Winter dreams made their way to me last night. Darkness and boxes filled with stories and cards and the cool warmth of some unknown lover's skin and it took me a while to remember.
These are dreams that have slept for a couple of years. Perhaps they were waiting; perhaps there was no room for them; perhaps I simply did not remember and they left no mark on a moving soul.
The season changes soon, and my dreams reach out to me to give comfort that the sun will fade and I will know again the feel of warm air against cold and find something like a blanket in the change and the dreams will be dark and terrifying and filled with blood and water and boats and impossible feats of violence and embrace.
In my winter dreams I do not need to fly. In my winter dreams the world holds me at its own distance. Warm long days lift my feet in sleep and I do not need the wings I learned to grow. The green smells of birth in spring hold me hovering between rooms. The spice and wood and burning of winter open something that needs only stars and wool and honey to feed it through long nights of worlds unremembered.
The rhythms of my heart will change. I feel again this strange and terrible peace. The smell of me begins to alter, and something new makes its way into the world. This is an entirely different sort of bear, living here in the warmth with a short dark breath between the heat and the weight of water.
Perhaps the dreams return because they are remembered. Perhaps I am less out of control of their presence than all this would make it sound.
The days are shorter without any assistance from me.
Winter is coming.
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
Thursday, 8 April 2010
On the outside
The day is brilliant and clear and I carry with me many books filled with information and advice and science and poetry and it is good.
The difficulty with unemployment (for now the only one) is mostly one of filling up my time in meaningful and positive ways. I am very focused on that combination of requirements of late. Not sure where they came from, but they are specific and I approve. I've accomplished nearly all of my goals for the day. There is one more bit of financial responsibility that I need to commit and then I will go and find another book and head home in the sunshine and happy to the land of face-buried felines and a new yoga routine. It is unnerving to think of starting new moves and different breathing and I think I'll do just fine.
I have not practiced for two days. It is not okay.
I remember only bits from one dream of last night and it was jarring. There were threads. Actual threads, one white, one orange (saffron?). I woke and struggled with something that has become a non-entity of late: despair. It is hardly unnatural or never to be expected, especially as so much changes between last week and the middle of August, and next fall and spring and the August that follows and every semester again and there really is no end to the movements of living. My heart has been very still of late, settling down past floodwater lines that I've never noticed before and telling me stories that have never had a voice. So to experience the fringes of pointless sadness was something not to be ignored, though also not to be embraced.
In my half-sleep the notion that this life is no longer on a conveyor belt, that the path it follows is walked and strolled and jogged and still and not inevitable or doomed, found words and they pleased me. I am not all for ego-strong free will, and I am not not not about to give it up to predestination. Life happens. And we/I decide what to do about it. It's very much a balance, a conversation, where pride and bravado and violence can seem to have more strength than sweetness and silence and the gentleness of a held hand.
In my vain attempts to prevent noticing the 'waiting' I have lectures to hear, books to read and projects to finish or start knitting and beading and crocheting and gluing and cleaning. I have about a week before anything exciting really happens again.
It is good to find my way here.
The difficulty with unemployment (for now the only one) is mostly one of filling up my time in meaningful and positive ways. I am very focused on that combination of requirements of late. Not sure where they came from, but they are specific and I approve. I've accomplished nearly all of my goals for the day. There is one more bit of financial responsibility that I need to commit and then I will go and find another book and head home in the sunshine and happy to the land of face-buried felines and a new yoga routine. It is unnerving to think of starting new moves and different breathing and I think I'll do just fine.
I have not practiced for two days. It is not okay.
I remember only bits from one dream of last night and it was jarring. There were threads. Actual threads, one white, one orange (saffron?). I woke and struggled with something that has become a non-entity of late: despair. It is hardly unnatural or never to be expected, especially as so much changes between last week and the middle of August, and next fall and spring and the August that follows and every semester again and there really is no end to the movements of living. My heart has been very still of late, settling down past floodwater lines that I've never noticed before and telling me stories that have never had a voice. So to experience the fringes of pointless sadness was something not to be ignored, though also not to be embraced.
In my half-sleep the notion that this life is no longer on a conveyor belt, that the path it follows is walked and strolled and jogged and still and not inevitable or doomed, found words and they pleased me. I am not all for ego-strong free will, and I am not not not about to give it up to predestination. Life happens. And we/I decide what to do about it. It's very much a balance, a conversation, where pride and bravado and violence can seem to have more strength than sweetness and silence and the gentleness of a held hand.
In my vain attempts to prevent noticing the 'waiting' I have lectures to hear, books to read and projects to finish or start knitting and beading and crocheting and gluing and cleaning. I have about a week before anything exciting really happens again.
It is good to find my way here.
