I am a sculptor of clay animals and those luminous hybrid creatures that sometimes appear in our dreams, if we are lucky and if we are paying attention. The slow process of hand-building something from clay can really deepen the visitation of a dream. I have faithfully tended these wondrous images, transcribing them to journals since I was in my early 20s.
(Sunday, December 8, 2013) I am giving my sister-in-law Kathy Day a tour of my house. The house was constructed before the time of power tools. The wooden floor boards are thick and roughly hewn (I can see the trail of saw blades in the wood), but the house itself is finely crafted with loving care.
We take in the rooms on the lower floor, which are flooded with light. I remember entering a black and white kitchen with large, square windows that look out on the countryside. The rest of the rooms have faded from memory.
We walk up an enclosed staircase to the second level, which is darker than the first. Our bodies seem to emit a glowing light, which is how we navigate the dusky chambers. Or perhaps a light follows us from room to room. Door trim stained in magenta and covered in a varnish that shines like translucent gold catches my eye. It’s more an oil painter’s technique than a carpenter’s trick. I tell Kathy this color is something I applied many years ago.
We walk into a hallway and find a porcelain-coated cooking stove stored against the wall. It might be from the 1920s. I tell Kathy I remember preparing meals on it. We turn a corner and find an even earlier stove, maybe from the middle of the nineteenth century, one I also remember. We move from room to room. At this point I must become lucid, because I realize that the number of rooms is infinite and that even the most ancient items appear new and luminous. This must be the house of my past lives. Or maybe the house of all my lives. I’m not surprised but I wonder why Kathy is with me.
Day notes:
It’s a simple enough dream, but the reason I want to record it is that the colors in the second level were multidimensional and shimmered in an exquisite way. The sense of loving craft was alive in the house.
My current kitchen is black and white and magenta, in a vintage late 50s style. It houses a growing collection of handmade dishes and objects by local and national ceramic artists.
Kathy and I have been mistaken for blood sisters. The last time she was at my house was when Chris was in a coma.
(Monday, December 2, 2013) Bonnie and I are at the dream conference. It’s wrapping up. We pass through a door into a feedback room, a dark, quiet place set aside for attendees to complete the conference assessment form. I’m not sure how we see in the dark to fill in the paperwork; maybe we are working online, at computer terminals. A small amount of light shines from under the door at our left. People on the other side are laughing and saying their good byes.
Bonnie has a lot of questions about the form. We sit next to each other in the dark, at separate workstations. She is whispering loudly, and Robert Van De Castle is irritated with her. He outlines the rules of the assessment and how we are to approach filling it out. I’m intimidated by Dr. Van De Castle; I think Bonnie has intelligent and interesting questions, as usual.
I sense a brightening of the light at my back. Ernest Hartmann is seated behind me, his back facing mine. He is sitting in a very erect, meditation posture. His spinal column is completely activated, as in a T’ai-Chi exercise. The warmth of his energy field is palpable. I don’t need to turn around to see him; I can “see” with my spine. I am able to receive a direct communication from him, spine to spine, energy field to energy field. His message is one of gentle love and peace.
Day notes:
The plumb line (spine) in T’ai-Chi (and in meditation and yoga, for that matter) is the connecting circuit between heaven and earth. It activates the heart chakra.
This is my third dream about Dr. Hartmann, my first about Dr. Van De Castle (from the castle). The day I found out about Dr. Hartmann’s passing I walked past a sign on the Big Rivers trail put up by the family of a man who’d had a cardiac arrest on his bicycle, just like Dr. Hartmann.
I have this dream three days after I register for the 2014 IASD conference.
An advanced T’ai-Chi skill is the ability to use chi (the body’s energy field) to see behind oneself or in the dark. My teacher Rob has started directing us to “see” with our plumb line.
The character of Robert Van De Castle actually seems to be an amalgam of Van De Castle and Dr. Robert Larsen, the Jungian head of my T’a-Chi school. Bonnie and I went to one of Dr. Larsen’s dream groups last winter.
In T’ai-Chi the full set of movements is referred to as “the form.”
I work for a company that makes office equipment, headquartered in the basement of a building in downtown Minneapolis. It’s morning; I open the front door and walk down the wide, shallow stone stairs into the lower level of the building. At the bottom of the stairs are two rooms. Everyone but me works in the large office to my left; I work in a smaller room to the right. My work is completely different from everyone else’s. A large logo/totem of Felix the Cat fills the wall in my office that separates the two spaces.
Dakini Mama (under construction)
The Studio
After a short workday, I head out to my clay studio, which is also downtown and within walking distance of my job. I only have an hour to work on my piece: I need to leave the studio by eleven for a meeting with my Mother.
I’ve created a small, doll-like sculpture. I think of her as a dakini. I need to make five small dakinis that attach to the larger piece. I have no idea how I can manage this in the short amount of time available to me, but the tiny dolls seem to make themselves. Two of them sit on the edge of a superhero cape worn by the large dakini, facing away from her like guardian spirits. Another is affixed to the heart and one sits on top of the head of the larger doll. The fifth little sprite amazes me. She stands alone, a warrior spirit with a translucent blue faceted-glass headdress. She holds a jewel-like glass sword in each fist. I am completely delighted by the powerful little dolls. I rush out the door and hop in my car.
The Conference
My first destination is a busy dream conference. I’m in a hurry. My goal is to replace my cotton bedding with silk coverlets; I find a vendor selling beautiful silk handiwork. I pick out a large coverlet with royal blue and turquoise threads, and a throw woven of magenta and scarlet threads. I love the way the play of light on silk makes the colors shimmer and shift. I pay for my treasures and get back on the road.
