, it looks like she is in a Scout uniform.  Are you supposed to be a Boy Scout too?  And I think, “You a Boy Scout. Boy, have they got it wrong.”

To my left, there is a tiered platform where they are displaying five different types of chips. None of the chips have brand names I am familiar with. One is named Hope (as in “I hope these carbs don’t go directly to my hips?”) and another Salazar (Slytherin, I presume?).  This is utterly bizarre and surreal, and then finally the woman stops talking and there is a break. I get up to get out of this crazy place and in the busyness, you grab my hand and pull me into an office.

It’s more like a reception area, with a high counter. You pull wooden hanging beads down to shut off the counter area and another set of wooden beads across the door.  I’m assuming that you want some privacy to talk to me about something, but then you take out your lighter and set the beads on fire.

“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” I hiss. We’re still in the office and, hello, you’ve just set the damn thing on fire.

You pull me through the beads before they completely catch on fire and walk me down the hallway. As we’re getting ready to walk through a door, we turn back to look. The inside of the office is completely engulfed in flames and no one seems to notice. You push me through the door and close it behind me.

And we are in the bedroom at my place.  You go to sit on the bed. It’s as if in crossing the threshold that the entire scenario that just happened never happened. I walk over to the nightstand and open it and take out a box and hand it to you. You start to laugh. It’s my toys.

“Start familiarizing yourself, “ I say as I walk into the bathroom to pee. I call over my shoulder, “The condoms are in a box on the shelf,” and then think, you dolt he already knows where the condoms are. I finish using the toilet and after I wash my hands I grab the lube off the counter as I walk back into the bedroom.

I try to keep this blog rated PG, so I will stop there and let your imagination carry you where it will.

Time passes.

I am at a meeting a work. It is in a store instead of our office, and there are tables facing toward the front. I go to sit at a table, and my boss says I can’t sit there. That table’s reserved for this other woman I work with, who is a notorious ass-kisser. I have to go sit farther back.

From where I am sitting in the back, I can see a building on fire (the Boy Scout Camp?). I try to tell people, but they don’t seem to care.  Minutes pass, and no one does anything. No one calls the Fire Department; no one’s trying to put out the flames. But then, I’m not doing anything either, just sitting there watching the building burn. Is this one of those things that’s supposed to happen? Is this karmic in some way? And if so, what exactly is it that the camp represents that has to be destroyed?

Daddy

Mom and I have been fighting again. After she learned reiki, it lessened a bit, but the fact that I’m travelling this week has sent her into anxiety mode again.  “If I could, I’d keep you in a bubble,” she said to me, just today.

So I was a bit surprised, when I was mediating last week, at what happened.

It began with a lot of anger towards mom, bubbling up to the surface. That’s what I expected. But instead of the anger being connected to a memory relating to me, instead I got a memory of a fight between Mom and Dad.

I must have been about ten years old. Mom and Dad were in the midst of one of their ongoing feuds. Dad didn’t like the meat at the grocery store where Mom usually shopped and wanted to drive her into one town over and go to another grocery store that had a much better butcher (and they did—the meat, especially the beef, at that store was amazing).

Mom didn’t want to do it. I’ve talked before about how she’s borderline agoraphobic, and despite the fact that Dad would drive her (because she doesn’t know how to drive), she didn’t want to go.

So Dad ended up driving into town and buying the groceries.

He’d always buy something not on the list, and they’d get into a battle over it. This time, it wasn’t about doughnuts or a different brand of pop.

Mom and I were in the kitchen fixing dinner when Dad got home. He went up to Mom and said “I got something for you,” and pulled out a gag toy called a “Laughing Bag.”  Yes, you read that right. It was just a canvas bag, with a little speaker in it that laughed when you squeezed it. It was silly, and cost all of a dollar, and it ignited one of the worst fights I’d seen since he’d stopped drinking.

Did he do it to piss her off? Was it an act of defiance in the power struggle between the two of them? Or did he do it genuinely to try to goose her out of the funk she was in?  At the time  I thought it was the former, but looking back on it, I think it was the latter, because the look of hurt on his face I think was genuine.   She was in fine form that afternoon, and went on and on about his wasting money, throwing in his face all that money he wasted when he was drinking, even though it had been years since he had stopped. She shamed him, and I watched him shrink in on himself. And I felt shamed watching the two of them, that my mother could be so obsessed with money that she would fly into a rage over a gag that cost a dollar.  It’s one of the few times when I was a child that I actually sided with my dad in the war between them.

Years later, Mom was cleaning out the dresser, and I saw, tucked underneath the socks, the Laughing Bag. She saw me there, in the doorway, and said, “That damn thing. I was so furious at him for buying it. It’s so like him to just throw money away.” It’s been years since the incident, and I say nothing, but I’ve noticed it’s still there, and that she doesn’t throw it into the trash with the old socks but tucks it away in the corner of the drawer.

All of this is as fresh as if I am reliving it, even though it’s been decades since these things happened. I’m so sad, and I start to cry, and I want you to hold me and make it better, but when I turn to try to focus in on you, you’re not there.

Instead, there’s my Dad.

And I’m a little girl again, and the grief is so overwhelming that all I can do is cry and wail and scream “I want my Daddy! I want my Daddy! I want my Daddy!”

It’s turned into a purge, and there’s no way back, only through it, and as I scream and scream, and scream, I feel the energy rise throughout my body the way it does when I am burning off some particularly dark stuff, some really heavy karma. It’s ugly, and I’m so nauseous as it’s happening, and I just want it to stop but it doesn’t. It goes on and on and on and I don’t think I can take it anymore. My pillow is sopping wet with my tears.

And then it subsides, and I look up, expecting you to be there, but it’s Daddy standing in front of me. And he holds out his arms to me, and I fall into them and hang on for dear life. This is so weird. He almost never hugged me once I grew up, like once I hit womanhood he could no longer show affection. A china doll on a pedestal.  I have a picture of me sitting on his lap right before bedtime. It was a couple of years earlier than the Laughing Bag incident. We were in the recliner and I was perched on his leg hammering away on the guitar they had bought me for Christmas, howling at the top of my lungs trying to sing. I was so happy and he was laughing so hard at me. It’s my favorite picture of us. It’s so hard to remember the good times. The bad times always overshadow them. And now, after all these years, my daddy’s holding me again.

He’s shushing me and trying to get me to calm down. I’m yowling again, and he pats my hair. “Do you know how proud of you I am?” he says. “You’re so smart and pretty and strong. You’ve grown into such an amazing woman.”

Here he is, with me again, after all these years, and what do I do? I dig up all the bad things again. But  as they start to bubble up to the surface again, I stop. Suddenly it all becomes clear.

He looks at me expectantly. He knows what comes next. That’s why he’s here. I’m finally reached the point that I can see.

“We agreed to all of this before we came in,” I say. “I had to grow up with the fighting because I needed to learn how to fight.” And suddenly, I realize you are off to the side. I turn to look at you. You are looking particularly nervous.  “I had to learn to fight for you,” I say. “I had to learn to fight for us.”

Dad looks pleased when I say that. He takes my hand, and walks me over to you. You look really tentative, like you’re worried he’s not going to like you. He takes your hand, and puts my hand in yours. Then he puts our clasped hands between his and says to you, “This is my precious little girl. Take good care of her. I love her very much.” And then, after having given us his blessing, he’s gone. And we stand there, hand-in-hand, looking into each other’s eyes.

Quest

I’m standing outside near a lake. Suddenly, you are in front of me, dirty and bedraggled, and holding a baby. I’m startled; I wasn’t expecting you. And what on earth’s happened to you? You hold the baby out to me and I take her (him? I can’t tell the sex the baby is so young). I pat the baby on its back and say, “Yes, I promised I take care of her” (so I guess it’s a girl).

You put your finger up to your lips and shush me. I whisper, “I promised. What’s with you? Did you take a vow of silence?”

You wiggle your eyebrows at me and grin.

“What are you up to now?”

You point to the top of a mountain that has suddenly appeared out of nowhere. And then, again out of nowhere, you unsheath a huge broadsword. I pull back instinctively–there’s a baby here for God’s sake–and say “What are you doing?”

You point to the mountain with the sword, and then take off to the mountaintop. I shake my head.

Time passes.

I’m sitting in a rocker in what looks like an old farmhouse, giving the baby a bottle. Suddenly, the door flies open and there you are, even more disheveled than ever. You stride across the threshold, your sword in one hand and a large wrapped object in the other, and stop, right in front of me. You take your sword and ram it into the floor by your side (Excalibur!) and go down on your knees in front of me. It’s all very dramatic. And when you finally speak, your voice is booming.

“This is for you.” You hold out the package, and, with a flourish, remove the blue cloth that covers it.

It is a giant diamond you have in your hand. Not as in diamond ring, but as in a gigantic rock. It’s the size of a cantaloupe and, oddly enough, despite its size it’s already been cut. But for what? It’s too big to wear in jewelry. What’s it really for?

And that’s what I say to you. “What exactly are we supposed to do with it?” I ask.

“This,” you say, and toss it into the air above our heads. Gravity does not kick in; instead, it rises to just about five feet above us and stays there. Then, suddenly, it lights up, and we are surrounded by a cocoon of warm golden light. You put your head in my lap. All is right with the world.

I know that you have dragons to slay and monsters to confront. And like any quest, you must set off for that mountain alone. But Beloved, hurry home to me. There is no light when you are gone.

Sweet Hearts

I dreamed about you yesterday morning.

I am in high school and my mom is nagging me to go to some event. I really don’t want to go but I do anyway. I go to a small building (about the size of the neighborhood laundromat). It is packed full of guys. I am the only girl there. We are all looking toward the front of the building where there is a counter. There is a really, really heavy guy next to me is who being annoying and hitting on me and spouting gibberish. I try to be nice to him but he is being really aggressive and getting into my personal space and I finally get pissed and tell him off.

He turns away and I look back to the front of the building. Then from a door to my right you come in holding a baby. You walk up to the counter and talk to someone and hand the baby over the counter to the person.

Then you make your way straight to me and put your hand in the small of my back and guide me over to a round table. That seems to be a cue to everyone that they should take their seats. The creepy guy follows us to the table like he doesn’t get the meaning of the hand on the small of my back.

When we get to the table, everyone sits down except us. You smile and take out a cellophane bag. In it are blue Sweethearts (candy hearts—you know—like these).

Only the blue ones were in the bag.

I try not to laugh at the fact they are blue. “Are they really for me?” I ask.

You nod and smile. “Open ‘em,” you say.

The seam of the bag doesn’t want to tear, so I take one of my fingernails to punch through the bag. You raise an eyebrow and say “What are you, a Sicilian?”

I’m like, Huh? What do Sicilians have to do with fingernails?

I shake my head and motion for you to hold out your hand. I pour some hearts into your hand, then some into mine, and we eat them. To be polite, I offer some to the other people at the table but I deliberately shun creepy stalker guy.

I go to hand the bag to you and you take it, carefully fold the top down twice, and hand it back to me. “Keep it for me,” you say and wink. I try not to blush.

You walk away for a minute to go back to the counter (to collect the baby, I assume), but no one comes over and sits in the chair next to me. Everyone knows that it belongs to you.

I wake up. Later in the day I am checking my emails. Someone has sent me a link to an astrology site. The site says that the Sun was conjunct Eros in Pisces that morning. How apropos, I think. Love meeting Light.

<3<3

Weave

 
The needles fly among the threads
Weaving tight hopes and prayers
Whispered sotto voce
Imperceptable
To any but you, and me, and god.
Only the Trinity knows, can hear the truth of us.
 
Rich brown earth, fertile and ripe to grow
Azure blue Atlantic crashing against the shore
Midnight blue of a moonless sky
 
All interconnected
In an infinite loop
I weave as I chant the dream into being.
 