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Lent Day 4, later
I've found a way to make some kind of peace with Circular Motion. It seems best. Noticed that while my back is very tender right now (that I've sat funny) I did not feel the same level of tension today or tonight. It was neither as strong nor long-lasting.
It is late and I am uncertain about my next activity. I believe that I will take out my contacts and go to bed with vitamins, water and Dr. Nussbaum. It seems balanced that long work days will be short reading days. Also, there has been much sleeping, and that strikes me as correct. I wonder when my dream life will leave more remnants in my waking life than it already does? I know that I dream. That is enough. It is likely that it will always be enough.
It is late and I am uncertain about my next activity. I believe that I will take out my contacts and go to bed with vitamins, water and Dr. Nussbaum. It seems balanced that long work days will be short reading days. Also, there has been much sleeping, and that strikes me as correct. I wonder when my dream life will leave more remnants in my waking life than it already does? I know that I dream. That is enough. It is likely that it will always be enough.
Friday, 19 February 2010
Lent Day 3
Right. Day 3. I have spent the day thinking, while knowing full well that it was not the case, that today was Day 4.
Realized that to think of this 40 days as a test is to establish it as a challenge that is perhaps not what I'm interested in facing. It is not whether I will keep the rules that I've set myself or not, it is implied and known that I will. What is unknown is the experience of doing so and also the experience of life in this time.
Today I found myself paying very close attention to my muscles stretched and held an form all twisty-round. The seconds and breaths were about awareness of posture and tension and musculature.
And red lentil soup. On which I have just stuffed myself. (by the by - always have a recipe for this, along with an onion, tomatoes, red lentil, cardamom, garlic, cinnamon and a bit of chili powder on hand. you will thank me later. really.)
Last evening's reading of Bozo Sapiens brought this wonderful information into my life: 'Want to be more perceptive and engaged in the world? Stop eating: ghrelin, the resulting hormone, boosts learning capacity to such a degree that the researcher who found the connection speculated that "perhaps the cognitive brain is a side-effect of hunger." (Nature Neuroscience, vol. 9, Feb. 19, 2006. p 381-88)( New Scientist, Feb. 25, 2006, Andy Coghlan) - Must here say that I very much distrust speculation - if the evidence is there, that is fine, but speculation is bad science.
As for yoga: The Circular Motion exercise is the only one that has never really made sense in practice or on paper. It still doesn't.
There is no real certainty in this. Decisions must still be made whose impact on my life will be felt beyond Easter. Also, I've to do dishes and want to wait until at least tomorrow evening. If not the day after. I have a very long day tomorrow and am very tempted to take a shower and get into bed and read Martha Nussbaum until I fall asleep and dream of characters as letters moving in a dance over a broad stage, singing to me their names and various histories, presenting to me more layers than one night's dreaming can reveal or understand, while outside the steps where I sit for many nights in focused attentiveness, the world begins to name itself with symbols and sounds carried proudly aloft or discretely sewn in a pocket, perhaps tucked away, as mine is, just behind an ear, protected by the hairline and the relative grandeur of the appendage.
I remembered today to buy toothpaste.
Realized that to think of this 40 days as a test is to establish it as a challenge that is perhaps not what I'm interested in facing. It is not whether I will keep the rules that I've set myself or not, it is implied and known that I will. What is unknown is the experience of doing so and also the experience of life in this time.
Today I found myself paying very close attention to my muscles stretched and held an form all twisty-round. The seconds and breaths were about awareness of posture and tension and musculature.
And red lentil soup. On which I have just stuffed myself. (by the by - always have a recipe for this, along with an onion, tomatoes, red lentil, cardamom, garlic, cinnamon and a bit of chili powder on hand. you will thank me later. really.)
Last evening's reading of Bozo Sapiens brought this wonderful information into my life: 'Want to be more perceptive and engaged in the world? Stop eating: ghrelin, the resulting hormone, boosts learning capacity to such a degree that the researcher who found the connection speculated that "perhaps the cognitive brain is a side-effect of hunger." (Nature Neuroscience, vol. 9, Feb. 19, 2006. p 381-88)( New Scientist, Feb. 25, 2006, Andy Coghlan) - Must here say that I very much distrust speculation - if the evidence is there, that is fine, but speculation is bad science.
As for yoga: The Circular Motion exercise is the only one that has never really made sense in practice or on paper. It still doesn't.
There is no real certainty in this. Decisions must still be made whose impact on my life will be felt beyond Easter. Also, I've to do dishes and want to wait until at least tomorrow evening. If not the day after. I have a very long day tomorrow and am very tempted to take a shower and get into bed and read Martha Nussbaum until I fall asleep and dream of characters as letters moving in a dance over a broad stage, singing to me their names and various histories, presenting to me more layers than one night's dreaming can reveal or understand, while outside the steps where I sit for many nights in focused attentiveness, the world begins to name itself with symbols and sounds carried proudly aloft or discretely sewn in a pocket, perhaps tucked away, as mine is, just behind an ear, protected by the hairline and the relative grandeur of the appendage.
