Deep Dreaming

(Tuesday, Christmas Day, 2018) waning gibbous moon Leo, tarot nine of corals (cups)

Dream 1:

A dream-within-a-dream. I dream that I am sleeping. In my dream-sleep I dream that I will remember my dream when I awaken, although the only detail I do recall upon waking is of a large shadowy figure. Bigfoot? At least I remember that I have had another dream-within-a-dream. That makes me grateful.

Dream 2:

The dream has two parts. In the first, I wear an angelic or monk style robe. I climb a ladder of infinite height, in the clear blue sky, toward the heavens. The second part of the dream is lucid. I ride in a flying machine that is shaped like a bubble of clear glass. With quantum speed I climb, climb, climb, high into the atmosphere. Then just as rapidly I begin to fall, deep into the ocean. I transform the flying machine into a submarine. When I reach the very depths of the sea, I begin to climb again. The machine rises to the shore, and I lucidly transform it into a ship that speeds across the waters. We enter a harbor and I lucidly create a wheeled vehicle that races over the surface of the earth.

Day notes:

Celebrating Christmas on Sunday with my brother’s family was delightful and loving. Dinner that evening at Terzo with Cullan, Hillary and their friends Galen and Alex was delicious. Beautiful. Hillary made a fantastic chocolate cloud cake for Cullan’s thirty-sixth birthday.

I have spent the last two days in my studio and it is going better than I could even have imagined.

Clown Aquarium, Lola And Edwin Luther

(Sunday, November 25, 2018) waning gibbous moon Cancer, tarot Sun

I am having a chat with my grandfather Edwin Luther in a large, celebratory environment. It feels like a holiday party for a community of people who don’t all know each other but do live in the same area. St. Paul. He is cheerful and friendly, happy to be with me. Not his personality in his past incarnation, where he suffered deeply from bipolar disorder. My memories of him are of an angry, aloof man who did not like children. Family members at his funeral were relieved at his passing.

Grandfather Ed tells me he graduated from Cretin Durham Hall, and that my grandmother Helen’s father owned a business in St. Paul, which is how they met. None of these things are true in waking life. I did find out during our Thanksgiving dinner that my grandfather’s agricultural degree was from the University of Minnesota. I had thought it was from the University of Iowa. The U of M agricultural campus is in St. Paul.

After socializing with my grandfather and others I walk up a tall set of stairs into the open air. Lola is sitting on one of the steps. I pick her up and take her to the vet. She is doing well.

I return to the underground party room. A beautiful, large clown loach fish is being put into a new aquarium. The fish is famous. People are enjoying viewing him through the glass.

I leave for a second time, walking up the stairs. Lola again sits on a step, but this time she is in failing health and great pain. I pick her up, carefully and gently, bringing her back to the animal hospital. I am very sad I cannot heal her now.

Day notes:

Chris’ grandfather was a street car driver when he was getting his law degree from Hamline. It makes me wonder if the two men could have met in the post-WWI time period.

This seems to be a dream about grandfather’s current incarnation. I think he is telling me that he is much happier in this lifetime. I appear to be walking up from a catacomb, a between-the-lives dimension.

Waking Dream: Rooftop Angel And River Of Death

(Friday, May 24, 2019) waning gibbous moon Aquarius, tarot five of pentacles

I’m not sure how to write about the last two days. The waking and sleeping dreams seem related.

Chris had day surgery yesterday at HCMC on the top floor. We walked into a large, empty lobby with floor-to-ceiling windows along the full east wall. I could see that the hospital helicopter landing was directly across the street and I pointed that out to Chris.

After they rolled Chris into surgery and I was sitting in the lobby listening to a podcast, I saw a huge helicopter hover over the hospital rooftop. It definitely was not a traffic copter. It circled slowly over the landing and I saw its North Memorial logo. A few minutes after the rotary blades shut down, a door opened at a small, rectangular tower near the helicopter base. Six healthcare workers started walking toward the air ambulance and were greeted by perhaps that many EMTs exiting the copter. The EMTs rolled a child-sized gurney into the opened door, which must have been an elevator tower: delivering a child in need to a Level 1 Trauma Center. That made me very sad. I soon found out that Chris’ procedure had failed, so we rescheduled for another surgery on June 13.

I had very little sleep before the procedure and even less following. Last night was full of dreams that made me feel I was working hard all night. Then Lola started begging for breakfast at 4 am. After I fed her I fell back into long, restricted sleep paralysis. There was strong pressure on my lungs and heart. I struggled and struggled to move, with no success. At one point, my dying coworker Cyndi appeared in my dream. She was glowing. I have been thinking lately of the experience of my last visit with passing Mama Kay, when she was visibly luminous. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, I escaped my paralysis.

When I checked emails this morning, the first thing I saw was a Caring Bridge update on Cyndi’s decline. It seemed like a final entry. A spiritual poem was posted about the river of death. I sent Cyndi a message thanking her for visiting me in my dream.

Somehow, the helicopter and Cyndi’s dream visit are related. She is small enough to fit in a child-sized gurney. Perhaps she was trying to soothe me a bit after the horrid day at the hospital. Two doctors are suspicious that Chris may have colon cancer. He’s down to 153 pounds.