Author: Denise

(Sunday, New Year’s Day 2017) moon waxing crescent Aquarius / tarot Spider Woman (Wheel of Fortune)

The Wheel turns. Many dreams last night, but I tried hard to remember the first:

I am with a woman who in the dream I see as Jeanne P., but when I awake and sift through the images I think is really Alea’s art teacher mother, who has worked in education for many years, as did Jeanne. They are physically similar, the same height and weight, with strikingly beautiful smiles. Perfect, brilliant white teeth. I can’t remember her name. I only met her one time.

I tag along as Alea’s mom searches for daycare for her (our?) grandchild. She expresses her strong, take-charge attitude fully, as I express my more reflective and slow-moving character of supportiveness. We examine the diagram of a center that has three rooms: one for administration, one for group activities, one playroom with an interactive water sculpture that creates rolling waves by tipping up and down. The daycare is run by the Three Rivers Park District.

Intrigued by the toy river, we decide to go on a tour of the center, which is up north, on the reservation. The interactive river is less than we expect: small, and constructed from an old pool table (pool of water!). The center itself has been revamped in a simple, economic way. Gold flower-patterned ceramic tiles from the old structure are still visible around the doorways. The local Indians have done the most creative work they can within their very limited means.

We head outside to find that the native village is located on a river bank, on the west side. I look east, across to the beautiful sandstone bluffs and gasp in pleasure. My heart loves the golden yellow cliffs. I am home. It feels like a fusion of the Mississippi River at Wabasha and the St. Croix River. Alea’s mom grew up along the St. Croix. Even a faint shadow of a golden New Mexico arroyo (dry river bed) is perceptible to me. Three rivers.

The villagers are outdoors, gathered along the shore of the river. Alea’s mom spies an old steel playground-style merry-go-round. An adult and young boy are seated on the motionless platter. She asks if I have coins to activate the wheel. I say I have a pocket full of nickels, which disappoints her. She inserts quarters into the coin box but nothing happens. I peer into the box and see that the slots are designed for nickels, but people have forced half dollars and quarters into most of the slots. I pour a handful of nickels into the only available open slots and the wheel begins to spin, to the delight of the child.

The sky is without a cloud, cerulean blue, what I call a Santa Fe Sky. We continue our walk and the Indian boy comes with us to the very edge of the water. I wrap my right arm around him and we lay down together on a large granite boulder, on our bellies, gazing into the current. He is my grandson. Our grandson?

Alea’s mother and I enter the water and begin to swim upstream together. She is much more athletic than I, but I am able to easily keep up with her. We swim in the very center of the river, without danger of barges or speed boats. We swim far, to a golden, sandstone-colored bridge with arches, like the old stone arch bridge at St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis. Here we turn back. The sense of being in the water, and of dipping my arms rhythmically overhead into it, is very powerful in the dream. I hear the splash of my fingers. I smell the scent of the river. I feel the coolness of the water on my skin and in my nose. Immersion in the wet river body is deeply pleasurable.

As we head downstream, I am careful to preserve my strength. I flip onto my spune and do a backstroke for some of the journey. Face to the heavens, then belly into the water. I tell Alea’s mom that I have recently come from a life near the ocean, which I loved, but I love the river even more.

Day notes:

The end of 2016 was explosive. Chris fell in the night and has a concussion. We spent all day Friday in the ER at Methodist.

Cullan called me yesterday evening to tell me that Alea had been attacked in her home by a man she met on an online dating site. She wasn’t raped but she was physically assaulted. She refuses to tell the police or her family. She tried once to tell her mother about being repeatedly raped by her cousin (when they were young) but her mother laughed it off and said, “Oh yes, I had kissing cousins too.” So no one in her family knows the history of her childhood sexual abuse. Cullan feels terrible. Alea wants to continue to work on their relationship but he told her he does not. Even though he said to me, at the end of sharing this story, that he is unsure he has made the right decision about leaving her. I said I was also unsure he has made the right decision.

How can Alea release the shame of her past if she refuses to share it? What if this man attacks another woman?

My Tanya dream from this summer (about an intruder in Alea’s house) was resurrected in my memory by the powerful west wind that blew the door off my house. An omen. In the Tanya dream, two middle-aged women enter Alea’s house and offer her sugar: sugar-coat the experience. In the dream I am amused as well, not taking Alea’s OCD seriously. How do I act react now?

I was looking forward to being a grandmother because I know Alea very much wants to have children. She will be a good mother. This is unbelievable sadness. So undeserved.

Swimming in the three rivers of time: past, present, future. The Wheel of Time is also represented by the merry-go-round.