The farmhouse, nestled among the trees,
A front porch cool in the summer shade,
Hand picked vegetables scattered on a kitchen counter
As jars steam upon the stove.
A closet neatly organized,
Your suits tucked in smartly among mine.
A freshly painted room,
Sunny lemons, robin eggs, violets.
Tiny socks and shoes lined up in a row.
A soft breeze floating through an open window,
A fluttering curtain whipping against your hair
As you laugh and brush it aside to lean down to kiss me.
The crickets chant the refrain.
 
My arms grow strong with the labor
Of lifting our blanket of dreams,
My biceps hard from the repeated tension
Of stich after stich after stich
That weave the threads that weave the words
That weave the magic that births our world.
 
When it is finished, I will wrap us in it
And cocoon us from those who try to part us.
We will carry our hopes to the skies
And spin it amongst the stars
Our love, our legacy.

Water, Water, Everywhere–and Then, There’s Nazis (And Ianto!)

All these planets entering Pisces has made for one wet (and surreal) week in Dreamland.  Not only has it been pouring down rain (like it is now–at least it’s not snow!), but there’s been one mess after another in my dreams.

Monday Night: I was in an apartment. It looked like an apartment on the west coast. My cousin was there with me. I opened the walk-in closet in the master because I keep seeing water dripping from the ceiling. When I open the door, someone has pointed the shower head in the bath straight at me and blasts me with water like a hose!

I yell and walk inside to see what is going on. There is water (and sewage–eewww) pooling on the floor.

Tuesday Night: I am in a hotel waiting to go to the airport.  I go up to a lunch counter and I am talking to an Asian woman who runs it. We’re talking about noodles. She says she can make me chocolate noodles. I say ok, and I ask here where the toilet is.  She tells me, and I go and again the toilet is a mess with the seats broken and overflowing. I finally find one that is unoccupied and reasonably not gross, but I have to pull off lots of toilet paper from the roll because the sheet has fallen into the sewage pooling around the toilet and the liquid has seeped all the way up to the roll. I somehow manage to use the toilet (I will spare you the details).

I go back out and the lady acts like I’m nuts when I ask for my noodles. She claims not to know what I’m talking about. I’m worried she’s trying to scam me in some way. I bluntly say, “Do I owe you anything?” and she says no. I think, Well, there are witnesses, so I must be safe.

I go into the conference area of the hotel. I’m trying to find you. I keep looking and looking and getting very frustrated when this guy comes over and talks to me and it turns out it’s a friend of a kid from school.  I vaguely remember him. They are having some kind of contest. Up on stage on the backdrop appears a huge clockwork like Dr. Manhattan built on Mars.  The guy wins whatever it is and he grabs my hand and drags me up with him. I think, Why the hell is he trying to drag me into this? They hand us a case with earrings in it. I take out a fillagree one and try to pin it on the guy and he starts bugging out.

I say, “Didn’t you want me to pin this on you?” He acts like he doesn’t know what is going on. I’m getting pretty pissed off at this point. I say “Fine. Fuck this.” I throw down the case and walk out. I go out a double door and down the steps. It’s opposite the quad from the college. I cross the lawn and step over a low bush. There are two guys walking with me, but I don’t know them. Then I step over a low fence and walk across the mall.

Suddenly, my mom and I are at a carnival. A guy is handing out books. We’ve won a Bible, and Mom is excited because we’ve never had a family Bible.  I’m sure we have the ticket and the receipt and the paper that says we’re supposed to get a Bible, but when we get there, the guy, who is an old, white-headed guy, says very nonchalantly, “Well, I think that’s it. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow.” And then he disappears into thin air–poof!

Mom is furious. I go and try to find him.  I see him in the distance in an office behind a desk. He’s attitude reminds me of Bilis from Torchwood, but he’s not Bilis. I have to walk down a country road with woods on either side and lots of overhang. It’s winter and cold and the trees are bare.  There are sketchy looking people standing around. They look at me menacingly as I walk down the road.

Friday Night: I am being held prisoner in some futuristic Star Trek type room, incongruously by Nazis. I can only assume that  the Nazis were because of last week’s Supernatural episode, but alas, there was no Dean or Sam, or even a helpful golem to rescue us. They are going to kill us. One guy has put a magic spell on a tube of lipstick so that a girl who has been killed will be reborn whenever someone uses the lipstick. The Nazis come in to kill us. I think, There has to be a way out of this, and realize there is–this is just a dream, and I can wake up. And I do.

Sunday Morning (after the New Moon): I am on a website looking at tee shirts. I click on the link in the left column for classic tees and then there are thumbnails coming up for all-time favorites.  Starting around #5, there are pics of Ianto from Torchwood–lots of them–from #5 all the way down to the bottom of the page.  I think, That’s cool! and then Ianto looks different.I click on  one of the pics and I’m taken to a video clip.  Then I’m actually in the video. Ianto is in a very mod suit and he has even more funky sideburns than he had in Series 1–it’s very 60ish. He is talking to some official-looking men and he is all fired up about something.  Then he goes into a room with a hoard of men in suits and gives a hell-raising speech about something.  The men in suits are really rowdy, and suddenly I realize Ianto is the Prime Minister and he’s giving a speech in Parliament. I think, Wow, this is something!

Then later I am outside on a street corner and a little boy is asking me to tell him what I saw because this was evidently a “significant historical moment.” I start to tell him. I don’t remember what I told him, but it seemed to make sense at the time. Then he says, “Maybe it’s better you just give me the video and I summarize it myself.” So I give him a jump drive.

Then two guys are debating. It seems Ianto now has a moustache.  It’s like a hideous 70s era handlebar, but instead of being full, it’s pencil thin, just along the top and edges. One of the guys argues that it’s fake; he says, “It looks like he just grabbed a moustache out of the prop box and stuck it on.” Somehow I manage to get a close-up of Ianto’s mouth–I have no idea how–and I see that there’s already a bit of five o’clock shadow growing in on the skin underneath the stache. It looks real to me.

Then the scene changes and I am walking down a sidewalk to see a poor couple with two kids–one in a stroller and one walking.  I know this woman, but I don’t know her name.  One of my relatives let her stay with her while she was getting clean (in the dream, not in RL). I hear the relative lecturing her saying, “This is your second chance. You don’t get a third or fourth one. You can never use drugs again.”

As they are walking towards me, I tell them I have something for them and I’ll leave it at their door–nodding to the place where they just left. The woman lights up, but the man makes her keep walking.

I go into the building thinking it’s the entrance to an apartment building, but it’s a store.  I realize the couple are homeless. I go to the woman behind the counter and asks if she knows the woman who just left. She says yes. I ask to leave some Xmas presents. Then I realize I have lots in my bag. I can’t tell which is which, but I assume the ones without names are the ones I want since I don’t know the people’s names. I realize the one I did put down for the woman did have a name on it- Chryssy. I tell the woman to tell them that the presents are for Santa.

Dutifully logged for your amusement.

 

Midnight

The ceremonial robes hang heavy on my shoulders yet as I spin in the circle their hems lift and spiral out around me as if tiny invisible hands are lifting them. As I turn, words, I chant words I don’t know but do, and I feel the power start to build through my bare feet as they pound the ground. I see a circle of low blue flames sprout around me as I turn, as the circle is cast.  I am in a clearing in a dark moonless night with the stars the only light and shadows overtaking the woods.

I come to a standstill with my hands outstretched in invocation. Suddenly, I am light. The weight of the robes has shifted to the caress of chiffon. I have crossed a border; I have passed a threshold. The weight of the world I have carried on my shoulders and the invisible hands have lifted the burden. I feel wave after wave of happiness course through me as I feel the power of creation flow through my feet to my heart, from my crown to my heart, my heart that is cracking open in joy.

I hear you in the woods. Your feet are pounding the earth as you run, run, run. I close my earthly eyes and see the forest in my mind’s eye as it really is, a matrix of energy that is alive, constantly shifting and changing, dissolving and then reassembling. I see you, running, running, straight to me. The trees and bush explode into atoms as you approach and reassemble as you pass, their branches and leaves swaying in your wake. Everything is a whirlwind of tiny dots of blue and green and violet, a pointillism painting animated. Everything is alive. Everything is interconnected.

Eternities pass. A moment later, there is silence. And then, you are there, in front of me, together with me, inside the circle. I fall into you. One arm surrounds me as the other brings your hand to my chin to lift my face to yours.

I lift my eyes to yours. I see galaxies born and die in your eyes. I see all of history in your eyes. The divine spark of creation ignites and my heart leaps as I see the love in your eyes. A door closes in the distance. There’s no longer a need for it. We are together at last.

Ani-Us

 

 

This is a new one—of all the crazy, surreal dreams/visions, this time I had one that was animated—that’s right—a cartoon.

 

As usual, the viewpoint was that I was in the dream but also watching the dream. I was a little girl. The animation wasn’t realistic by any means—it was very much 30s era Looney Toons. I must have been about five or six in the dream—little chubby thing with blonde ringlets and a precious little dress with a Peter Pan collar—white lace anklets and Mary Janes. I was sitting in the back of an old 30s era pickup truck. The gate was down, and I was sitting on the gate holding on tight as the truck was driving really fast down a dusty road in what seemed like the middle of the desert. In the exhaust and fumes and kicked-up dust, I could see you running after the truck.

 

You were a little boy in short pants and a dirty tee shirt. Your shoes looked too big, and your hair was long and curling. You were covered in dust, with smudges of dirt across your cheeks. You were a little chubby thing too, with apple cheeks and pouty lips—if we’d been side-by-side and cleaned up we could pass for that Hummel picture my aunt had hanging up in her house. You have a grimace of determination; you are hell-bent on catching me.

 

I instinctively know you are trying to catch up with the truck so that you can jump up on the gate with me. I can see your mouth move, know you are calling out my name, but I can’t hear it with my ears but hear it with my mind. Your legs are churning heroically and your arms pumping madly as you try to get close. Every time you do, you reach out your hand to try to take mine as I gesture for you to run faster, and just as you start to take hold of my fingers, the truck speeds up. I try to lean out of the truck to get closer to you, to give you my hand, and again, just as you start to catch up the truck speeds up again. This happens again and again and again, and I’m getting upset. You’re pushing yourself harder and harder and I can see tears running down your dirt-stained cheeks. The truck speeds up again. He’ll never make it, I think, and choke back a sob. It’s going to happen again. I’m going to lose him again.

 

And the truck speeds up even faster. You start to grow smaller as the truck puts more distance between me and you, and then, suddenly, I yell “NO” and I fling myself out of the truck.

 

As I’m in midair, grown-up me thinks Um, you’re in a skirt and this is a gravel road as I almost do a cartwheel in midair. I see myself, bottom up, bloomers there for all to see as my skirt and starched white petticoat puffs up like a parachute. I still tumble down on the ground and scrape my knee. And then, suddenly, you’ve caught up with me, but before I can jump up and hug you, you grab my hand and pull me to my feet and yell “Run!” as you pull me, hand-in-hand, off the road and into the brush to the side of the road. Then I realize there is a bad scary monster after us, and we jump together behind a bush as we hear footsteps on the gravel down the road.

And then I wake up.

Solstice Vision

Spring.

A beautiful spring day. The feel of the sun on my face. A warm breeze flicking my hair into my eyes.

I look around and we are in a meadow, blooming wildflowers as far as the eye can see. No trees, no buildings, no people, no roads. Just mile upon mile of exuberant color splashing against the cool green of tall swaying grass.

You are laughing at my side. I turn to look at you–faded jeans dirty and rumpled, a dark tee. You are so happy–it’s been so long since I’ve seen you this happy. You are smiling with your eyes, letting the mask drop, your soul show through.

