(Tuesday, April 30, 2013) The Dreamsters Union has arrived for an overnight stay. I have plenty of rooms for everyone; no need for anyone to share. Each dreamer’s room is on its own level, built on a concrete slab, giving it the feeling of a step/steppe. The house is narrow but deep and all the bedrooms are at the back. Step back.
The visit is unexpected. My rooms are not ready for guests: bathroom vanities are full of make-up and sundries pulled from the medicine chests. Beds are unmade; blankets and sheets are torn loose from the mattresses. But we make do.
Claudia is the first to wake up in the morning. She hasn’t slept well and feels a little ill. I realize I must go out to find breakfast for my guests. I prepare to depart with my sculptor friend Anne-Francois Pattis (from Provence, in the south of France, by way of Highland Park, Illinois). I leave my infant daughter behind in the care of one of my visitors. Baby can’t speak yet, but I give her a big hug and promise to bring home an M&M muffin. In my mind I see a fat, fluffy muffin covered with colorful, happy candies.
Anne and I start walking to the shopping district. I tell her there is a lovely bakery just a few blocks from my house. Being French, I know she has extremely high standards for pastries (and everything else!). But we walk and walk and walk. We end up in a large retail store, Macys in St. Paul. We hurry through the store so we can continue our search for the neighborhood with the tiny boutique shops. I begin to grow anxious. I’m lost and Anne has a short fuse.
I decide to circle back toward the house. In frustration, I burst through the alley door of a small shop, stumbling upon the arcade full of boutiques, completely by accident.
It’s a fabulous experience. Each emporium is exquisitely decorated and stocked. One room is particularly beautiful, with rough plaster walls the blue-green color of shimmering Lake Michigan on a calm, sunny day. The proprietors are equally handsome, attired in Bohemian garb, delightfully serving each customer with theatrical panache. It could be 1991 at the Loring Bar, or Paris at the turn of the last century.
Even Anne-Francois is enchanted. We notice the petite French pâtisserie in the farthest corner of the market. We head back to see the pretty, dark-haired woman behind the glass bakery case. She shows us the most gorgeous delicacies, including a lacy, curled-up waffle full of fruit that melts in my mouth and caresses my nose with a heavenly perfume.
It would be scandalous to ask for an M&M muffin! We fill a white paper bag full of pastries and return contentedly home.
Day notes:
Monday night I shared my dream of the house with 53 bedrooms with my fellow Dreamsters.
I was reading an article in the IASD magazine about shamanic dreaming. The author said that counters and other types of barriers can signify the border between worlds. Hence someone on the other side of the counter could be an ancestor or visitor from “the other side.” This barrier, the bakery case, is glass: transparent.
A stern, dark-haired woman has been a recurring figure in my dreams for 30 years. Dream-Anne is like the stern, dark-haired dream woman, but Anne is grey now.
This dream and “Puma in the Meadow” both have the action of leaving a house, walking out into the world with a female friend, then circling back. Both dreams end before I re-enter the house.
The dream plot: Very special visitors arrive, inter-dimensional visitors (dreamers). I am unprepared. Part of me is newly born, but I must trust the care of that part of me to the dreamers. I leave my home to search for bread. I don’t need to go far, but in spite of that I get a little lost. I can’t find what I need in the Big Store, in Big Business. My treasure is in the Small Store of the Handmade (Hand Maid). I have a stern guide who is nevertheless delighted when I find the beauty and sweetness I am looking for.
Claudia sent me an email this morning asking about the hypnotherapist Eric Christopher. She has to fly to a wedding in California and she is feeling anxious. It’s activating her flight phobia. “Claudia is the first (dreamer) to wake up…” Wake up spiritually?
Wow, nice dream. It’s like the Puma dream has more sequences. The Pastries sound like “soul” food.