Author: Denise

(Saturday, February 15, 2014)  I’m a widow, perhaps. Single, at any rate.

I’m with a crowd of people haphazardly running around a square athletic track. Or maybe it’s the street surrounding a village square or plaza. I see one of my coworkers, Jorge Juarez, and a few others. There is at least one gentleman who interests me, but I can’t get his attention. Not even my coworkers notice me. I feel invisible.

Dejected, I walk through a thin line of trees to a second, adjacent field. It mirrors the size and shape of the first square, but the street around it is completely empty. I seem to be the only one who knows about it.

I start to run. I am extremely surprised: running is effortless. I have the easy, rhythmic stride of an Olympian. I make several passes around the square without becoming even slightly winded. Being in such a fit and well-trained body is wonderful.

I head to the locker room at the nearby gym to change out of my running clothes. The room is brightly lit, made of concrete block coated with shiny white paint that amplifies the light. Again I am alone. But I hear my friend Jeanne Cowan’s disembodied voice directly behind me. I’m startled and don’t catch what she first says to me.

“Jeanne, is that you?” I cry out.

“Yes!” she says with her characteristic cackle. I turn in a complete circle but she is nowhere to be seen. Her voice seems to come from the other side of the concrete wall.

“You won’t find a man until you go to the southwest,” she says.

I’m baffled. Where in the southwest? Southwest of what? Do I move there or just visit? What kind of man: mentor, friend. lover, shadow? When does this meeting take place?

Jeanne is silent. These questions seem to come as I transition from dream to waking reality.

Thoughts:

I am on a different track than my coworkers. It’s a thin border between their world and mine. I’m moving onto my natural path. I am fit and ready. The road less traveled. My true field.

The square is a recent theme in my dreams. Ceramic tiles and now the village square, which was a feature in my puma dream.

There is an article in Ceramics Monthly about a sculptor who works very large (he has to climb ladders to finish the top of his pieces) in stoneware paper clay (as do I). His work is inspiring. The last two issues of the magazine included interviews with two artists whose sensibility feels kindred to mine. I find that very motivating. Ceramic sculpture helps me move up the ladder? My New Mexico magazine that arrived Friday featured the Coronado Kiva State Monument.

The second dream in as many days with a disembodied guide.

 Two dreams of widowhood.

I had a dream over a year ago that included a grassy, green athletic field and Jorge Juarez (from Mexico). I called that dream “Nina the Artist.” Green square, like the green tiles in my recent ladder dream.

(Valentine’s Day Friday, 2014) I have purchased a house from an elderly woman. I think her husband has passed away. She does not want to sell, but she is too old to take care of the place now.

It is the house in Fridley where I grew up. I don’t really want it; I prefer my house on Circle Park because of its large, private lot. I have no fond memories of the Fridley house, either. My parents drank. They were neglectful and abusive to us and to each other.

So I miss my Circle Park house but I have to make the best of the situation. Fortunately I have a guide to help me get through the emotional pain. She hovers slightly behind me and to my right, like a translucent golden angel from a Pre-Raphaelite painting. It’s my sister Jo. She holds her full lips near my ear. She whispers her support firmly and constantly. I can feel her pretty warm face nested in my flowing hair. I feel sad, but protected.

Like a new owner, I inspect the house, starting in the basement. The rooms are all full to bursting with stuff. It’s the home of two pack rats who never could sort through the stacks or stop their hoarding behavior. Unable to let a single thing go. I am very disturbed and frustrated that the task of reduction is left to me. I experience the unfairness of it, deeply.

I walk up the stairs and turn left into the living room at the front of the house. Hardwood floors are covered with old-fashioned wood and glass display cases holding boxes and boxes of firearm ammunition. Ammo store, store of ammo. It’s frightening. I know this is the first room that needs to be cleared so I visualize the emptied room in my mind.

I turn back toward the kitchen. Now Jo levitates behind my left shoulder and speaks into my left ear. It’s my childhood kitchen, not the great room addition that was built after I left home. One of the wall tiles pops off and falls to the floor.

I open the side door and step out. Jo introduces me to my mother, who is standing on the stoop. In the dream my mother is an ancient, dark-haired Slav who speaks only broken English. She’s a hag and I’m about to dismiss her when my sister shows me one of my mother’s intriguing sculptures.

The artwork employs a technique lost to time. I can’t figure out how it is done. She creates a mold that seems like it is crafted from leather and then fills it, maybe with clay. I’m amazed and impressed by her artistry. The pieces are haunting, mysterious, and look a little like the Bog People found near old Celtic settlements. But because of the language barrier between us I will never be able to understand her process.

Then I notice a spare and wizened cedar tree growing very close to the house, to the right of the door (to my left, as I face the door). The cedar has the appearance of the twisted old Witch Tree that grows out of the rocks overlooking Lake Superior near Grand Portage. Sacred tree. Magically surviving in the most barren of soils.