I sense something to my left. As I turn, I bilocate. Suddenly, I am in both Embodied Me and Angelic Me. Angelic Me is hovering just a few feet above Embodied Me and I am looking down at us through her eyes. Embodied Me looks up and meets Angelic Me’s gaze–a moment of recognition. Angelic Me sees myself in body, in the tall grass and blooming flowers, with you by my side, so happy, and realizes I am holding a baby on my hip. The baby coos and gurgles, and Embodied Me smiles up at me, a smile of a secret shared. The wind picks up again, blowing my hair back from my face in long golden waves of unfurling, undulating liquid light, tendrils reaching, reaching, reaching. Embodied Me–solid, grounded, a part of this earth. Connected–to you, to Angelic Me–to everything that blooms. To everything that warms. To everything that loves.

And then I smile up at myself, a smile of contentment. There is nothing else that is necessary. A perfect moment, us laughing, and a riot of joyous color racing into eternity.

Children Everywhere

Dream #1

I am boarding a plane. It is a huge plane, double decker, and I am walking through first class to get to my seat. I am walking along the aisle on the right side of the plane (my left). I am dragging my carry-on behind me. As I go through the arch, I see you in the back of the plane. Incongruously, you have a baby stroller, open, with a baby in it, and you are beginning to walk up the aisle on the other side of the plane, pushing the baby stroller in front of you. No one seems to think this is odd, and I have no idea how you are managing to get a stroller down that tiny aisle.

You keep looking at me like Well, come on. I can’t exactly leap across the passengers in the middle of the plane. I rush as fast as I can to the back of the plane and then up the other aisle. You don’t bother to stop and wait on me (how rude!) and by the time I get to the front, you are in First Class. The attendant shuts the door and tells us we all have to sit down. I have no choice; I sit in a seat right at the front and fume. Are you in first class? Did you leave the plane? Why didn’t you wait on me? And where did the baby come from?

Dream #2

I am in a hotel room holding a baby in my arms. She is fretting, not outright crying, but she’s on the verge. I am rocking her back and forth on my hip, rubbing her back and chatting to her to keep her distracted. Then, just as I pat her bottom, she poops a big load in her diaper. And I mean a BIG load. The diaper can barely hold it all there is so much poop. I am trying to find the diaper bag so that I can change her, and I can’t find it anywhere.

Dream #3

My mom is talking to you in the parking lot of the grocery store. She doesn’t realize it is you, but she should; it’s pretty obvious, but she doesn’t make the connection. You are in an old beat-up sedan, and off in the parking lot there is a little girl playing. Mom is dividing her attention between talking to you and watching the little girl. Then she has to go to the bathroom, and she tells you to keep an eye on the little girl while she is in the store; she tells you nothing better happen to her!

And a vision. . .

This one is pretty graphic and disturbing. I’m putting it behind a cut. If you are squeamish, don’t click.

October New Moon Dreams

It’s the moment between sleep and waking, a few hours before the new moon is exact.

I feel you wrap your arms around me. I am so sad. I feel that everything is falling apart. I’m scared that I’ve lost you. You are sad. You keep telling me that you are a loser, and I keep telling you no, no you aren’t. How can I get through to you how wonderful you are? How can I get through to you how proud of you I am, how much I love and respect you? You are my hero, my gallant knight. Yet how can I judge you for feeling that way, when I look in the mirror and all I see are my imperfections, my failures too?

We are so alike, you and I. Two peas in a pod. And neither of us has any patience. We want everything, and we want it now!

I cry. You hold me. As sad as you are, you try to comfort me. I love you so much for that.

I drift off.

I am at a railway station. There is a train getting ready to pull out. You are on the train. But there is something unearthly going on. It’s as if the train is being eaten, or pulled some way into oblivion. It is covered by darkness which races over it from the caboose toward the cab. You are running along the train trying to get away from that darkness. There are still bits of the train that haven’t been consumed yet; I can see you through bits and pieces of windows. If the train is consumed, you’ll be pulled into another universe, and I will have lost you. I will not lose you! I run along the tracks and leap up periodically, trying to reach through the windows to grab your hand and pull you through the window, but I can’t. I get to the cab, and I realize I am going to have to go onto the train to get you. But if I do, I could be pulled into that universe too.

I push down my fear, and I jump onto the steps, I walk into the cab as you are sprinting down the aisle toward me, the darkness on your heels. You reach out to me, and I grab your forearm and pull you through the door. I push away from the train with all my strength, and we fly free, just as the train is consumed and disappears.

We fall onto the pavement. You right yourself first and pick me up, pulling me into an embrace, hugging me to your chest hard. We both cry. We came so close to losing. But we didn’t. We are still here, and we are together. Fear will never separate us again.

I drift off. A door is starting to swing shut. The light is barely visible, a thin sliver. “No,” I yell. I am so sick of locked doors. I am so sick of walls. I am so sick of darkness. I push the door open.

The door starts to swing shut again. I push it open; it swings shut, again, again, again. I’m so tired, and so frustrated. I see a brick, and I dart to pick it up, get back to the door just in time to set the brick between the door and the jamb. The door is open, a crack, but just a crack means it is not locked. The light shines through.

No more darkness. I go off to find you.

Monster Moon Madness

This is an instance where what my mom dreamed is actually more interesting than what I dreamed.  I’ll tell her dreams first as they are more coherent than what mine were.

First she dreamed that I dressed up as a witch for Halloween. However, the only traditional part of the costume was the hat; the rest of it was a slinky black dress and a jacket.  She said I was a “high class witch,” which I find hugely amusing. She said I went to work, and people didn’t understand it, and I had to explain.  “High class” as in Level 5 and “high class” as in “classy.” I thought the first part was pretty perceptive of her; she would never identify me as a witch because she understands that through the stereotype, but she did recognize that I done a lot of spiritual growth, and I have progressed.

The second dream was about us, but she didn’t even realize it! I was so tempted to tell her, but she’s freaked out about us as it is, and she just wouldn’t get it. She said they were in a Catholic church for a wedding, and the processional had begun. But the bride wasn’t in line because she was off in another room to have sex with the groom. The groom realized it and ran away from the altar. Meanwhile, everyone was watching the processional and wondering where the groom went to and where the bride was. After they were done having sex, the two of them walked down the aisle together arm and arm, laughing and skipping.

Now, the first part of the dream immediately made me think of The Bridegroom vision from over a year ago.  And the walking down the aisle together was obviously from Processional. She’s never read my blog, and I’ve never told her those visions, so how could she have possibly dreamed them–unless they are real.

She knows intuitively what is going on with us. She actually asked me, last year, what a twin flame was. I explained to her, and she immediately told me that was stupid and crazy. That’s when I stopped talking to her about you, at least in any signficant way.  Shortly after that was the double-yoked egg incident, where she said she felt guilty eating it because she felt like she was eating twins.  Her higher self is trying to tell her what is going on, trying to prepare her, but she just wont’ listen. She’s just too threatened.

I joked about it. “Maybe the two dreams are related,” I said, teasingly.

“You would never have sex in a church!” she yelled. “Don’t be silly. It’s because I was thinking of your cousin’s wedding.”

And that very well could have triggered it, because they just got the wedding photos back and Mom got hers.

At least I know there is confirmation, and that what is happening is supposed to be happening; otherwise, why would she dream the same dream we did?

Oh well, on to mine. We are in a hotel in Chicago, but it isn’t one I recognize. I’m there for a business conference, and you’ve tagged along.  There is a window by the door, but instead of seeing outside, it’s more like a crystal or a mirror for scrying. I come out of the bathroom, and you are watching what is happening in the window as if you are watching something on television.

You are absolutely enraged. I have never seen you so angry!  Your face is bright red and the veins are bulging out of your neck. I try to get you to talk to me, but you jump up off the couch and walk away from me, yelling. I can’t make out what you are saying, but I do make out “Mom.” I’m confused. Are you mad at your mom? My mom? Someone else’s mom?  I try to make out what is in the window, but I can’t make sense of the images. At one point I think I see a shot gun, but then it’s a meadow, and then a skyscraper. It makes no sense. It’s like on Chuck when the intersect kicks in and he sees random images that mean absolutely nothing unless you have the key.

I’m torn. I’m worried about leaving you by yourself, but I have to go downstairs to the conference. You’re just stomping around the room waving your arms and yelling, so I think you’ll probably be okay and grab my briefcase and go.

As I get in the elevator, right smack in the middle of the cabin is a chair, and Michael is sitting in the chair. There are people around him, and they ignore him as if they don’t even see him. I don’t see him as Michael, but as a guy named Michael I went to school with.  He is annoying me by taking up so much room in that damn chair, and I’m short with him. He shrugs it off.

I get out of the elevator, and I am confused. I don’t know if I am in the right hotel for the conference, or if the sessions are in another hotel, or if they are somewhere else. Like in any dream, the city looks familiar but not familiar.  I go back inside to my right, where there is a big circle of carpet in an open area; they have set up a buffet there and beyond that area there is a door. I try to make my way across the buffet as I think the registration desk for the convention is probably beyond that door, but one of my profs from college is there, and she says I should join them and eat something, so to be polite I put a little something on my plate in hopes of eating it fast and then getting out of there.

Right before I wake there s a flash of a scene. We are sitting along the river, a ways back, under the trees. It is summer, and it is a warm and lazy day. The river is barely moving, and I smell magnolia and sweet honeysuckle. We are curled up in each other’s arms against a tree. It is so calm and peaceful. It is home.

Then, the next night, another dream. I am back at my college. It is Christmas time.There is a very large Christmas tree in the reception area. It is not decorated. It is also very old. It is one of those metallic trees they had back in the 60s. There are pictures in our album of my grandma’s; there was a light at the bottom of the tree and it cycled through different colors: red, blue, green.

This tree is just metallic silver. There is a man with me in reception, and he is screaming. He takes out a saw and starts trying to cut off one branch of the tree. But he doesn’t seem to think that he is cutting a tree; he keeps screaming that he is going to cut off his wife’s arm. I am horrified. Is he delusional? Or is the tree really a woman, and I just don’t see her as a woman but as a tree? I keep telling him to stop it, but he doesn’t. He keeps yelling and keeps hacking away at the branch.

Then I think, maybe I’m taking this too literally. Maybe this is a family tree, because I had that dream last month about my ex’s family tree written in the book. And maybe instead of cutting off his wife’s arm literally he’s talking about cutting off his wife’s branch of the tree?

While I’m puzzling this out, I suddenly realize I am in the Foundation office, and there is a girl named Chelsea there. I am supposed to meet one of the vice-presidents. She is chatting with me as I wait. Although it is an administrative office, there are university items for sale, including socks, which weirdly enough are not in the school colors.

Then I am in a high school, a very old one, and I am trying to find a restroom. It is between classes, and kids are running everywhere, and I can find the student restrooms, and the faculty restrooms, but I can’t find the public restrooms.

Then I am in the Arboretum at the Galt House, and I stand up from the sofa. I’ve just finished a coffee, and out of nowhere, you grab my hand and start to pull me toward the elevators. But then you stop and swing me back into your arms and we start waltzing through the Arboretum. I am slightly embarrassed; after all, I’m the girl who almost flunked Social Dance in school. I always trip over my own two feet. But you’re very good at leading, and somehow I’m managing to follow, and not one person in the place seems to have a problem with us dancing, or for that matter, seem to see us. They just instinctively move to one side or the other of us, as if they can feel us there but can’t actually see us with their eyes.

A Month of Darkness

It starts off innocently enough.

A picture someone posted of you at a work function. You’re smiling, with your arm around them, nothing untoward, very professional. A quick hug, a smile, a few polite words. I know how this works. I do it too. That’s part of our job.

And it’s not like I don’t know this. It’s not like I haven’t seen you do this a hundred, a thousand, times before. It’s perfectly innocent, but this time I erupt and seethe with jealousy.  It sets off one of the worst purges I’ve had in a long time.

I’ve been through enough of these that I know what it is. All that darkness has to be faced, released. But I’m getting so tired of it. I’m a good person. How much evil can I have inside me?