I remembered today to buy toothpaste.
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Lent Day 1
Today is the first day of Lent, 2010. The decision to change much about my daily habits is, I allow, completely insane. It is also something that I've wanted to do for months, and as I do not see myself moving into the forest for 40 days in search of understanding or enlightenment or closeness to God, I have made the choice to go without in different ways, no less shocking, tho far more modern & possible. Also, there will be coffee and chocolate. Yes.
So. I've eaten no meat today - 2 bean & cheese burritos, coffee, chocolate cake, tea, iced lemon muffin. I am hungry for rice, I think, so may make some and hard-boil an egg for a late snack. I've dumped the last mouthful of wine from a leftover glass and unplugged the TV stuff. I've also read more than 60 pages of a book about A History of Reading, and have determined to finish The Story of Language by Mario Pei before I embark on A History of Writing (1984) which must naturally have a place in all this study. Also, yoga - haven't done that yet - this it will be a nice segue into the evenings' craft work and listening - I think I shall hear more of Byzantium tonight. Tomorrow will be a good day for the red lentil soup, I feel, and to finish cleaning and clearing out the refrigerator and freezer.
My dreams begin to resist my efforts at keeping them from terrifying me. I am not sure what this spring will bring.
NaNo has given me the ability to believe that I can accomplish ridiculous things & now it is about perpetuation of that behavior, the place where it begins to become habit.
For change to be meaningful and the world after it's done to be sustainable and positive ans what was aimed for, even a little, it must be deeply felt and in this case deliberately enacted and carefully considered. Oddly, once I made the Life List of Lent*, it all made sense and there was no need to add or subtract anything. Today involved a certain degree of awareness and I anticipate more than a little antsy behavior as the 40** days continue.
Evening walks are good and there are enough projects to keep me occupied and invigorated and walking the rails through lands of reality & imagined surrounding & the dream life for me to be at once involved and overwhelmed and maybe even learn how to get used to it and feel more self control with it also. It is slow and requires faith and focus and deliberately chosen food.
Change, for me, is in the depths, not the details.
*Life List of Lent
**technically, it's 47 days. minus Sundays. Because that's how New Math works.
So. I've eaten no meat today - 2 bean & cheese burritos, coffee, chocolate cake, tea, iced lemon muffin. I am hungry for rice, I think, so may make some and hard-boil an egg for a late snack. I've dumped the last mouthful of wine from a leftover glass and unplugged the TV stuff. I've also read more than 60 pages of a book about A History of Reading, and have determined to finish The Story of Language by Mario Pei before I embark on A History of Writing (1984) which must naturally have a place in all this study. Also, yoga - haven't done that yet - this it will be a nice segue into the evenings' craft work and listening - I think I shall hear more of Byzantium tonight. Tomorrow will be a good day for the red lentil soup, I feel, and to finish cleaning and clearing out the refrigerator and freezer.
My dreams begin to resist my efforts at keeping them from terrifying me. I am not sure what this spring will bring.
NaNo has given me the ability to believe that I can accomplish ridiculous things & now it is about perpetuation of that behavior, the place where it begins to become habit.
For change to be meaningful and the world after it's done to be sustainable and positive ans what was aimed for, even a little, it must be deeply felt and in this case deliberately enacted and carefully considered. Oddly, once I made the Life List of Lent*, it all made sense and there was no need to add or subtract anything. Today involved a certain degree of awareness and I anticipate more than a little antsy behavior as the 40** days continue.
Evening walks are good and there are enough projects to keep me occupied and invigorated and walking the rails through lands of reality & imagined surrounding & the dream life for me to be at once involved and overwhelmed and maybe even learn how to get used to it and feel more self control with it also. It is slow and requires faith and focus and deliberately chosen food.
Change, for me, is in the depths, not the details.
*Life List of Lent
**technically, it's 47 days. minus Sundays. Because that's how New Math works.
Tuesday, 28 August 2007
Facing the future
It is almost impossible to think of tomorrow while stretched out on a hammock feeling the sun like a blanket and the breeze from all sides. It has been a lovely respite from attempting the impossible, being here. My mother mows in a straw hat with a black band around the crown. She has cleared something like 4 acres of yard and mows it in sections as often as she can. My father has potted plants and planted flowers all around the house. He bought mums for the pots on either side of the driveway. The cats give love and chats with very little meaning to me or any other human. The feral cats adore my mother and her gentle voice and manner. They stand still and let her pet them, rubbing against her ankles and throwing me dirty looks.
