Places Only Remembered In Dreams

1.

Sometimes I dream of a small building, perfectly square, made of cinderblocks painted azure blue. Inside is a dark space, meant for unknown purposes - unknown to me, that is - at least, there is never anyone around to explain. Sometimes I find things there. Printed pages of stories I can't remember writing. Pictures that disappear when I look too long. Messages from people I've never known.

I'd forgotten that this was a real place, a real building, anyway, until I happened upon it on my recent trip to Victoria. There it was, blue and inscrutable as ever, broadcasting no hint as to its use. I remembered then that back in those times of my restless night driving, it used to have a moon-shaped light at the door. 

2. 

Sometimes I dream of a place that is an impossible combination of English lowland and Gulf coast rice field, the glint of wetland reflecting the grey-grained sky. Ghostly egrets stalk like emissaries from other worlds. Clouds of murmurating starlings glimmer like white noise. Far away in the distance, I see the beacon blinking. I imagine the wisps of fog, the salt air at your windows, the warped wood at your door. 

I suppose the word must have spread on the astral...

Somehow I'd forgotten to post this earlier, but this is the art notebook I kept during 2021-2022. I don't know if it's good at all, but I do know I finished it, and that must count for something.

Silence

Last night I dreamed about our house in Victoria. As often in my dreams, it was in a state of disrepair, dusty and abandoned, only resembling the real place in basic structure. It was an uneasy dream. My children were there, along with my step-son, but they were insubstantial, as if they'd been drained of their vital force. All their ages seemed wrong. In fact, everything about the house seemed wrong. 

From the hallway appeared my (now grown) son, but as the 8 year old he once was, an angelic, curly-haired boy. In his hands he held a gift tied with red ribbon. 

"On my birthday, I was silent" he said, unnervingly, before I woke.

Today the weather was the perfect sort we hope for all year: warm, but not too warm, dry, but not parched. Bright sun, soft breeze. I enjoyed it, despite the sickly dream haze lingering in the back of my mind. Why think of these things when the vanilla scent of the whitebrush is rising and the air is alive with bees? But sometimes a dream won't let go

It's not that I hadn't noticed the date. I had. The 4th of May. I'd seen it at midnight, even. Yet for some reason, it hadn't registered. 

"On my birthday, I was silent" says my eerie, angelic child. 

Suddenly, I remembered. It was the anniversary of the night we'd left Victoria, arriving here on the edge of a storm. And it's ironic that I'd forgotten, really, considering I'd titled the post about it "The Persistence Of Memory"

This bright day was nothing like the dismal drizzle of 8 years ago, though the feeling of uncertainty is the same. It has not escaped me that this time, the uncertainty belongs to everyone. For 8 years, I've been perched on the edge of this rock watching the world change, and now it finally seems to have caught up with me. 

It has also not escaped me that in the dream, my son was holding a gift. 

Not long ago, a friend who'd experienced a similar life upheaval around the same time said, "I feel like everything since then has been leading to this. Like I was made for this." 

I understood what she meant. This journey has been agonizing at times, yet here I am on the edge of this rock still, riding out these crises - national and international - in relative safety. To be doing so in Victoria doesn't even bear thinking about. For once, this unforgiving landscape holds me like a cradle while I wait to learn what needs to be done. 

In this post, I wrote about keeping the old key to the storage unit I'd rented back then as a sort of talisman. What I didn't mention was that the key is tied with a red ribbon. When I realized what the dream meant, the symbolism of the red ribbon on the gift box was immediately clear. 

Now that mourning the past is over, It's time to reclaim my autonomy.

A Multitude Of Moonmen

For many years now, I've had  recurring dreams of sending tiny little letters in tiny little envelopes through a series of tiny mailboxes concealed in strange places.

It's never been clear what the messages are, or to whom, but in the interest of evoking this dream, I have made a collection of tiny cards and envelopes. Perhaps soon I will know where to send them.

Last Night I Dreamt Of A Man...

He had a young girl who worked for him, and every night he had her carry a burning coal from one room to another in a little silver box. She did as she was told, but what she didn't know was that this was part of a love spell he was casting on her, and therefore she was helping to cast a spell on herself.

Very intriguing.

I'm put in the mind of another dream I had years ago in Victoria, about a local minister who had a box of fire buried beneath his church. No one else knew it was there, except the minister (and me, the dreamer, of course.) I could see it there, burning underground in its little silver chest.

I don't know the connection - or at least not yet. I have the feeling I will one day, though.

Dale, The Nervous Psychic

Last Sunday, I fell asleep and dreamed that Dale - the manager of the corner store who I've mentioned here - went into business calling himself "The Nervous Psychic" and was a great success. He even had a pink neon sign over his front door, like the one above.

The dream made me laugh, not the least because Dale is, indeed, very nervous and very psychic. It's one of the things we have in common.

But the dream also made me laugh because it was just happy, a very, very good dream.It's hard to say why it was this way, but since I don't have very many good dreams, the special ones stand out.

Something about the pink neon sign flickering in the night. A good omen.

In the way of dreams, a warm light in the winter cold.

Web of November

The other morning, I dreamt the town was covered in spiderwebs, including a massive one in the sky.  This was a good dream, which is a bit of a surprise. I'm not the biggest fan of spiders.

After reading up on it, I understood a bit better. A spiderweb can be a sign of creation and self-determination. After all, the spider creates the web under its own power. Which is something I'd been thinking about, one way or another. How much I act versus how much I'm simply reacting to others.

Spoiler alert: not enough and way too much.

And of course there is also Indra's Web. Or maybe there is only Indra's Web. Who knows?