The Quest
I drive south along highway 101 to pick up Jeanne Peppel and a few other people (our dream group?) at the intersection of 101 and 7. At this geographic location, the grade of the landscape increases dramatically. I have to back up the car and take a running charge to make the climb. Ice seems to be affecting the vehicle’s traction, too. Spinning wheels.
I’m the designated driver, but Jeanne is our guide. She directs us west to Lake Minnetonka and the city of Excelsior. It feels as though the poles have shifted 180 degrees. As I travel south on 101, the sensation in my body is that I am traveling north. When I turn west onto 7, I feel I am turning east. Excelsior Bay (south) feels like Wayzata Bay (north).
When the lake comes into view, we all exit the car and travel on foot along the shoreline. Ice is just beginning to form at water’s edge. We tread lightly but the ice-mud crunches beneath our feet. The lake is grey, not royal blue like Minnetonka in summer, and I cannot see across. It must be an ocean.
The Mission
After walking carefully in single file for a long while, Jeanne turns to face us. It’s time for our group to work on our fundraiser. We are making candles shaped like the ice flows of glaciers and donating the proceeds to help people displaced by climate change. The candles look like the ones my mother taught us to make as children by pouring hot paraffin into a milk carton full of ice.
Day notes:
Bonnie and I went to see Susan Griffin and Mark Seeley present on climate change (“What is the Cosmos Telling Us?”) at Carondelet Wisdom Ways this weekend. Susan wrote the first eco-feminist book and is a member of Code Pink. James Balog’s film about the death of the glaciers, “Chasing Ice,” was shown Friday evening.
The order of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet started in St. Louis, Missouri, Jeanne Peppel’s hometown.
I do work for a company that makes office equipment.
I have been working on a little clay doll. She drives a Volare (Italian: to fly) station wagon and is based on a dream I had in 2011.
“Felix the cat, the wonderful wonderful cat. Whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks.” Felix (meaning “Lucky”) is a Trickster/Magician character. His medicine bag mirrors the Magician’s in the tarot. One of my favorite childhood cartoons. I believe my black cat Lola tricked me into exploring acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine and T’ai-Chi (because of my desperation to find a healing modality that worked for her). My coworker Cyndi gave me a little black bendy cat that sits on my desk. My black cat is good luck!
I have been dreaming a lot about silk. From the web: “Silk is made by silkworms fed with mulberry leaves. Because of this labor intensive process, it was traditionally only available to the wealthy. It has become a symbol of luxury.” And: “The silk moth is a multicultural symbol of rebirth and reincarnation. It is also connected with metamorphosis, as it changes from the caterpillar to the moth after a period of silky gestation. Admired more than many common moths for their symmetry of pattern and colour, and the preciousness of their fibres, they are also connected with the night and the flame, creatures of secrets and illumination. The silk worm feeds on the mulberry, so ingests wisdom. However, the continuous fibre that they weave is ultimately to their own doom, as unravelling the thread will kill the insect.” I have several mulberry trees in my yard. I am always transfixed by the gorgeous silks worn by ordinary women and men at the Indian dance events my friend Suchi Sairam creates.
Dakini (Sanskrit): A female messenger of wisdom. From the web: “Dakinis are elusive and playful by nature; trying to nail them down with a neat definition means missing them, since defying narrow intellectual concepts is at the core of their wise game … The dakini principle must not be oversimplified, as it carries many levels of meaning. On an outer level, accomplished female practitioners were called dakinis. But ultimately, though she appears in female form, a dakini defies gender definitions. The Tibetan word for dakini, khandro, means ‘sky-goer’ or ‘space-dancer,’ which indicates that these ethereal awakened ones have left the confinements of solid earth and have the vastness of open space to play in.”
The five wisdom dakinis appear in the first five days of the bardo (after death, the space between incarnations): Day 1 Wisdom of Universal Law (white/ether); Day 2 Wisdom of the Mirror (blue/water); Day 3 Wisdom of Equality (yellow/earth); Day 4 Wisdom of Distinction and Discernment (red/fire); Day 5 Wisdom of Action and Accomplishment (green/air). These five dakinis also sync with the five themes of my dream.
I have a meeting with Mother Nature at the Eleventh Hour.
The flame melts our handmade candles just as global warming melts the glaciers.
In my dream of mountain chalets from a few weeks ago, I had to gun the engine of my vehicle to make it up a very steep slope.
Turquoise, from the web: “For nearly a thousand years, Native Americans have mined and fashioned turquoise, using it to guard their burial sites. Their gems have been found from Argentina to New Mexico. Indian priests wore it in ceremonies when calling upon the great spirit of the sky. Many honored turquoise as the universal stone, believing their minds would become one with the universe when wearing it. Because of its ability to change colors, it was used in prophesy or divining. To the prehistoric Indian, turquoise, worn on the body or used in ceremonies always signified the god of the sky alive in the earth.” Peter gifted us all with beautiful turquoise stones from Arizona.
Magenta, from the web: “Magenta completes the chakric circuit, by joining the crown and base chakras together … If the visible spectrum is wrapped to form a colour wheel, magenta appears between red and blue.”
Excelsior is a Latin adjective meaning “higher” or “loftier,” used in English as an interjection with a poetic meaning of “ever upward.” (Wordsworth poem)
Yesterday Chris showed me a cartoon on YouTube of a Felix-style animation. Very old. The cat was dancing with a young girl. Not sure why he felt compelled to show it to me.