Obviously a hell of a lot.

I hate myself for this. This isn’t me. I’ve never really felt jealousy before. Not this mindless all-consuming rage. When I’ve been in relationships before, and I’ve seen my guy with another girl, even if he’s not flirting with her, I never felt this. I always made it my fault. I’m not good enough, pretty enough, nice enough. I’m too demanding, too much a bitch, etc. etc. etc.

Maybe, in a twisted way, this is me finally finding my self-worth.

You have done absolutely nothing to make me question the commitment we’ve made to each other. If anything, you have gone out of your way to assuage my fears. Yet I still seethe.

I keep going back online and looking at the picture, again, again, again. Why am I doing this? The one thing I know with absolute certainty is that there is nothing and no one who could ever separate us. Travel or circumstances may take us away from each other, but I know that you and I will always find our way back to each other. Yet I look at this picture and I am physically ill. I am nauseous. I think I’m going to throw up. Instead I throw the phone across the room and curl up in a ball and sob and sob and sob.

This darkness erupts, unpredictably, over days. I keep it from you, ashamed. I can handle this on my own, I think. I’m strong. I’ll sort it out.

But it’s not getting sorted out, so I do what I learned from my father.

I shut down.

I can’t deal with the pain. It’s too much this time, and I’ve been in so much pain over the last year. I just can’t cope with it. I just can’t.

Work conspires to enable me. All hell breaks loose at the office, every day, for days on end. I can barely remember to eat let alone quiet myself down and face the monster that’s inside of me. What time I do have, I crochet. If I count, I can’t really think. Mindless activity to chase the rage away.

********************************************************************************

I have a dream of us. You are walking out of the fog on a chilly fall morning. In your arms is our daughter from that lifetime I saw last fall, the one where they murdered us and stole her away from us. This isn’t that lifetime, but this one; you look like you, and you dress the way you do now. The baby is in a froth of a dress, all lace and ribbons, in baby pastels of mint and peach and soft sunshine yellow. Her energy glistens in the fog that surrounds us.

As you walk toward me, she reaches out to me. When you are close enough, you hand her to me. As I take her in my arms, her dress billows out. It leaves a train of sparkles, mint and peach and yellow, stars and hearts. She snuggles in against me as my arms go around her.

“Promise me you’ll take care of her for me,” you say.

“Of course I will,” I say, swaying back and forth from side to side to soothe her. Then, I realize what you have just said.

“Where are you going?” I ask, alarmed. Oh God, don’t let me lose him again, I think. I am frantic.

“Take care of her,” you repeat, firmly.

“Why?” I cry out. “What’s going on? Are you all right? You’re coming back, aren’t you? Promise me you’re coming back?” All I can think of is that vision from that lifetime, you lying dead in a pool of blood. That can’t happen again. I won’t let it happen again.

I wake up, shaking, reaching for the phone, hoping there’s a message from you, hoping you’re all right.

*****************************************************************************

So far this month, there has been one murder by shooting, one murder by stabbing, and one murder through blunt force trauma where we live.  There have been several other stabbings and fist fights.  A couple of kids were expelled from school for bringing guns to the campus. There have been five house fires, and one old lady died in one. There has been a bank robbery and three armed robberies of stores, all within a mile of where we live. A couple of weeks ago, a guy at work pulled out a knife on someone else. That’s just here. That’s not counting what’s going on else where, school bomb threats, and aborted terrorist plots, and angry mobs attacking embassies and killing people.

There seems to be darkness everywhere.

*******************************************************************************

I feel warmth against me. It runs the whole length of my back, so it’s not the dog. Have you come home in the middle of the night and not awakened me? I roll over, and you are not there. There is a teenage girl there, looking at me. I realize it is our daughter; I see us in her face.  She smiles.

“It’s okay Mom. I’ll stay here with you.”

You told me to take care of her. And here she is taking care of me. I feel ashamed and grateful and loved at the same time.

****************************************************************************

I’m so frustrated, and I have no right to be. I know how busy you are. But when I don’t hear from you for a day or two, I worry. Are you all right? Have you got shot or stabbed or run over by a car? Have I done something to piss you off? Have you finally gotten sick of me and left me for someone else? Have I lost you, yet again?

Ah, there it is again. The jealousy.

But, it’s not really quite jealousy. It is, I realize, but it isn’t. Of course, it’s the self-esteem thing, the insecurity. You can’t be jealous unless you’re insecure. But as I force myself to finally face all of this I’ve been denying, I realize that the word I’m really looking for to describe this isn’t so much jealous but begrudge.

I begrudge each and every person you spend time with because they get to be with you and I don’t. When I let myself think about you when you aren’t here, I am in so much pain. My heart literally feels as if it’s breaking. I feel as if someone is sticking a knife in my belly. I cry so long and so hard I can’t breathe. We spend so little time actually with each other, compared to other couples, and I know with work we can’t, so it makes every moment we are actually in each other’s presence so precious to me.  I know you are being faithful to me. I know you are just doing what’s required of you. But damn it, I want that arm around me more often. I want this agony of your absence to be gone.

Would I be freaking out about this so much if we were more the typical couple, seeing each other day in and day out? When our lives settle down and we move into that more traditional kind of relationship, will this jealousy go away?

The realization calms me a bit. I’m still ashamed. I should be thinking about you, your needs, your wants. It’s so hard for me to deal with the darkness inside. Good girls don’t hate. Good girls don’t rage. Good girls don’t always think of themselves first. I guess it’s my turn to learn what it means to be bad.

******************************************************************************

It’s so dark. No moon, no stars, no artificial light. Just pitch black. There is a huge wall in front of me, going up, way way up, into the sky. It stretches to my right and my left as far as I can see, fading off into the horizon.

Where did this come from? Who built it? Am I a prisoner here?

Did I build it?

I hear pounding on the other side. Someone is beating against the wall. And then I hear someone yelling my name.

It’s you.

I yell back, call out to you. You hear me, and the pounding becomes louder, faster. It sounds different. It sounds—metallic. I realize you are pounding on the wall with a sledgehammer.

I think, and there appears on the ground next to me my own sledgehammer. I grab it and run over to the wall, swing it where I hear you pounding on the other side. Between the two of us, we manage to make a fairly large hole about waist level. You start to crawl though, and I grab your hand and help you over. You stand up and grab me in a fierce hug.

“What are you doing?” you ask, as you stroke my hair and rub my back.

“I don’t know!” I wail, sobbing. “I didn’t do this. I didn’t do this, did I?”

You shush me and I cry into your shoulder. I’m so ashamed. Did I do this? How could I ever build a wall between us? I am so ashamed.

I finally calm down and you wipe the tears from my cheeks, kiss the top of my head. We break from the embrace and look at the wall—and the hole is sealing up behind you.

“No!” you yell and grab the sledgehammer from where you threw it when you came through. You pound at the sides of the hole, smashing the brick, but it keeps reappearing. I grab my hammer and help you, but the brick grows back faster than we can hit it.

“Step back,” I say. I’m going to finish this once and for all.  I raise my hands, palms toward the wall, and pull the energy down through me. I let it build, and then with all my anger and darkness and rage, I let it erupt through my hands.

The wall shatters, disintegrates into a shower of light particles that float in the air and then settle on the ground like dust. You sigh and put your arm around me. I sag against you. I make you this promise: it doesn’t matter who builds them–there will be no walls between us. Not now. Not ever.

And then, suddenly, I am consumed with fire. The ecstasy has returned, and, this time, I cry with joy.

 

Nightmares in the Dark of the Moon

The first night. . .

We are standing on opposite sides of a freeway. We so want to get to each other, but there is so much traffic, we don’t have an opportunity. Finally, the traffic slows on your side of the freeway, and I know you are getting ready to dart across to the median. As I watch you, seeing you in stop action as the cars and trucks whizz by, I see you start to walk into the roadway when your left leg goes out on you and you crumple onto the side of the road.

I scream. I can’t get to you because of the traffic. You don’t get up. I’m terrified. You don’t get up. You don’t move. Did you hit your head when you fell? Do you have a concussion?

Then I see a semi coming. I scream. It zooms by,  just missing your head. I am out of my head with fear. Then I realize, This is the dreamtime and I throw up my hands facing you and think Wall! A brick wall starts to assemble, from the bottom up, up at least eight feet in a semicircle around you. The trucks and cars see the wall, swerve. I breathe a sigh of relief. You should be okay until I get to you.

I wake up, shaking. It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream. They’re not all precog. I send you reiki, just the same.

I fall back asleep. I am in a hospital room, standing beside the bed. You are in the bed, and I am trying to wake you up. You won’t wake up. Are you sedated? In a coma?  Several days have passed–your beard has grown back in. I love you with your stubble, but not like this.

I see you standing at the end of the bed, with your angel wings.  ”It’s almost over,” you tell me. I’m terrified. What does that mean? Are you going to die? What’s almost over?

Angel You hugs me, and we start to float up. It’s such a lovely feeling, floating like this, so light.

“No,” I say. “I can’t leave you like this.”

“It’s the dreamtime,” Angel You says to me.  ”What do you want to do?”

I float back down. If I can fly, I can pick you up and carry you. I can do anything I want, if I want it here. I scoop you out of the bed. You still don’t wake up.  This reminds me of how I first started to see you in the dreamtime, all those years before we met, always sleeping, my Sleeping Beauty.

I hold you in my arms like a child and lift off.

“Where are you going?” Angel You asks me.

I think first of the cottage, but no. They’ve spoiled it, our safe haven. It’s contaminated, besmirched.

The cave.

I think it and we are there. I touch down behind the boulder where we used to fall asleep in each other’s arms and place you on the bed of hay there. I search for the blanket of stars when I feel two paws poke at me. Is the dragon back, come to stand guard over you until I figure out what to do?

I wake up. The dog is walking over me to get to the other side of the bed.

********************************************************************************

Interlude

I’m in the kitchen. It always starts in the kitchen. Every day, like clockwork, whenever you are away, I feel you with me right before dinner time, checking in. I’m here. I’m okay. I love you.

But today instead of the loving words and reassurances, there’s pain again. It’s been a while since this has happened. I’d hoped that we were done with it, that we’d finally cleared whatever this is that causes us to pass this agony back and forth between each other like a hot potato.

I hear you scream my name, over and over and over in my head. I stop what I’m doing and take your pain because I love you. I double over and cry, cry, cry, gut wrenching sobs because I know when this happens you can’t cry, and you can’t keep it inside you any more, so I take it on and release it for you, just as you do for me.

And people think true love is hearts and flowers and picket fences. People are such fools. The love that we have, the fire, it would consume them, vaporise them like a nuclear explosion, leaving only a shadow, ash. It still astounds me, the intensity of this light that cycles between us, but my body is learning how to adjust.

But with every energy there is dark and light. it can’t always be the ecstasy. And so I accept the shadow side, let it pass through me, knowing it is ephemeral.

It dissipates faster than it has in the past, but when it is with me, it is overwhelming.  I feel rage, all-consuming rage, and mindless raw hate, and I beg you to keep your cool, whatever it is that is setting this off in you, Stay calm, stay calm, don’t do anything stupid.

It passes. Later I’m curled in a chair, crocheting a sweater for the dog. I’ve lit a candle for you, with the intention that whatever it is that is causing this pain is released. The flame is burning steady and bright. I feel you next to me, calm now, your energy stronger with me than it ever has been before. I feel you with me for one hour, two, almost three. We’ve never sustained this connection for so long when we’re apart.

I don’t know what happened yet, but whatever it is has made the connection between us even stronger.

********************************************************************************

The Second Night. . . .

It’s another one of those dreams where I am seeing things through your eyes. Not just through your eyes–I’m you. I’m with you in your body, seeing what you see, feeling what you feel. We try to move and can’t–I realize we are tied in a chair. You seem to already know this. It’s odd, this duality that’s unity, this two as one.

