(Friday, April 25, 2014) I am in the twilight space that is a frequent atmosphere in my dreams. Dark, but with light beginning to glow all around the horizon. Eclipse light? Even though it is perhaps the middle of the night my dream is busy with people.
I am a field worker for a large university study. I love this work, I love the freedom, I love my coworkers, I love traveling and meeting new people. I love working in the peace and potential of the darkness.
In preparing for my next case interview, I find that I need a few tools, such as needles for our finger-prick blood draws. I go to a green: a large rectangular field that is a gathering site for students, like the commons in front of Northrup at the University of Minnesota. Other field workers are hanging out at picnic tables scattered with cardboard boxes. The boxes are stocked with the items we put in our toolkits.
I say hello to my coworkers. A young man asks what I need and helps me rummage through the cardboard boxes. I find the needles, which are long sewing needles and not medical needles. I take a single needle and gather a few other tools, then head into the brightly-lit university hall at the edge of the green.
I quickly drop off some of my data at the office inside the hall and head back outside. I look down at the stone walkway and notice strange landscaping around the foot of a tree. The plants are highly domesticated, not native. Genetically modified! An autumnal rusty orange color favored by some plant breeders. The plants are overgrown and neglected; it all looks very Seuss-like. I think it’s time for the gardeners to create something new and more organic. More in tune with the frequency of the earth and her creatures.
I start walking across the grounds to my next case. Some students are jogging together with their dog, who runs up next to me and gives me a fun little bump with her shoulder. She has the golden, curly, wooly coat of a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, but her muzzle is broad like a bear or lioness, not pointed like a descendant of the wolf. Her eyes are huge round gold moons and they look straight into mine. “That’s Gunnar’s girlfriend!” shouts one of the students as they all run off together across a gulley at the edge of the green.
Finally I arrive at my destination, a small, old blue-and-white two-story house on a small, steep hill. My real-life coworker Angela walks down the hill to greet me. Angela has large brown doe eyes. She has been watching over our subject, a very tiny girl around two or three years of age. The child has dishwater blond hair and is wearing a worn, green-striped dress with a ruffled hem. Angela explains that the girl’s family has recently bought a new home in a fourplex in an impoverished area of town. The child is clearly traumatized. Angela says that leaving the front stoop of her present house makes the toddler extremely anxious. She starts to wring her small hands and circle in an agitated dance of worry. The idea of drawing blood from such a fragile bird breaks my heart.
Day notes:
I received an email this morning from a coworker: “Good Morning, I wanted to let everyone know I have a tool bag in my office for employees to check out. It has tools and cable management supplies in it. Just stop by and check it out when you need tools. Jerry.”
Chris and I are part of the University of Michigan Retirement Study. Our field worker Sharon Black visited a couple weeks ago. The study is composed of a two-hour survey and the collection of some medical data, such as blood pressure, blood draw, saliva, height, weight, etc. As I write this journal entry I receive a follow-up phone call from the University of Michigan Retirement Study!
I have had a lot of blood work done recently but none of it analyzed genetics. I have been unable to get my MD or ND interested in testing me for gluten intolerance. I am resigned to the genetic component of my osteoporosis.
Easter Sunday we sat at the edge of The Village Green, a commons in Chris’ hometown of Northbrook, Illinois.
Our ex-Air Force neighbor’s German Shepherd is named Gunnar/Gunner. Easter weekend we talked to a police officer who brought a young German Shepherd to the nursing home where Chris’ mom lives.
I once had a Chesapeake Bay Retriever named Puck. She had golden eyes and tremendous spirit. Perhaps this was a visit from her.
When I was a toddler we lived in a small rental house on Essex, on a hill near the river and the University of St. Thomas. From there we moved to a house my parents purchased in Fridley, a very scrappy, blue-collar suburb. I never adjusted to the move. I was an overly sensitive, fretful child. Probably still a good description of me on some days.
I have dreamt of Angela before. I think she represents the angelic in my dreams.
Interpretations:
There is a fertile (green) field of inquiry that involves the collection and analysis of blood. I may have to pursue this on my own.
There is a fertile (green) field of inquiry that involves a past life trauma. A powerful guide is waiting to assist.
There is a fertile (green) field of inquiry that involves an unconscious trauma from my early childhood.
Blood was once considered to hold the ancestral information that we now believe DNA and genes carry.
My favorite fairytale as a child was Sleeping Beauty/Briar Rose, the cursed princess whose finger is pricked by a spindle and falls asleep for a hundred years. Unconscious. There is a sexual component to needles and, of course, pricking fingers. The prince wakes Briar Rose.
Needles are also a tool for mending, joining together.
This dream has an alien thread. My character visits subjects in the night and takes medical samples, under the guidance of an extra-terrestrial (angel). Hybrid plants and animals.
Before Chris and I went to the Black Hills to meet Winter Storm Atlas, I had a dream about animals with weakened genetics. Thousands of (hybrid) cattle died in that storm. The buffalo survived.
My dreams often feature a village Green or Square or Plaza.
Field. Ground. Energy field, electrical ground. Energy workers? I work in The Field and apparently The Field is everywhere. I work from the Heart (the Green Field at the Center). The Field is wherever I am. Universal.
Perhaps the Illuminated Hall at the edge of the commons is The Hall of Records. Akashic Records. Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment is near Chesapeake Bay in Virginia Beach. Retriever is another word for the work I do in the dream.