The golden-yellow color is prominent: sun, warmth, joy. Maybe the citrinitas of alchemy too.

A theme of living simply, within one’s means. Nickel coins activate the wheel, not silver half-dollars or quarters. From Wikipedia: Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile. Pure native nickel is found in Earth’s crust only in tiny amounts, usually in ultramafic rocks, and in the interiors of larger nickel-iron meteorites that were not exposed to oxygen when outside Earth’s atmosphere. Meteoric nickel is found in combination with iron, a reflection of the origin of those elements as major end products of supernova nucleosynthesis. An iron-nickel mixture is thought to compose Earth’s inner core.

(Thursday, December 29, 2016) new moon Capricorn / tarot two of swords

A night and early morning full of dreaming. The first dream I remember takes place in a large log cabin, very much like the one our family owned on Wahkon Bay of Mille Lacs, built in the early 1900s by three women. But my dream cabin seems to be located on our family lot in Fridley, overlooking the prairie field and giant cottonwood trees that once stood there. It’s dark, midnight, not the normal grey twilight I dream in. The interior of the cabin is dark, too, as old log cabins are. Dark but cozy. Lit by a warm fire.

It’s my house and Chris’ house. I am working from home, but taking a break in the main room of the cabin. Suddenly I hear geese honking. A huge gaggle of domestic geese are running together across the side lawn. I note the oddness of geese moving through the night, running not flying. Their wings must be clipped. Then I hear the loud, unified howl of a coyote pack, hunting the geese, and I understand what is happening. I am excited by the chase, and I alert Chris to the event.

When things quiet down outside, I walk into a wing of the cabin I use as my home office. Chris enters the room for just a moment and we have a flashing sexual encounter that is purely energetic, with no actual physical contact. Flame of desire. He leaves the room and I go back to my work.

As I rustle through some paperwork, I discover that I am missing a paycheck. A group of us had traveled to our office in the Netherlands and upon our return, as we exited the plane back at MSP, we were handed gold-colored paper checks. I didn’t take mine, I guess I was distracted, and now I head to corporate headquarters to see the head of HR to help sort it out. I meet Diane in a busy, well-lit hallway outside of her office, next to a wooden staircase. She is her usual kind and loving self. Ready to assist.

Day notes:

I wonder if I heard geese or coyotes last night when I was sleeping. I must have.

Chris is back to work, painting in his studio today, and I have been working in my clay studio. Working as a graphic designer is like having my wings clipped!

Coyotes are called “song dogs.” They yip, bark and howl. They create an auditory illusion called “beau geste” wherein two coyotes can sound like a pack of seven or eight. They are also called prairie wolves.

Trees, logs, wood and paper. Fireplace and flame of desire.

 

(Thursday, December 29, 2016)

I am with a large crowd of worshippers, moving in long lines to enter a simple, but beautiful, cathedral. The cathedral has a medieval air and a traditional structure: tall gothic ceiling, stained glass windows, wooden pews, stone floors. My progression of fellow devotees is at the back of the cathedral, near the baptismal font and not the altar. A gentle, holy priest stands in the midst of the great throng, helping us all find our way. Some of us are able to fly, like angels. The priest signals to us, reminding us of our gift of flight. I am one of those who levitate into place.

Day notes:

The priest in this dream reminds me of Father Keeffe, who was our priest after the 1965 tornadoes, when mass had to be held at the high school gymnasium. My first communion ceremony took place there. He was the founding pastor of St. William’s church, the progressive Catholic church we attended as children. He felt like a very holy man to me, as none of the priests that followed him ever did.

Today I looked Father Keeffe up on the web and found that he passed away in 2015 at the age of 93. I was surprised to see that he had once been the priest at St. Mary’s of the Lake, next to Wayzata East Middle School, less than two miles from my house. He is buried in Windsted, just a little bit west of here. Twenty-five years ago my friend Jana and I were biking along the Luce Line, which is a block from where I live now (then I lived in Elk River). Tornado sirens went off so we veered off the trail and took shelter in a restaurant in Long Lake. As we sat drinking coffee, I told her the story of the Fridley tornadoes and about how our church services had to be performed at the high school gym. As we chatted, I picked up a local newspaper (probably the Lakeshore Weekly News) and found a story about Father Keeffe! I often unnerved Jana in that way. She did not handle magical / mystical / synchronous events well.

Monday, January 2: We passed by St. Mary’s on the Lake parish on our way to the ER on Thursday. Yesterday Chris said, “The actor who played Father Mulcahy on M*A*S*H* died.”