Dreaming About Dreaming, Cartoons And Clay

(Saturday, November 30, 2024) new moon Sagittarius / tarot Death

In my dream I wake up from sleep, but dreaming continues: I am walking along the edge of a river to my right, a scene from a dream I had years ago about the Virginia Beach IASD conference. That dream has moved behind me. It is in my past. I enter a large “building” that has elements of nature. In some areas, the floor is earth and grass. It is dim, evening light.

There are lots of people working on creative tasks. I used to be an employee, but now I am just a helper. There is a stone wall above a fireplace on which I carve a simple piece of artwork. Later it is covered in clear glass.

I am getting ready to go. People do move in and out, like an eight-hour shift. In my third-eye I see art elements made of paper and bright paint: rooms deep, deep in the underground. Cartoony characters are hiding there. The art rooms look very much like the dream-castle I made out of cardboard, but they are truly many feet below the surface. The cartoons represent people who feel they need protection.

We workers move around and chat here and there. People know that I am getting ready to leave. I have two big plastic deli containers, full of delicious food. One is a wonderful, colorful salad, the other is a mix of nuts and spices. I am trying to find some sturdy, decorative ceramic bowls, like the ones my family and I have from the old Red Wing Pottery, and it takes a while. As I am searching, a hefty, smiley woman comes in a door to tell me she is getting a “fire document” ready for me. Protective, legal paperwork in case of a blaze, but I make a joke about “getting fired.”

Finally I find the two clay bowls I need for my offering of food. I place them on a very long wooden dining table, filling them with tasty veggies and nuts, then head out to a hallway. There is an open door on the right side, and I enter it to talk to the woman with my paperwork.

Day notes:

It was seven degrees this morning. I just noticed that the long fireplace crack that I fixed with putty and paint last month came back. So I filled it again, this time with caulk, and will repaint it tomorrow.

Even though we are all working in a huge, single story building, the dream feels like we are outside. Nature. The space goes on for miles. This dream seems to be a reminder of my dinner with former coworkers on Friday. In the summer we eat outside at Sea Salt. My former employer is a global company. I would always walk along the Minnesota River on my lunch breaks.

As a child, when we were on our way to the southeast corner of Minnesota (near Rochester), we would sometimes stop at Red Wing Pottery. On Thursday I brought two handmade clay bowls with cranberry-orange sauce and herb-nuts to our Thanksgiving dinner.

I am starting to have dreams about creative work. My goal for the future. I wonder if the cartoon characters are symbolic of my anxiety about my upcoming diagnosis? Unconscious, underground. Is fire a symbol too? Or is it about firing my clay? I feel safer having my pieces fired by female professionals instead of at home. I need to fill out legal documents every time I ask them to fire for me. Fired ceramics are stone, surface glaze is glass.

I woke up at 4 am and was thinking about some members of the IASD I met years ago. Then I fell back to sleep and had this dream. I am no longer a member, so the IASD is behind me.

Monday, December 9: I am considering taking a Zoom class with the Jung Archademy. The female instructor has a PhD in psychology and is a ceramic artist. I just finished combining my three bits of fired clay into a single piece of ceramic wall art.
https://www.chantalpowell.com/works-1

I had a small salad at my former coworker event on Friday. And I am going to buy a fancy salad from Wise Acre for Christmas Eve. My friends talked a lot about getting fired, as they worry about it every day.

This dream was shared with our dream group and I wrote this after working on it together: My dream begins and ends with past and powerful dreams I have not forgotten. Even though most of the people on the planet, as Toko-pa says, dismiss dreams, I never do. It’s time to move on and spend less focus on the physical realm. The imaginal realm is the journey of elders. The journey that leads us to the divine. As we pass on, we lose our memories of previous lives, just as we often lose memories of our dreams. But dreams provide us with infinite recalls of our past, and visions of our future. The open doors. Let go of fear, the underground cartoons. Elevate and fly.