This dream tree has a single long and heavy bough that reaches left along the roof line of my house. Like a protective arm. The shape of the tree is an inverted L, or a gallows.

Day notes:

Yesterday I dug up a photo of Jo and me sitting under the Christmas tree when I was 3 and she was 2. My mother dressed us as twins, even though we looked nothing alike.

I also sometimes dream of Chris’ aunt Jo, who has protected this house by way of the inheritance she left us. Jo fell into dementia after the death of her partner Lucias.

Cedar trees’ symbolic meaning include healing, cleansing and rituals of protection. The shape of the tree reminds me of the Hanged Man card in the tarot, the card of sacrifice and letting go. Tao Te Ching: “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need.”

My great grandparents on my father’s side were Czech. But I think the language my dream mother speaks is a different Slavic tongue.

On one of the 15 below zero mornings the tiles on our kitchen floor made a loud bang. Twelve of the tiles popped up, away from the subfloor, and created a little teepee next to the dining room table.

Twin qualities of Circle Park and Fridley houses:

1. Both ramblers are built on a hill
2. Both are located one block from a small lake
3. Both lakes have a government structure (prison/school) and a nature preserve on the western shore. Both lakes have a public beach
   
4. Both houses were built with an underground garage
5. Both were in the path of the 1965 tornadoes but survived
   
6. Both sit next to a city park (playground/softball fields)
   
7. Circle Park is on a one-way street, Fridley is on a dead-end street
8. Both have a white birch tree located near a steep set of stairs (stone/concrete)
   
9. Circle Park has a tuxedo cat named Lola, Fridley had a tuxedo cat named Boots

(Sunday, February 9. 2014) I’ve had two very similar dreams this week.

In the first, I have inherited or moved back into my large ancestral home. I’m exploring or reacquainting myself with the inner spaces. I’m very excited and want to share the experience with others but am unable to create any interest in the people I know.

I enter one of the bathrooms in the house. The floor and walls are completely covered with small (4-inch square) tiles that are much thicker than modern manufactured tiles. The bathtub, sink and toilet appear to be from the 1920s or 30s. I think the tiles are a deep green color. There is no window so the lighting is dim and the room has the feeling of a cloistered, protective place.

The space is more than a story tall. I look upward but the ceiling is not visible to me. I notice metal rungs built into the wall behind the bathtub and so I start to climb. The rungs are feathered with fine cobwebs; no one has touched them for a very long time.

In the second dream, I enter a large public bathroom with no windows and soft lighting. My coworker Steve Adams has brought his two small daughters into the room to wash up. This space is also completely covered with handsome ceramic tiles, but these tiles are horizontal (perhaps 4 x 8), slate-colored and modern. It feels like an airport restroom.

Again I notice metal ladder rungs built into the wall. I start to climb. I cannot see the ceiling. I have a thought that I may sometimes need to move not just in a vertical direction, but horizontally as well. As I reach out my right hand, rungs form and fill the wall.

Waking thoughts:

The first room is square and the room feels like a deep well. Climbing the rungs of the ladder feels like climbing from the bottom of an underground sewer or tunnel system. The second room is rectangular in shape, mirroring the shape of the slate-colored tiles. It feels like ground level. The space is doubled (4 x 4 turns to 4 x 8).

Both rooms are fully functional. No clogged sinks or toilets as I have dreamed about in the distant past. Rooms of purification.

The rungs of the ladder echo the structure of the human spine. The dreams start at the base of the spine, in the root chakra, where waste is released and energy from the earth is absorbed into the body.

The rooms themselves mirror the inside of a ceramic kiln.

Steve Adams and I work at the same level: he is the lead web designer, I am the lead print designer.

The first dream has the sense (that I am beginning to more easily recognize) of a past life dream. There I am unable to find kindred souls but in the second, modern dream a coworker and his children share the room with me. Perhaps this time around I will have more success finding like-minded souls in my spiritual journey. The second restroom (room of rest, retreat) is located in an airport, where people journey through the air. Fly.

From the web: The ladder may indicate access to high places in this life or access to special places in the universe. It indicates meditation and prayer. You are setting forth on a spiritual path and higher awareness. Each rung of the ladder is symbolic of a stage in your spiritual awareness. The dream may also highlight how you are looking at things from a different perspective.

The dream brings up the idea of kiva and the kiva ladder. Seven rungs on a kiva ladder, seven chakras in the physical body. Kiva is sacred space, without windows, underground. Womb. Purification. I prayed in the Great Kiva at Chaco Canyon and in a smaller kiva at Bandelier in 1987.

http://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/native-american-culture/kivas.htm

http://thssite.tripod.com/shel1/kiva.html