Flight of Stairs

(Saturday, November 9, 2013)  The dream begins with me flying high in the sky, arms outstretched like an airplane. Just a few moments into the dream, this image collapses and I find myself seated in an airplane as it arrives at a small airport in The Netherlands. The pilot has to make a quick, dangerous landing and almost overshoots the short runway.

An English-speaking woman from Germany is seated next to me. She is an artist like me and we are friends. We are making plans to take Dutch language lessons together. She has been living in Holland for awhile but I am a new immigrant. Chris has purchased a house on the shore of the North Sea and I am on my way there. My friend and I visit a few small gift shops together, but then I head on alone to my new home.

The house is large, three stories tall. When I arrive, Chris is inside, working with a contractor on the suspended iron staircase in the center of the house. The stairs are completely open, with no walls, and the steps are wooden slats, like rungs of a ladder. There might be a metal handrail. The plan is to replace all of the steps and I question the contractor about this. He shows me how the slats, over time, have weakened, becoming over-flexed. They vibrate dramatically when anyone tries to walk up them.

I leave them to their work. I miss my old house already, so I decide to go for a walk and visit. It’s a long walk: I’m traveling to another country. When I reach the busy boulevard where the house is located (on my left) I am surprised to see that I am in a valley beneath very tall mountains. I remember the neighborhood but not the vertical peaks (to my right).

Day notes:

Sifu Rob talks about how energy work like T’ai-Chi creates a new body. He says one may therefore dream of a new house, which is indeed the predominant theme in my dreams lately. The dream staircase is structured like the spine (the center of T’ai-Chi and yoga). Slats are like vertebrate. Perhaps energy work is strengthening my skeletal system.

I worked with Gabriele Pillman on Friday, who is from Germany. My coworker and friend Bob Hill left for Amsterdam Friday night.

I spent last weekend in Highland Park, Illinois, visiting my artist friend Anne, who is from Provence and owns a house in the French Alps. Her Chicago house is half a block from Lake Michigan, the inland sea. North Sea.