The months of November and December are always difficult ones, and this autumn is determined to be nothing but rain and fog. The only thing to do is keep walking.

In the meantime, I think about making my own web, weaving thoughts and actions into something useful.

The Phantom Arrives Upon A Storm

Autumn, 1990. Not long before Halloween. I dreamed that I was walking to the mailbox at the end of our road. It was after 6 and the air was violet. Night was about to fall.

A fierce wind kicked up and blew my hair all around. I paused at the corner where our street met the main road and looked out toward the horizon. A storm was approaching from the west. I shivered. The wind was cold.

The sky was darkening by the second, but I didn't move. There was an ominous feeling, and as I looked at the clouds I knew that there were things in them, strange and otherworldly things moving in with the weather.

"The phantom arrives upon the storm"  I said, to no one in particular. The wind began to howl.

When I woke up, a cold wind was battering my windows. I wondered (still wonder, really) if the phantom hadn't arrived after all.

Dream Dogs

Every May, as the school year begins to wind down, a memory of a dream comes to me. I don't know why it remains after all this time; perhaps because I've never really understood it. The mind does love a mystery.

It was near the end of fifth grade and I was eleven years old. God, what a wretched year. The teacher was a snob. there were preppies everywhere and when you are the tallest girl in class (again!) there is no way to hide. It was the definition of awkward, and I was glad to see the back of it.

This is where the young adult novel usually begins, I think.

Anyway, it was May, it seems like a Wednesday. It was the day before the class skating party, which would not have been held at the rink on a crowded Friday, and it wasn't piano lesson day, which would have been a Thursday. What I'd been doing after coming home from school is unknown - probably drinking Tropicana orange juice and playing with my hamster. Or scrawling in my notebook and reading Nancy Drew. On my bedside table was a small radio, playing insipid pop, this I know for sure. I wasn't that keen on insipid pop, but I was nervous of FM because every time I flipped the dial, the stations were playing Pink Floyd. There's only so much prog rock an eleven year old can take.

I didn't normally take naps after school (or ever, for that matter) so the very fact I'd fallen asleep was unusual. But it was a mild evening, my window was open and there was a fresh spring breeze.The radio was probably playing something by Paul Davis, as KTSA was wont to do. It was about 6 PM. I slept.

Now, the neighborhood where we lived was an oval shape, crossing a number of undulating hills. It wasn't terribly big, but back then I hadn't been allowed to wander to the far edges, and the hill on the southernmost curve of the oval was too steep for a bike anyway. That sharp curve, looming high over the town, seemed a place of unfathomable mystery to me, and in my dream, I suddenly found myself standing there.

It was dark night, pitch black, as the full moon began to rise. I could feel something about to happen. Dogs were barking in the distance.

Out of the woods beyond the hill the dogs came bounding. First one  - an English sheepdog, if I remember correctly -  then more and more of all kinds, dobermans and St. Bernards and Afghan hounds and golden retrievers. They were all barking and baying as they came over the hill.

I knew - the way one does in dreams - that what I was seeing was a secret ritual, that the dogs had come to gather here under the moon. I knew the ritual occurred only at certain times, for reasons unknown and unknowable to any human. The weight and importance of this secret filled the dream, and I was amazed that I'd been able to witness it, even if I didn't understand.

I woke slowly as the sound of the neighborhood dogs barking merged with my dream. Through the window I could see the lavender twilight sky and the full moon above the ash trees. I knew it must have been the barking dogs that had inspired this mysterious dream, and I felt an uncharacteristic delight. It gave it the ring of truth.

The next day was the class skating party, and then the long memorial day weekend, and sometime during that weekend is when I emerged, imago-like, from my awkward phase of puberty at last.

Perhaps this is what the dream was about, albeit in an oblique way. The secrets and hidden rituals of adolescence. The awkward, plain girl who fell asleep that evening might have been a dog in schoolyard parlance, but perhaps the message was that dogs can be fascinating, mysterious creatures as well. Or something like that. Whatever the case, I will always treasure the dream.

And this is the point where the young adult novel usually ends.


Notes: 
1. I was correct about the day, and the phase of the moon. Am patting self on back, as this was an appallingly long time ago.
2. Despite the variety of dogs in the dream, I have only rendered one type in my drawing, This is  because I'm terrible at drawing dogs.

Spirit Of The Water

When it's been raining for a while, the sides of the road fill with water, like little flood-meadows.One morning after a particularly wet few days, I dreamt that I went to look at one of these puddles, and saw a golden koi rise to the surface.

I didn't know what it meant, but it felt lucky somehow. After all, what else could a golden koi mean?

The next day, I happened to be next to a murky pond. I didn't imagine there was any living thing there, but suddenly a golden koi rose to the surface, much like the dream.

It's not clear if that week was any luckier than usual, but I felt an uncommon peace surround me.

I suppose luck is in the eye of the beholder.

The Grave Dancer

 Dream archive - May 24, 2009

In the dream, we are driving home late at night. The only light is the full moon, and I can see the silhouettes of  palm trees lining the road. Nearing home,  my  husband says, "there's someone outside the house".

I look up and see a glimpse of a veiled woman underneath my window. We know it is the grave dancer.

My husband pushes me down and says "hide, hide!"  He stands guard at the window, but we know she's out there. There are bells attached to the grave dancer's veil, and we can hear them outside in the dark.

Little Pink House

One night, I dreamt of a little pink house. I lived there in blissful solitude, under a starry sky.

Moments later, my friend Theo busted through the door carrying a watermelon, but that part of the dream didn't make it into the painting. ;)