I’m freaked out at seeing through your eyes because I’m still not used to it, and I am absolutely freaked out at not being able to move–one of my nightmares come to life. There are odd noises, like hammering, and it starts to grow dim. We try to focus and realize we are in–a cargo crate? What the hell?

And then I am outside your body floating above and I see the two face stealers, the ones who killed us and stole our daughter from us. You are indeed in a packing crate and the male face stealer is using a crane to put the crate in a very deep well.

No! I scream. They are burying you alive. And as I scream in terror I wake up and I am furious, absolutely furious, at them because I thought we had done with them, and at myself for freaking out and leaving you in danger. And before I can focus in and get back to you, the alarm goes off.

I take the dog outside. As she sniffs the barren dry grass, I look up into the sky and am taken aback. The sun has not yet risen, the clouds have cleared, and the sky is a deep, clear, achingly beautiful midnight blue. In the east, just above the treeline, where in just a little while the sun will start to cast its rosy glow, I see Venus winking brightly at me. I look up and see two more stars, one above her and to her left and another above her and to her right, forming a perfect Isosceles triangle.

I think of you, in the East, and my heart aches. I visualize all my love pouring to you through that funnel of stars, coalescing through Venus like a laser. There is no container on earth that could hold the intensity of what I feel for you; only the stars are worthy of carrying my heart to you.

In the shadow of the moon I pray it is enough to protect you and bring you safely back to me.

Cryptic Email

Okay, it’s weird enough when I have strange dreams that don’t make sense, but when I dream I am watching someone type an email to me, that’s a flag that something is up.

Usually I get things in images or stories and then I have to “decode” them. Thankfully, I paid attention in my literature classes, and I know how to interpret stories. The issue is figuring out the sometimes idiosyncratic symbolism that my subconscious uses to communicate with me.

When I get something in writing, it’s usually serious. So I have to admit I was a bit thrown when immediately upon waking I remembered the typing of the email. Of course, since it probably is serious, my subconscious just couldn’t let it be an easy interpretation. There were multiple lines, which I remember as making occasional sense when I was watching the type come up on the screen in the dream, but I don’t remember most of what I saw on the screen now that I am awake.

I do remember, very vividly, two lines.

USCU

your wife

My first impression was that USCU was silly. USC is University of Southern California, and University of Southern California University is, well, redundant.

So then I started playing around with it.

Phonetically: You ass. See you (as in goodbye you idiot).  You ass. See, you. (like duh, don’t you see it is you, you dumb ass).

Partially phonetically: U.S. (United States). CU (See you). See you in the U.S.? I am in the U.S., so is someone who isn’t from the U.S. going to visit me?

Partially phonetically again: US (us=you + me) CU (see you). We see you?  Why say US to begin with? Why not just say WE?

And then “your wife”?

There were words between USCU  and wife, and if I could remember them maybe it would make more sense.

There’s just one problem: I’m a chick, and straight, and I don’t have a wife.

Your=you are wife (bad spelling aside–it should be you’re–but who says “you’re wife” anyway?). I’m not legally married. Am I going to get legally married? Umm, something someone needs to tell me? Or is this more symbolic, like this dream from last year?

So, cryptic email. I know it’s important, but I don’t know how to interpret it yet. Maybe I’ll get more information tonight.

Aliens Invade, Sirens of Various Sorts, Sex Comedies and Parties–

–All in a week’s dreams. Again, no idea what any of this means (if it means anything), but dutifully logged for the record and your amusement.

Dream 1

I am in a car with a bunch of guys. We pull up in front of a bar. The guy who is driving the car is Gareth David-Lloyd, but he doesn’t look like Gareth David-Lloyd; first of all, he is Black; secondly, he is dressed in 1920s clothes. I realize all of us in the car are Black, and I am the woman who was trying to get into the speakeasy in this dream.

We are once again trying to get into a bar, but it’s not that speakeasy. This bar is closed too, but it’s because we are there too early. I get that we are the entertainment for the evening, and we are there to set up.  I am standing on the sidewalk in front of the building and look up and see the sign. I know the name in the dream but I can’t remember it now. The logo looked like an null sign, you know, a zero with a diagonal slash. There is lettering making up the circle spelling something out, and then a name as the slash. All I remember is that it had something to do with fishermen, maybe a fish market or something like that?

Dream 2

 Chris and I are sharing a hotel room. She is being much friendlier to me than she was in the last dream. I’m not sure why we are sharing a hotel room as I just ran into Walmart to pick up a few things. This room is attached to Walmart, one I’m not familiar with, a very small rural one, and we have the door open and can see people walking past with their shopping carts.

Then the weather siren goes off, and I tell Chris I’d better make for home. I have my dog with me, and I am reacting to her as a dog, but instead of seeing her as a dog, I see her as a boy around ten or twelve (Background: When I first got my dog, I tried to psychically connect with her to ask her if she wanted to be spayed. When I made contact, I saw her as a teenage boy who told me his name was Michael. He also told me he absolutely did not want babies—he looked horrified at the idea—so I called the vet for her appointment the next day). I am trying to pack up my stuff and keep finding my bras everywhere. I realize every single one of my bras is in this hotel room. Why the hell would I bring all my bras?

Dream 3

Chris and I are no longer in the hotel room. We are in a penthouse suite, and part of the ceiling is glass. I can see the storm clouds rushing over our heads, and suddenly several clouds appear that look like the undersides of very large black termite-like bugs. Suddenly, termite-like bugs start swarming out of the clouds and we realize the clouds are really alien spaceships. One of the bugs materializes right in front of us; we are defiant but careful because we don’t know how dangerous he is.

Dream 4

I am driving to my mom’s house. Suddenly the storm sirens go off, but they aren’t telling us about a storm; they are ambulance sirens. We are all supposed to get in ambulances. I say out loud as I pull up in front of my mom’s house “I don’t have an ambulance,” and I hear a voice answer, “Get everyone in the SUV and buckle the seat belts.”

Dream 5

Someone has sent me a DM on Twitter that has a link in it. I click on the  link and it’s a photo of a poster for a movie. It looks like a 60s era sex comedy, you know, like Doris Day and Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk. There are several girls in bikinis—60s era bikinis, you know, the ones that actually covered cleavage and had cute little girl ruffles across your bottom. They’re all posing in cutesy Playboy-like poses around a man in a 60s era suit, who just happens to be Gareth David-Lloyd. He is making an exaggerated look of astonishment, with his mouth a perfect O and big wide eyes as if he’s shocked, absolutely shocked, to see girls in bikinis.  The title of the movie on the poster is Love and Ovaries.

I have no idea what that means folks. I’m just reporting what I saw.

Dream 6

Not really a dream. Just kept seeing the name Patton flashing in neon lights throughout a dream with nothing else coalescing around it. I don’t even remember images or feelings associated with it–just the name.

Dream 7

I’m going to get my hair done, and I tell the owner I don’t want the new guy to do  my hair; I want her to do my hair. The guy gets pissy with me, and I threaten to walk out. She pulls me aside and shows me that she has published an article with a guy named Franklin, and she is listed as Mrs. Franklin as the co-author.

Then she and I go to a party. There are guys everywhere. Outside I see a squirrel with a collar on. I go out and put my dog’s leash on the squirrel’s collar.

Then the owner and I go back inside with a guy and he grabs me from behind. There’s something about my dress–I’ve got on a pale lavender cotton tee shirt dress under another lavender silky dress.  I’m a little freaked; I’m afraid that he is going to rape me (I think is was a flashback to when I was attacked; I was jumped from behind) and I think This is it. This is how it ends. I’m gonna die. And then suddenly the guy pushes me away and grabs the owner and comes on to her for a while and then leaves.

I tell her “What a weirdo,” and she says “I kinda like him.” I say “To each his own,” and walk away.

I go outside and see my dog off her leash. Duh. I put it on the squirrel! It’s an outside party, and I’m afraid someone will open the gate and she’ll get out.  I go over to the squirrel and try to take the leash off it, but every time I reach for the leash the squirrel nips at me. At one point I am shaking the leash and the squirrel is hanging from it! It still is flipping itself up trying to bite me!

I let go of the leash and let the squirrel fall to the ground. I think I need work gloves to put on so if it bites me it won’t break my skin. Where am I going to find work gloves at a party? I wonder if oven mitts would work.

 

Another Staircase

A dream from last week. . . .

I’m driving down the street in my hometown (the street  from the tornado dream). In reality, the street is one-way north, but in the dream it is one-way south. That reversal may be significant, or may not.  There’s a lot of snow on the ground, but it’s melting, and as I’m coming up on the stop light at the intersection of the street with the main street in town, I see there is a Masonic temple to my right and that it is open and people are going into it.

Now, there is not a Masonic temple in my hometown (that I’m aware of), and this is a grandiose Victorian era monstrosity that you usually see in much larger cities than our little rinky-dink berg. The temple is where the old dime store used to be, but in reality, the dime store is one block over. Again, the displacement may or may not be significant.

So I pull over to the right of the street and park. In this dream I’ve always been curious what the inside of the temple looked like, and this seems like a good opportunity to go in and look around.

I walk into the temple and it looks like a lobby in one of the old, grand early cinemas (we do have one of those locally, but this isn’t that cinema; it’s one I’ve never seen before). There are a lot of people milling about. The decor is late Victorian. The colors are pretty drab. It reminds me of a mid-19th century edition of a Shakespeare collection one of my great aunts left me: dark green and rust colored, tattered leather and tarnished gold leaf. It’s musty and dark and very, very old.

There is a very elaborate, ornate staircase to my left. It goes up one story, then slightly turns at not-quite a ninety-degree angle, then goes up another half story to a landing.  I somehow know this staircase leads to the theatre, and I’m curious as to what this theatre might look like, so I start to go up it.

The staircase is crowded; there are lots of people going up and down it. About half way up, I run into Chris. I am surprised to see her; it’s been a while since I have. She greets me, and I’m immediately put off by her. She is being very haughty and condescending. She is a step or two above me, and she doesn’t come down to the same step I’m on. She’s stopped right in the middle of the staircase, which has made me stop in the middle, and people are trying to get around us. It’s a tight squeeze.

She’s going on and on about some gifts I gave another girl, a girl much younger than we are who has started working at my office. She knows this girl, and they are good friends. There’s something about a cabbage grater and green ceramic bowl, and while she’s talking, I keep getting flashes of an old-fashioned wooden lean-to ladder, and I think that even though she’s talking about a cabbage grater she’s really talking about a ladder. I’m trying to figure out why on earth she’s linking the two together and why she is being such a bitch to me when we’ve always gotten along really well.

Then a realize she is angling for me to give her the same gifts I gave the other girl. This pisses me off, first of all, because she seems to have a sense of entitlement that she deserves gifts for something; secondly, it comes out of a raging jealousy that I suddenly realize she has towards this other girl; and lastly, I feel as if she is trying to emotionally manipulate me in some way. I’m so angry at her that I decide then and there that I will never give her a cabbage grater and a green ceramic bowl no matter how much she thinks she deserves it.

I never say these dreams make sense people. I just record what happens.

So I put on my pretend nice face and chat a little while longer and then get away from her and move on. I get to the landing, but the theatre is closed, and everyone is going directly down the back staircase. I think this is really bizarre; why would they have the staircase open if the theatre is closed? Wouldn’t they block it off so people wouldn’t be going up to the theatre? I’m now doubly pissed, and as I reach the first floor, I look outside the windows and see that the snow beside my car is melted–I’ve parked in a no parking zone, the stripe having been obscured by the snow. I rush outside just as I wake up.

By Candle Light

It’s become second nature now, something I do more nights than not. I take out a vigil candle and charge it with reiki or write an intention or a wish or a prayer on it, light it, and let it burn.

