(Friday, September 19, 2014) Waxing crescent in Leo / six of pentacles
I awake into the realization that I am the new owner of an old mansion that sits on a very high ridge above the sea. I leave my bedroom and descend a staircase into a great room with a ceiling at least 20 feet tall, perhaps more. Even the MacMansions being built in my Plymouth neighborhood do not have such expansive spaces. I notice the size of the rooms and begin to calculate the number of gallons of paint it will take to coat the walls. Hundreds.
Lola is with me, inspecting hidden corners. I realize I need to leave her behind for a little while when I go to visit my family, who are staying at the bottom of the hill. I already know that the house is haunted with spirits, but she is a black cat. She is a witch’s cat. She will be fine. I get into the green vintage sedan that I dreamt about in “Hoch Deutsch” and navigate through one gravel parking lot and then a second. The age of the vehicle makes me apprehensive. I wonder if the brakes will be sufficient to make it down the steep grade of the road. So I leave the car and walk down the hill into the busy city.
I meet up with my sisters Jo and Jamie. They are getting ready to leave town themselves but want to visit my manor house. Jo particularly understands the importance of seeing my home. Perhaps our last time together?
The three of us begin walking back up the street toward my ridge. The road is so steep we lean forward to gain footing. As we cross an intersection, through a green traffic light, the clouds open and it begins to pour, but we continue on. We have been discussing some kind of trauma that our parents are experiencing, so I lift my cell phone to my ear to call my son Cullan. I’m expecting the new operating system on my iPhone (OS 8) to respond to my voice and text Cullan the news but what happens is that the message goes to an engineer I work with named Saeb. This makes me distraught, at first, until I decide to trust the intelligence of the phone and the universe. Saeb must be the intended recipient. He will be able to help in some way.
We finally arrive and enter the house through a small door at the far right side. I reach my hand across the wall to my right and find an old-fashioned light switch with two vertical buttons. I depress the upper button but I’m not sure if all of the lights go on. The house has been abandoned for decades. A dining table long enough to seat thirty people fills part of the room and the walls are layered with old paintings and bookshelves.
We walk past the great room into a long corridor. We hear voices. With my left hand I open a narrow door on the right side of the hall, a closet or a pantry. A tall, gregarious man reaches out his hand to grab mine and I shake his huge paw. It is a very physical sensation within the dream. Lucid. He tells me his name is George. He is well over six feet tall with a round friendly face and wire-rimmed glasses. Short-cropped grey hair. He is wearing a British country gentleman’s suit that is not very modern. He strides out into the hallway, pulling a lovely woman behind him by the hand. She is blond and statuesque. We seem to have surprised two secret lovers.
Jo looks at me as if to say, “Ghosts!” When we turn to look at the couple again, George is a young man: slender, with reddish brown hair. The woman, too, has gone back in time. This clandestine and devoted love affair lasted many years.