Category: Denise

(Thursday, June 25, 2015) Moon: waxing gibbous Libra / Tarot: Maat (Justice)

On my lunchtime river-walk today I glanced to my right and saw the full white wing of an egret perched in the top branches of a bush. Like it had fallen from the sky. I picked it up, gently, and looked around me to make sure I was alone, then hid the wing inside my light knit jacket. I remembered the time Rob brought an eagle feather to T’ai-Chi class. He had found not one, but two feathers, on a solo canoe trip to the Quetico. I was amazed that he did not seem to know that anyone who is not a registered tribal member needs a permit to possess an eagle feather. Maybe he didn’t care. That made me so curious I looked into it further and found that it is illegal to keep feathers or nests from any wild bird.

I walked a few more steps and saw the severed black leg of the poor egret in the middle of the asphalt trail. I carefully moved it into the grass. I tried to imagine how this could have happened: had an eagle attacked and dismembered the egret in flight? Big Rivers Park is full of bald eagles and red-tailed hawks. Coyotes too. The upper section of the leg looked as if it had been pinched clean by a powerful beak, not torn with canine teeth. To my eye.

I didn’t find any more evidence of the battle on the rest of my walk, but I did rescue a small green frog that was trying to cross Old Highway 13.

Near the end of my journey, after greeting the giant Grandmother Cottonwood tree that I love, I came around a bend in the path and saw a man doing T’ai-Chi in the middle of a beautiful grassy circle. I have never seen anyone doing T’ai-Chi in the park before. What a wonderful sight.

•••

I received a group email from Rob just this morning, so he was on my mind. He hasn’t taken me off his mailing list, even though it has been over six months since I attended his T’ai-Chi class.

The Egyptian goddess Maat is depicted in the tarot card I pulled this morning. She judges the dead. Her scales of justice hold a human heart and a small white feather. Karmic balance.

Tonight on the local news I saw a clip of an actress in an angel costume. Giant wings made of white feathers.

 

(Tuesday, June 2, 2015) Moon: full Sagittarius / tarot: ace of wands reversed

A short, simple dream filled with emotional power. I am exhibiting many pieces at the dream conference art show. One large table is filled with my works: ceramic animals and abstract vessels coated in high-gloss glaze. The surfaces of my pieces in waking life have a matte finish, so that is different, but the dream art has an oddness of spirit that feels like me. Many of the forms have lids that can be shifted and shared between them.

I am talking earnestly to my new mentor, a tall gentleman in his sixties. He offers me $4,000 for a sculpture of a creature on wheels. He points out the fragility of the wheels but wishes to take the piece nonetheless. He is interested in purchasing more of my artwork as it is created over the course of time. I am astonished and deeply joyful. This feels like a huge shift in my life. What I have been waiting for.

The room, which is already full of people, becomes even busier and slightly chaotic. The conversation with my mentor is interrupted, but I am not worried: we will reconnect later when the atmosphere has calmed.

The gallery director, a blond woman in her fifties, is not so confident as I. She expresses her frustration with me for losing or delaying the acquisition of funds, a percentage of which goes to the conference.

 

(Monday, June 1, 2015) Moon: full Sagittarius / tarot: crone of pentacles

Conference dream last night. The conference is held in a building with deep red brick walls and white terrazzo floors, like my high school that was built in 1960. A handsome building with large skylights and multi-level ramps that were fun to slide down. Like skiing or surfing on stone.

My two friends and I are running gleefully through the halls at full speed, in the spirit of small children, though we are adults.  One of my friends is male and one is female, but in the dream they are always in shadow, so I don’t know if they are Bonnie, Jeanne or Peter.

We run through a wide glass door that leads outside to a stone wharf with angled sides. It’s evening: stars are twinkling in an indigo sky and the dark water is completely still. We are running so fast we can’t stop. We leap into the water, laughing.

The shock and surprise of our entry into the water is that it is warm and soothing, in spite of being part of an ocean bay. I immediately relax. Floating in the harbor is magical, delightful. There are no boats docked on the surface of the harbor, but sailing vessels and a village of lights many layers deep are visible just beneath our paddling feet.

This scene or the memory of it dissolves. My friends and I are back in the conference center, running wildly down the hallways again. High energy. We come to the intersection of two corridors and nearly run down a man and a woman standing under a skylight. The man is a bit derisive. He finds us immature and uncontrolled; we find us joyful!

It’s Ice T, the renaissance-man rapper, actor, writer, political activist. Only in my dream he is much younger, taller and fitter than in waking life (he is nearly my age, born in 1958). He has six pack abs and a mane of thick dreads that frame his handsome face like an aurora. His mate is a Scandinavian beauty, extremely tall and lithe, with platinum hair and translucent skin.

He has become bored of her company. Her cold beauty is all she has to offer. He would like to speak to me, to get to know me better.

Day notes:

Interesting that this dream comes soon after the dream of the “Scandinavian King.” Ice T has the air of a black lion, a Lion King. His consort is a Scandinavian Queen. Ice queen.

My guess is that part of this dream explores the depths of the ocean, the vessels and the village of the deep. I am not allowed to remember that scene, perhaps.