It takes approximately one-and-one-half hours for said candle to burn. Different colored ones, like the ones I buy at our local witchy shop, burn a bit faster. And of course, when a candle is really charged, or the intention is really in synch, that speeds things up too.

But lighting a candle on a regular basis has its origins in something that was not speedy—waiting for you to come into my life.

Before I even knew who you were, before I even knew your face, I would light a candle and wish, wish, wish for the right man to come into my life. I would put the candle in the window as a beacon, so that you could find your way home to me.

I never told you that, did I? Yet another secret revealed.

And yet it worked, didn’t it?

********************************************************

There has been a lot of really dark, negative energy recently. Not just for us, but for everybody. I’ve been burning through (no pun intended) vigil candles like mad. Sometimes I have two or three going at the same time. Intentions for us, protections for friends, more major mojo ones for the sticky situations.

And that’s what I was dealing with earlier in the week—another sticky situation. I always try to be super careful when setting intentions and prayers for others—always put an “escape” clause—“if it be their will,” “as it harms no one,” “as it works for the good and benefit of all,” but I always fret about boundaries. Boundaries, one of my major issues. More on that in a later post.

But this one I feel justified—there’s abuse going on, subtle abuse, but as someone who grew up in an abusive home I know it’s there; even when everyone else sees the smiling faces and thinks everything is wonderful, I’ve had many decades of learning to read between the lines. Body language is everything, and the vibes I’m getting is that it’s beyond the usual dysfunction/addiction matrix—there’s dark stuff going on here, stuff that is not consensual, stuff that is meant to stifle free will.

So how do you help free someone who is bound without violating free will?

It’s tricky. There are soul contracts, and karmic lessons, and psychological and developmental growth points that have to be respected and honored. Yet no one deserves to suffer, and no one deserves to be afraid.

I mulled it over. Wrote an intention that I thought would deal with the situation while still respecting free will, and provided multiple escape clauses. I lit the candle, with the prayer that if something could be done, it would be, and let it go.

Things progressed as usual. Stressed out, I curled up in my chair and grabbed my yarn and crocheted like mad. The repetition of the movement, the feel of the yarn, the texture of the fabric and patterns in the color—they usually bring me (close) to a trance state.

Then my eye is drawn to the shelf where the candle is.

It’s nearly burnt down, just a small fragment left, and it’s sputtering and guttering as if it’s going to go out.

There’s no draft in the room, and no ghostie I can discern, so I take it at face value: this intention is hitting a nerve and someone (or something) is fighting back.

So now I’m at a decision point: Do I let the flame die out? Do I refocus my attention and keep it going until it hits the end? Do I take this as a sign that I’ve crossed a line?

I don’t think it’s the latter, or the candle would have gone out way before this. There’s still a good ten minutes left, so I decide to try to refocus and see what happens.

I try to remember exactly what the intention was. It’s always long, because I’ve learned I need to be explicit as possible to avoid unforeseen consequences (more on that later), but I need the quick and down-and-dirty essence of the request. I compose a short sentence in my mind and start saying it to myself.

The candle continues to sputter.

I start to think maybe it’s not meant to be. Maybe I crossed a line; maybe this grief is supposed to go on.

So intent am I in trying to suss out the philosophical ramifications of all this, I don’t notice when you sneak up behind me. I jump when I hear your voice in my ear, reciting the intention I’ve been reciting.  Of course you’ve heard it; I know it’s like me yelling at the top of my lungs in your head when I really get focused (sorry sweetie; it goes with the territory; besides, I get to hear that soundtrack that runs through your head on a 24/7 basis).

You rest your head on my shoulder and we fall into cadence, almost chanting.

And immediately the flame leaps up.

There’s an overwhelming sense of relief that I haven’t overstepped my bounds, that my instincts were right in doing this, and that you support me and want this situation to be resolved as much as I do.

My partner in life and love and magic.

And that leaves me mulling over this core issue that comes up for me again and again: owning my power, believing I have a right to it, and putting it into practice.

*******************************************************

I’ve nearly gone through an entire box of candles in the last few weeks. I was trying to light one and drip some of the wax into the base of the candle holder so that it would be secure. I’m tired, and I keep holding the candle at the wrong angle, and keep snuffing it out. Not a good sign.

I keep scratching matches, and lighting the candle, and getting frustrated. Should I just give up? Maybe it’s another sign and then Bingo! The wick finally catches on and flares up in a good solid flame. I get a couple of drops of wax in the holder (and more down my hand; ow!) and finally get the candle solidly upright.

I go into the kitchen to pick the wax off my hand and see if I’ve given myself a good burn. It looks okay, so I go back into the living room.

The dog has jumped from the chair to the floor and is looking up at the shelf.

I look up too and see flames—and they aren’t on the candle.

I run over and realize that one of the matches I used to light the candle hadn’t been completely out when I put it in the empty votive holder. It’s reignited, and since there were several other matches in the jar, they’ve caught fire too.

But instead of a steady flame, the flame has separated into two separate flames, joined at the bottom but each leaping on its own, first one flicks up as the other retreats, then the other leaps up as the first one crouches down, dancing with each other in perfect rhythm.

And of course this just happens to be occurring right in front of our picture.

Talk about spontaneous combustion.

And while I laugh at how apt this is, I am still not going to risk burning down the house, so I carefully put out the fire.

Besides, we’ve both learned the fire between the two of us can’t be extinguished, even if we tried.

I take the matches out into the kitchen, far away from the candle, and get the jar of sand just in case. From here on out, lighters only.  Sometimes I forget just how powerful this energy is.

*****************************************************

It’s ten years ago, right after I got my master’s initiation. One of my friends has the perfect guy for me, she says. He’s older, and has money, and is a professional, but he’s into spirituality and Buddhism and yoga and such. She’s keen on setting us up on a blind date. She’s working on the first stage: lattes at the local coffee shop. Nice, neutral, safe.

I’ve just moved, and I’m sorting through stuff in the boxes that are filled with things for the hall closet. I come across something I had completely forgotten about: a reiki infused candle I’d picked up at the last New Age fair. There are two of them, actually, one for love, and one for money.

Well, it seemed to me that this was a sign. My friend’s trying to set me up with what seems like the perfect guy (again, other people’s definition of “perfect” for me–I still wasn’t strong enough in myself to acknowledge that what I genuinely wanted in my heart was radically different from what everyone else just assumed I would want, mostly because of what they wanted, or some stereotype they had of a “young professional woman”).

Anyway, a reiki infused love candle. And since I did reiki now, the more reiki I put in it, the better, right?

I wish I could blame this on being blonde, but I was still a brunette back then.

At least I had the sense to do it in the kitchen. It was about the time I was hanging out a lot with one of my wiccan friends, and we had been talking about candle spells. . . you can see where this is going, right?

At least I had the sense to know not to use his name. And I knew about the “escape clauses,” so I was sure to put them in too. And I poured out my heart, all my yearnings, and desires, and wishes for the perfect man for me. All very benign, so it seems even in hindsight, and I put the reiki symbols on the candle and then held it in my hands to charge it even more.

All I can say in my defense is that I was very new to all of this and I had absolutely no idea exactly how powerful reiki was. The New Agers I knew (and the only reiki people I knew at that point were New Agers) were all the peace and love recycled hippie types. Let the sunshine in and Age of Aquarius and everything is wonderful and lovely, man.

Sigh. I lit the candle.

Not only did I get a good strong flame, I got a flame that shot up about a foot in the air.

I was completely freaked out.

The dog was just a puppy, nearly five pounds sopping wet, and even she knew this was not a good thing. She stood at at the door, looking at the flame, and barked at it.

The flame just kept growing higher and higher.

I panicked. This was a new place. The last thing I needed was to burn down the apartment the first month there. I grabbed a glass of water and tried to dowse the flame.

The candle must have had fat in it, because instead of putting out the flame, it made it stronger. The flame flashed up a good seven feet, nearly to the ceiling. I thought it had hit the ceiling and I stood there, waiting to see the flames take off along the stucco.

But luckily it didn’t. It must have been only a few seconds, but it seemed an eternity. It was one of those moments when you are terrorized to the point that you can’t move. I stood there, immobile, watching a seven foot flame leap and dance on the stove.

By the time my mind finally started working again (flour, flour, grab the flour) the flame had died down to a normal size flame. I snuffed it out and threw the whole mess in the kitchen sink, watching it for a few minutes to make sure it was really out, and then throwing the flour on it to make sure.

What a mess.

The blind date with the guy never took place. It turns out that the “perfect” guy had a deep dark secret, and to try to hide it, guess what he did–yep, arson.

And I suppose in a way, what happened was for the best. Once his “secret” saw the light of day, everyone realized he needed help and he got it. It’s so easy to look at the face that people show the world and to just assume because someone seems happy and smiling that they really are. To have to confront the pain and suffering of another is just too hard–after all, look at how modern man deals with his own suffering: booze and pills, denial and projection, anything to numb the overwhelming agony in his own heart.

Better to suffer and to acknowledge the suffering than to lie to ourselves and to others.

And I suppose it benefitted me in multiple ways too. It burned away for me the illusions I had about the “perfect” man–made me realize that “Mr. Wealthy Professional Guy” was not what I wanted or needed in my life.

That was the last time I ever trusted anyone who said to me “I know the perfect guy for you.”

I also never again trusted anything anyone was selling as “reiki-infused” or set with any kind of intention, charm, or magic, by anyone else. Even if someone has set the item with good intentions, you can’t know exactly what they said or what they did. And without being sure of exactly what they said or did, you’re on dangerous ground. From that point on, any intention, energy, or “magic” I used was mine and mine only, one that I had thought through carefully and agonized over before I ever said a word or lit a match.

This was the beginning of my education as to what it really meant to be an energy worker. I began to trust less and less in the New Agers and even in some of the reiki people I knew. The world that they seemed to live in looked to me more and more inauthentic; as big an illusion in its own way as the culturally sanctioned, capitalist-approved world of stereotypes and assumptions I was growing more and more weary of. In that first year after my initiation, I was given a series of tasks that tested me, taught me how powerful I really was, and made it clear that I didn’t need anyone else’s approval or help to manifest what I needed. Even when I still doubt my power, doubt my right to act or to intervene, I think back on that first year and what I learned and it helps me center and find my way back to my power.

And, I suppose, looking back, even though I was thinking of that “blind date” potential when I lit that candle oh so many years ago, I can’t help but wonder if our higher selves, guardian angels, or whatever, had a different intention for that outpouring of yearning and desire and hope, because all of these things that happened, beginning with that last initiation, put me firmly on the way to crossing your path years later.

Desires, hopes, dreams–we see them all through the mundane lenses of what this world tells us we are, who we should be, and what we should want. Our higher selves really know, and if we listen and are true to what we find whispered on our hearts, so do we, if we are courageous and brave and honest with ourselves.

 

Uranus Goes Retro, My Dreams Go Nuts

I have no idea what any of this means, but I am dutifully logging it anyway.

I am in a building (hotel, convention center) with a teenage girl. We are trying to get onto an elevator to get to the parking garage to get to my car. People are ahead of us, and as the doors open, they get onto the elevator. . . and when it’s our turn, they shut the doors in our faces.

“How rude!” the girl says.

I tell her another elevator will eventually come. I’m more preoccupied with trying to find my car. Where did I put it? I thought it was on the first level, but as I’m looking around, this place doesn’t look familiar at all. Am I in the right building?

I walk outside and the girl walks with me. There is a big sign over the entry to the parking garage, and I could read it in the dream but I don’t remember now. It had a Knott’s Berry Farm kinda feel to it, but I think it was something along the lines of “The M—– ——-.” Some kind of tourist attraction, not an amusement park per se but maybe something historical or cultural? Definitely had a country appeal.