I walked out into the world of the trees last evening and watched the clouds rush in, changing and growing and billowing and going gray and white. The sound of the rain and the flashes of lightning filled the room in which I sleep. It is the room in which I slept when I lived here so many years ago. I thought it was green, maybe it was, now it is tan and the bed is much smaller and while I am not sure how well I will take to being in the world again, I miss my bed and my room.
I am dreaming oddly, the hospital dreams have stopped, but there are more people than I am accustomed to and last night there was a man on my arm, and it was good. And Brad was stocking up on water cooler jugs filled with wine and there were smoked turkeys and platters of fruit and I asked if he was throwing a party and said if he was I'd like to know so that I could not be there and he said something about how O'Neill was always saying how if anyone's hungry he's the one to feed them and Brad was pissed and decided he would feed the hungry for a while and see how O'Neill liked it. I thought he meant Thanksgiving and was even more confused as it is not yet September. Upon waking, I thought I would have to remember to ask Brad if he was talking about Jack O'Neill from Stargate or someone that I've never met. Then I fully woke up and realized that wouldn't make any sense at all.
As a younger person I always resented the reality of chores, the day-to-day crap of job and laundry and dishes and cleaning my room. Now it is going to be my life line. I do not know what has happened to my brain, but something is different, bound to show up at some point on the scanner. I have a guess, but I know too much about electrons to believe it can be all true.
Have decided to cut back on the ibuprofen. It works to cut my pain, but my pain is no longer great. I am tired and somewhat more stiff than I would like, but in no way incapacitated or stalled. The only real issue with me being tired is that I am now much more emotional than I am used to being. Still fragile. Not in the mood to fight it anymore.
It is odd to think that today next week I will be thinking of different things, sitting in a different place, using a different computer, reading different books (okay, maybe not), facing the future as me, still, but differently. Why that strikes me today so much more strongly than it has struck me in the past is quite beyond my comprehension, but then, right, there are many things which are.
I am looking forward to the world and the me that I am become, mostly because that's the way my feet are headed.
I walked out into the world of the trees last evening and watched the clouds rush in, changing and growing and billowing and going gray and white. The sound of the rain and the flashes of lightning filled the room in which I sleep. It is the room in which I slept when I lived here so many years ago. I thought it was green, maybe it was, now it is tan and the bed is much smaller and while I am not sure how well I will take to being in the world again, I miss my bed and my room.
I am dreaming oddly, the hospital dreams have stopped, but there are more people than I am accustomed to and last night there was a man on my arm, and it was good. And Brad was stocking up on water cooler jugs filled with wine and there were smoked turkeys and platters of fruit and I asked if he was throwing a party and said if he was I'd like to know so that I could not be there and he said something about how O'Neill was always saying how if anyone's hungry he's the one to feed them and Brad was pissed and decided he would feed the hungry for a while and see how O'Neill liked it. I thought he meant Thanksgiving and was even more confused as it is not yet September. Upon waking, I thought I would have to remember to ask Brad if he was talking about Jack O'Neill from Stargate or someone that I've never met. Then I fully woke up and realized that wouldn't make any sense at all.
As a younger person I always resented the reality of chores, the day-to-day crap of job and laundry and dishes and cleaning my room. Now it is going to be my life line. I do not know what has happened to my brain, but something is different, bound to show up at some point on the scanner. I have a guess, but I know too much about electrons to believe it can be all true.
Have decided to cut back on the ibuprofen. It works to cut my pain, but my pain is no longer great. I am tired and somewhat more stiff than I would like, but in no way incapacitated or stalled. The only real issue with me being tired is that I am now much more emotional than I am used to being. Still fragile. Not in the mood to fight it anymore.
It is odd to think that today next week I will be thinking of different things, sitting in a different place, using a different computer, reading different books (okay, maybe not), facing the future as me, still, but differently. Why that strikes me today so much more strongly than it has struck me in the past is quite beyond my comprehension, but then, right, there are many things which are.
I am looking forward to the world and the me that I am become, mostly because that's the way my feet are headed.
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
dream
in the dream there was a man, he winked at me as if to say that he knew the joke and so did i, he wasn't trying to trick me, he wanted to see if i could see how he was doing the trick. it was a coin, a large one - maybe an inch and half across, silver in the middle with a gold edge, like the old francs. on one side the coin was worth 39 cents, on the other side it was worth a dollar. one of the sides had a smaller coin attached to it - magnetically, maybe? he would flip the coin - not toss it, just flip it over and the littler coin would be there, and the player would make a bet with his own coins. it didn't depend so much on what side came up, rather how well the player could match the value based on what he had in his possession. i can't remember which side had the little coin, the dollar or the 39 cents.
somehow it seems important.
somehow it seems important.
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