So I’m curious now, and really confused, because none of this is looking familiar and I don’t know where the hell my car is. The idea of walking through an entire parking garage looking for it isn’t appealing either. I think maybe I can go into the garage and set off my car alarm to find it, but that would be really embarrassing and everyone would look at me like I was nuts. Why the hell didn’t I write down the level and letter when I parked? Why didn’t I take a damn picture of it with my phone?

So the girl and I are walking around, and on the other side of the building, there is an entrance to what looks like a large indoor farmer’s market. It kinda has the feel of the Reading Market in Philly, but it’s not the Reading Market, and over the door is that sign again, “The M—– ——-.” We go in.

It is very strange. To the left, there seems to be food stalls and tables and chairs where people are eating. To the right is the urinal, and there are no walls! Seriously, you can sit at the table and eat and watch the guys as they walk over to the urinal, which is in plain sight, and whip out their willies and take a whizz. I’m thinking, Jeez, I’ve got a kid with me! They should have a wall up. What kind of people are these? I turn around to say something to the girl to see if she’s seen it yet, and she’s gone! Now where on earth did she disappear to?

So I’m vaguely worried, because even though this girl is not my kid, it’s the mom instinct in me to be protective. So I’m wandering around and trying to find the girl and at least make sure she’s okay. I find the women’s restroom, which at least is walled in, but she’s not there. I walk around to the back of the building, where they have stalls set up to sell stuff. There are some nice pieces of reddish agates, cut like small rectangular tiles. A young boy is looking at them; I reach around him to look at one, ask him if it’s okay, and he says yes. They really are agates, but I have no idea what you would do with rectangle ones. I reassure him I’m not interested in them. He seems relieved because he wants to buy them.

I walk around and see lots of jewelry, but nothing that really appeals to me. There are some Indian women there selling tee shirts; I like the colors and designs on the tee shirts but they are using them as advertising for their business which is a real turn-off for me. It’s really blatant and detracts from the artistry of the design.

I’m disappointed in what I’m seeing, and I still haven’t found the girl, and I still don’t know where the hell my car is. I walk down a ramp and as I get to the bottom, a guy stops me.

“You’ve won!” he says.

“Huh?” I say. I look around. It looks like assembly from high school, but it’s all adults and older people at that (like meeting time at the senior citizens’ center).

“Your tee shirt! It’s won the design contest.”

I look down. I’m wearing my Blue Gillespie hydra tee shirt.

“I didn’t design this,” I tell him. “g designed it. A guy named g.”

“But you’ve won!” he insisted. “You put your special touches on it and made it yours.”

Are these people on crack? I think. What special touches?

I look down and am horrified. The tee shirt is supposed to be black with the hydra and the band logo in white. This tee shirt, MY BELOVED BLUE GILLESPIE TEE SHIRT now looks like someone has covered their hands with bleach and grabbed the shirt at random places around the hydra to take off the color. The (sorta) handprints are in a greyish mauve and whatever idiot has done this has put sparkly glitter around the handprints.

I AM FURIOUS. THIS IS MY BLUE GILLESPIE TEE SHIRT. BLUE GILLESPIE DOES NOT DO SPARKLES GODDAMN IT.

Seriously, I am enraged. I actually am yelling BLUE GILLESPIE DOES NOT DO SPARKLES when I wake up.

Sparkles. No. No sparkles. Never, ever, ever.

Home

To shut the door on the chaos outside and let the quiet surround me. . .

To sink down into softness of my feather bed and pretend I’m floating on a cloud. . .

To pull my quilt over me against the chill of the air conditioning. . .

To feel the dog curled up against the back of my leg, softly snoring. . .

To fall asleep as the sun is starting to slide beneath the horizon. . .

To roll over in the darkness and to find you there with me. . .

To snuggle up against you and rest my cheek against your curls. . .

To give in to the temptation to drop soft kisses along the gentle curve between your shoulder and neck. . .

To reach around and put my palm on your chest, hearing the soft, steady thrum of your heart, reassurance that I’m not dreaming. . .

To feel your hand cover mine and hold it there, fingers intertwining. . .

To sense the energy combine and explode out of our hands and shoot into the air around us, fireworks. . .

To know that one day every morning will begin this way. . . .

 

A Few Comments on FandomFest Louisville 2012

And I mean few. Stuff happened over the weekend that overshadowed the con for me, so I got to do relatively little compared to other cons. In addition, the one celeb panel I went to, I ran out of memory and wasn’t able to record the whole thing. I’ll post what I managed to get to YouTube (link eventually to your right), but last time I checked someone had already posted the entire panel anyway, so I’ll just drop in some highlights.

Warning: cussing below. If you’re sensitive, now’s the time to leave.

 

 

 

After the relatively sane organization of Philly Comic Con, FandomFest was a clusterfuck. A big part of the problem was that the venue, the Galt House, consisted of meeting rooms in each of two towers. The program listed what room the presentation would be in–but did not list whether the room was in the Suite Tower or the Rivue Tower. To find that out, I had to flip through the back of the schedule and look at schematics of each floor of the hotel (six in all) to find out where the room was. If I hadn’t printed out a hard copy of my own, I would have had no idea what was going on. If Gareth Lloyd hadn’t posted a link to the schedule on his Facebook page, I wouldn’t have even known there was a schedule. By Sunday afternoon I finally saw someone walking around with an actual program, but that was the first and only time all weekend I saw one.

After standing in line to register (and it took a while to figure out what line), I had to get back in line to buy tickets for photo ops and autographs since the online order page had been shut down before I knew I was going to go to the program. I heard from people that there was actually a date posted for when the page would be shut down, but my guess is that it was on the Fright Night page and not the FandomFest page, since I didn’t know there were two separate pages until right before the con.

I managed to get through the lines by about 7:30 and ran off to find the room of a program I wanted to attend–only to find it was empty. Several of the rooms where there were programs scheduled were empty, despite the fact that the programs were scheduled to run 1-1 1/2 hours. I thought I’d at least catch the tail end of the talk, but no. If this were a business convention, and I was supposed to be there for an hour and a half to give a talk and do a meet-and-greet, and I took off early, I would catch holy hell. I was not happy.

I took a quick turn through the vendor areas, and was pleased to see that there was actually some merchandise I was interested in. I noticed that a lot of the celebrities (who were supposed to be there until 9 p.m. on Friday) were not there; either they too had packed up and left early or they hadn’t bothered to come down at all.

So Friday night was a great disappointment. The one good thing was that I did get registered, because as fucked up as it was on Friday, Saturday looked like Armageddon. Saturday was the day that Bruce Campbell was there, and, well, you can imagine what it was like.

Photo ops were equally chaotic on Saturday. The people at the door were giving contradictory information, so the fans had to take it upon themselves to be aggressive in getting information and passing it along to others. The plus side: the photos were some of the best I’ve ever gotten. Everything was done with a ticket, and you had to surrender your ticket to get your photo. All the photos were kept private in a filing folder, which meant they were not tossed on a table somewhere where someone else could see them or knock them to the floor and stomp on them. The prices were also reasonable, and included a JPEG. The bad: supposedly they were to give you a slip to tell you where to go to download the JPEG, but no one ever did. That meant an email to the organizers, which first was rejected as undeliverable, and then went through–and hasn’t been answered yet. So there’s  the possibility that I may never get the JPEGs that were included in the fee (can anyone blame me for having Torchsong flashbacks here?).

I also bought some autographs. These were the same price as those at Comic Con, which I thought was pretty steep for this venue. The photos were running $10-20 cheaper than photos at Comic Con, so I expected that the autographs would be less expensive too. I waited until Sunday to do the autographs. I had managed to track down the people I wanted to sign–and they weren’t there. I wandered around a bit and came back–to find that they had moved them into a different room without bothering to put up a sign telling us that they were moving.

Yes, that’s right. The celebrities were scattered across three different rooms, and except for the Buffy and Boondock celebs, there wasn’t clear signage. Again, I had to be aggressive and go up and pester organizers to get the information I needed.

The good thing about the autographs was that once I found the celebrities, I got to chat with them a bit, which was nice. At Comic Con they rush you through so fast you barely have time to say hello. I had taken my copy of Blue Gillespie’s Seven Rages of Man in the hopes that Gareth would be willing to sign it, and since things were quiet we actually got to take a few minutes to chat about the album and what’s going to happen to the band now that Clark has quit (yes, Rhys really is playing both parts; no, they aren’t hiring a new guitarist; Rhys will play that part live; if they do hire someone, it will be to play bass for live gigs only. Gareth emphasized that creatively Blue Gillespie will always be him and Rhys and Nick). Gareth said there is a new backdrop that g has been working on for the gigs, and they’re going to premier it at the upcoming concert. He also chewed my ass off about American fans not doing more to get the band over here to the US, specifically to Austin for Comic Con in October, so fellow Blue Gillespie fans, I pass the ass-chewing on to you–go email (politely) Wizard World and let them know that you want the band to come to the States this fall.

It should be no surprise after reading the above (and kudos to you if you made it this far), then, that the only celebrity panel I got to attend was the one with Gareth and Peter Davison and Colin Ferguson from Eureka. I haven’t watched Eureka on a regular basis, but I have to confess I now have a huge crush on the man. It was Confess Your Inner Geek day at the con, and Colin admitted that he was horribly shy and didn’t get comfortable speaking in school until he was in his twenties. Peter was more into sci fi books rather than media and said he liked H.G. Wells when he was growing up (Warehouse 13 giggles anyone?). Gareth confessed that when he was a boy he had all the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes on VHS and had taken one of his school notebooks and numbered and catalogued each episode so that he could find them. Not only that, he wrote brief synopses of each episode and then he wrapped the notebook in aluminum foil so it would look futuristic. So since we’re in the nerd confessional here, I’ll confess that I too had recorded nearly all the STTNG episodes (as well as Classic Trek), but I will concede the point to Lloyd coz I did not get creative with tin foil. Kindred geek souls, unite.

Peter Davison was just, Peter Davison. I mean, what else is there to say? I got the to see the Doctor, my Doctor, the one I remember best from the Classic series, and he was just as cool and classy as I imagined he would be. *swoon* And to make it better–he did a voiceover in Sherlock. Yes, Sherlock. His was the voice doing the astronomical lecture while the mayhem was ensuing in the planetarium in the first series. I need to pay closer attention to my shows, don’t I? How could I have missed that? (oh, right. Cumberbatch).

Yes, there were Jello shots, and I thought at one point I was going to get lobbed one from the stage, but alas, I didn’t. It was a fun panel, but the only real “news” I got from it was that Gareth has a four-episode arc on Holby City (which he described as something akin to ER) coming up this summer, so that is good news. There needs to be more Lloyd on tv.

I know a lot of this has been bitching, but I do want to end making the point that with better organization, this could be a really fun convention. The fact that there are three tracks–literary, film, and celebrity–means that there’s a lot you can potentially do at a con like this one. I loved the Galt House, and I was so happy that there were several restaurants on premises, a 24 hour deli, and a gorgeous lounge where you could hang out and catch your breath. There were many, many areas where folks could sit down (in actual chairs, not the floor–other con organizers, do you hear?) and chat or check your messages or just hang out and people watch. The fact that the hotel was downtown and that there was a Starbucks within walking distance just made things even better. And I had a gorgeous view of the Ohio outside my room, along with the Belle of Louisville casino boat. I could have done without the pipe organ playing Here Comes the Bride and God Bless America at wildly inappropriate moments, but it was still fun.

Oh, and I actually ran into Norman Reedus at the elevators. I was this close to him as he was signing autographs for some fans. Jealous, girls and guys? Not my type, but up close, I get why everyone swoons over him. But what can I say? My heart belongs to the Brits.

The Visitor

Saturday night. . .

I was in the living room watching tv. I had been puttering around in the bedroom earlier, putting away the laundry, and had forgotten to turn off the light. I was too tired to get up and do it, so tired that I was just curled up in the recliner watching some stupid reality show about people who are too stupid to know how to run restaurants (really, people? bad food=no customers. duh.).

Anyway, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it–a dark whoosh across the bedroom door, just inside the door. I thought at first it was the dog but 1) it was too high up in the door frame to be the dog and 2) the dog was sound asleep oblivious on the sofa.

Ghostie, I realized. I cocked my head and listened to see if I could hear anything. Nothing. I closed my eyes to see if I felt anything. Nothing. When I opened them again, I saw a man standing in the doorway.

Now, when I see ghosts, entitites, etc., it’s not like I see them solid. My mom does, but I don’t. I see these things with my third eye, not my regular eyes, and they are more amorphous–it’s energy coalescing into a figure, but it’s not solid, and it’s more an interpretation of the energy that any specific image that pops in my mind.

This was a man in a suit.

Now, I’ve had lots of visitors (most notably my headbanging Bill and Ted-type guides), but a guy in a suit is, well, unusual.

As usual, however, I don’t see a face. I almost never do–I see clothes, hair, etc., but it’s very rare I actually see a face. He seems to be waiting on me to come to bed. He doesn’t seem negative in any way; I don’t get the sense that he means any harm. It’s just I get the vibe–c’mon, bedtime. Come in here.

I think, I’ll be in in a minute; I want to see the end of the show.

I sense him grin at me.

I look away and watch the tv for a while. I look back up. He’s still there, just inside the bedroom over the threshold. He’s amused and laughing at me.

When I’m done with the show, I say in my head.

When the show is over, I lock up the house and go into the room. I sense him move over to the side of the room. The dog is not reacting at all; usually when we have a visitor, she goes batshit and barks, or she gets wound up and gets as far away from him/her as possible.

I get ready for bed and crawl under the covers. The dog is curled up at my feet. I sense the visitor sit down on the bed next to me. He pulls up the leg closest to me as he settles up against the headboard. His thigh is running the length of my right side and I sense that he is looking down at me. I get the vibe of amusement, and tenderness. I get the sense that he wants to watch over me.

Well, at least his intentions are benign. House rules: if you’re just hanging out, that’s fine. Start messing with us or pulling poltergeist shit, you’re out of here.

He just wants to sit with me, I sense, so I turn out the light. His thigh against my side is just as warm as the dog’s back against my feet; it’s as if someone really is sitting right next to me and, in the dark, it’s easy to think that there is a solid body right there. He’s still sitting there as I fall asleep. I feel very safe and very protected; whoever he is, tonight he’s my GQ guardian angel, with an oh-so-meticulous half-Windsor and a heart that is radiating oh-so-careful tenderness.

Flying into the Tornado

Last night’s dream

It starts back in my aunt’s house, but this time the house is fully lit–and deserted. Once again, I hear the television in the background, but I can’t make out what is being said. It sounds like several men talking, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of emotion in their voices–very even and neutral. A news program or documentary? I wander through the house, but there’s no one else; I’m alone. I take this to mean that the child snatcher is gone; that narrative (whatever the hell it was) is over.

Next I’m in a small plane–not even a commuter–a really small puddle jumper. Michael is flying the plane, but I don’t know any of the other people. We are flying fairly low, following the path of the main street of my hometown towards the west. There’s some turbulence, but nothing bad, until we get towards the outskirts of town and hit a particularly bad pocket of wind.

“I knew it!” I hear someone scream, and realize that there are now two Michaels–the one flying the plane and the one sitting across from me screaming. “This is it; we’re gonna die!”

“Oh settle down,” I tell him, annoyed. “It’s not that bad.” I lean forward to look out of the cockpit window. We are flying really low–rooftop level. That’s weird, but I tell Screaming Michael, “As low as we’re flying, even if we do go down, it’s not going to be much of an impact. Stop worrying.”

Pilot Michael decides to try a right turn to get out of the turbulence. Now we are flying north towards the library–and it does get scary. There is a bus driving towards us, and suddenly the wind picks it up and carries it about ten feet above the ground before setting it back down. I look the the west and, yep, there’s a tornado, right behind the library.

It’s a weird looking tornado, though. Instead of the rotation, it seems to be standing still, frozen in time, and it doesn’t seem to be clouds and debris. It’s like I get to zoom in and get a good look at the composition, and it looks like a porous black mass–more like a colony of black mold than a cyclone.

Meanwhile, everyone on the plane is going batshit. The tornado seems to be in stop motion, but we aren’t. I tell Michael the nearest place to set down is the parking lot to the east where the clinic used to be, but it’s so close we might not have enough lead time to do a smooth landing. We can’t just hover and sit down like a helicopter. The best bet is to get away from the tornado and try to go north again towards the farms outside of town. Michael nods and goes a sharp right to get away from the tornado.

Then I wake up.

I used to have tornado dreams all the time, and they scared the bejesus out of me. It comes from growing up in Tornado Alley, and having a mother terrified of storms. That’s the logical, psychological explanation.

The spiritual explanation I’ve learned is that the tornado symbolizes for me drastic change of some sort. It always appears when something radical and life-changing is afoot. What’s interesting to me is that while I was scared in a dream (it is, after all, a tornado. Ever lived through one.

? It IS damn scary), my response wasn’t absolute terror, or the need to run away and hide, the way it was in previous dreams. We actually flew right into the tornado’s path, yet I kept a cool head when everyone else was going crazy, so that was good.

I also find it interesting that the tornado stood still. I don’t talk a lot about this, because it really weirds people out, but I found very early on that I could use reiki to dissipate storms and divert them off their path. The first time I realized that was, surprise, in the middle of a tornado. It completely jumped over where I lived, and when it got to my mom’s neighborhood, it tore up everything around her house–except for her house. One of my friends had to hike into the neighborhood on foot to check on her because no cars could get it, and she said it was the spookiest thing she had ever seen–as if my mom’ house had been enclosed in a bubble. It had–a bubble of reiki energy. I’ve done it watching storms on live radar on tv, saying “I’m diverting it north!” and then it goes north. “Now let’s take it back west!” and it goes west. Completely freaked out the newscaster, by the way.

So I find it really interesting that the tornado was standing still. It was under control, but I didn’t dissipate it with reiki, so that tells me that whatever change has to happen is going to happen. I don’t know what the black mold represents. Rot I suppose? What are connotations for mold?

The other thing I find really interesting is that the tornado was heading for the library, and whenever I see library in my dreams, my mind immediately goes to the akashic. So, change is going to take down the akashic? Does that mean karma is over? Because how can there be karma if the records that document karma are destroyed? And does that mean we are finally liberated? Is that why I let the tornado stand, so that the winds of change could finally set us free, a controlled change, a way in which no one gets harmed?

It will be interesting to see how this turns out. As scary as it was to live (dream) it, I think ultimately it’s a hopeful sign.

Gemini Blue Moon Dreams 19.06.2012

It starts out I’m back in the dorm at college. I’m wandering the halls and then I go into your room. It’s a date, but not a date. I’m not sure what it is. There’s that tremendous energy between us, raw and powerful, but you’re distracted about other things. I’m trying to be helpful, but it’s hard for me to focus; all I can think is For God’s sake, just come over here and take my face in your hands and kiss me. Kiss me, long and hard.

Then I’m outside driving a car (not mine) through what looks like a border checkpoint. It must be Canada/U.S. because I’m driving on the right side of the road and everyone is speaking English. As soon as I get through the checkpoint, I see over to the left a loading lane for buses. I do a U-turn and pull the car up just at the very end of the lane. I’m watching for someone or something, and it has something to do with whatever it was we were talking about in the dorm, which I don’t remember because all I could think about was kissing you.

I’m sitting in the car and I look over to my left and see a cafe–not on the sidewalk but in the middle of the street, which I think is odd, when I see Nan sitting at one of the tables. What is she doing here! It’s been so long since I’ve seen her. I jump out of the car and bound over to her and give her a hug.

We sit at the table and talk and have a coffee. It’s so good to talk to her. I’ve missed having someone to talk to. There are things I just can’t talk to my mom about anymore (like you). Nan gets us talking about you and I’m evasive. I still don’t remember what you and I were talking about (kissing!) but I feel the need to protect you. Nan is smart, though, and she laughs.

“I see nothing’s changed since I left,” she says, shaking her head in amusement. I look at her, and she says “Always a boy. You’re always entangled somehow with a boy.”

I blush. It’s more than that, but again, I hold back from telling her everything. There’s something we’re trying to protect, but I don’t know what it is (kissing!).

Then Nan and I are somehow back in the dorm and she plops down on the bed and I fling myself next to her and we hug. I so have missed this! I don’t get to do the girlfriend thing much anymore and I miss it. All the girls I know have paired off, gotten married, had kids. They have that traditional life as suburban wives. I don’t fit in with them anymore. And most of the people I work with are guys, and no matter how much they accept you as “one of the guys,” it means you can’t be a girl with them. I miss being a girl, and talking to a girl about girl things, and being silly and sharing clothes and makeup and not being embarrassed to squee and shriek.

But who am I fooling? College was my greatest performance. I fit in, but only because I created a character and played a role that wasn’t me, wasn’t remotely me, because I in no way fit the traditional girl stereotype. So why do I miss living a lie? Why would I be tempted to go back? Is it because the path we’ve taken is so hard? Is it because there’s so much pushback to you and me together?

I can’t go back to living a lie, no matter how comfortable it was. I’m not a girl; I’m a woman, and I’m with you, and you’re the most important person in my life, and we are not traditional in any sense of the word. We have to be true, have to be authentic with each other. We’ve learned after all these years we don’t have a choice, not with each other, even if we want to go back to living the comfortable lies. It’s impossible. We’ve come too far; there’s no going back. There’s only forward.

My allegiances have changed. My life is with you.

There’s something really important about you that I need to remember, that relates back to that conversation in the room, but the more I try to remember it, the more it slips away, like it’s been erased, like it’s one of those things my subconscious needs to know but my conscious mind can’t, and all I can feel are the emotions, the connection, and worry, and a bit of fear and loneliness and insecurity, and the need, the need, for you to drop everything and come over and kiss me.

Share this:

sitting here in the dark missing you

Why do I keep trying to describe the indescribable? The lovemaking is so sweet, so powerful, that just the memory of your kiss is overwhelming.

It is beyond mere physicality, yet that is a part of it. It is beyond emotions, although that is the center of it.It is raw power, power so intense that our separateness is completely destroyed. No longer you and I. Only us.

And yet it is that same power that sets off the purges. Not immediately, but as our bodies process the energy, they must readjust, and the adjustment is not always pleasant.

So why do we keep doing that which causes us pain? That’s the question. Are the moments of pleasure worth the hours and days of suffering that follow?

The meat would say no. The meat would run. But this isn’t just physical. We’re not dogs drooling at the sound of a bell.

We have to shift perspective. We are more than just these bodies.

The power of our joining is so intense that it is transformative. The power of our love changes us. As the divine creative force of the universe travels through us, it reshapes us. Each time  we change a bit more; each time we become more and more one.

It is the healing crisis. Each time brings up more hidden emotions: fears, insecurities, anger, shame. It allows us to let them pass through us and release them. And each time we come together again, the union is more complete because of the work we do afterwards to let these things go.

This has been my life for so long now, this has been my life with you for so long now, that I no longer remember what I was like before you. I no longer remember a life without you.

I sit here in the dark, my eyes swollen from tears shed over a slight that had no consequence, what was  just a stimulus to bring along another crisis (abandonment, loss, shame) for emotions buried from a wrong I no longer remember. And I hear your voice echoing in my memory (Sorry, sorry, sorry) for a wrong that really has little to do with us and I love you for saying it when you don’t have to.

What we work through in a matter of hours others would rage over for weeks or months–or lifetimes.

I sit here in the dark and wait for you to come home. I can still smell the scent of you, taste you on my lips. These sensations bring tears of a different sort.

How did I get through the dark night before I met you?