(Sunday, July 14, 2013) One of the events of the IASD Dream Conference is a guided nature walk. Bonnie, Peter, Pat and I joined the walk to the First Landing State Park, which is a cypress swamp a short distance from the convention hotel.
We all became lost, but Bonnie and Peter’s group realized that fact early on and headed back to the hotel. I was in a separate group of 13 people, including Pat, who did not figure it out till nearly sunset.
Someone in the troupe called the hotel and asked them to send us a shuttle. While this was being negotiated, however, a few others had flagged down a man in an SUV, with a fishing boat in tow, and talked him into taking them out of the woods. There was room for three people in the open boat. Two people were already seated and an extended discussion among The Lost ensued about who the third passenger should be. Finally, the impatient and surly driver stuck his head out of the window of his SUV and informed us he had places to go.
I was worried Pat would miss the opening reception for the art show, so I talked him into hopping into the boat. So away they all went, down the darkening road. Someone then wondered, sardonically, if we would later discover the three dumped in a ditch somewhere.
Finally the shuttle arrived, with Pat and his two boating companions already seated inside. Apparently the surly driver had only taken them to the end of the road, which was about a quarter mile away.
(Saturday, June 29, 2013) Because of storms along the eastern seaboard, Bonnie and I arrived at Detroit International from Norfolk (and the dream conference) six hours too late for our connecting flight to Minneapolis, at around two in the morning. We had re-booked before we left Norfolk and were scheduled for an 8:30 flight home from Detroit.
Immediately after deplaning, the Delta gate attendant printed off a new ticket that sent me to Reagan Airport in D.C. at noon that day, with just 15 minutes to make my connector back to Minneapolis. The computer had bumped me, but not Bonnie, from the 8:30 flight. I went to another gate for help but the woman there told me all the direct flights back to MSP were “zeroed out.”
I joined the Help queue with a group of young female basketball players and their parents who had been on our Norfolk flight and were desperately trying to get all 18 of them back home to Minneapolis. I think I stood in line at least two hours while Bonnie tried to sleep curled up on the hard floor. The mood all around was of intense frustration, fatigue and disbelief. I had been pretty irritable with one of the Delta employees and was not feeling good about my behavior, so I decided to try to exercise real calm in the middle of chaos, in the middle of the long, crawling line. I focused on keeping my spine supple and my breathing deep. I treated it like a walking meditation and tried to release any expectation of outcome.
When I was finally next in line for assistance, I heard a voice deep with authority ask: “Ma’am, do you need help?” To my right, about 15 feet away, stood a distinguished black gentleman with very erect posture and a small leather attaché case held loosely in his left hand. “Ma’am, do you need help?” he repeated, and then said. “Come with me.”
I followed him around the corner to a computer terminal. He turned out to be the Delta supervisor. He booted up the computer and told me that prior to talking to me he had checked the Minneapolis flights again and had found one, only one, direct flight, departing at 1:30 in the afternoon. He had secured it for me.
This just all felt like a dream! I told him twice that he was my guardian angel. We spent about fifteen minutes together looking through the computer. He said he had forgotten more information than most Delta employees know. Finally, he showed me the schedule of all the direct flights to Minneapolis and got me on the stand-by list for a 7:30 flight. He told me if I missed that flight to get on stand-by for the next flight, and then the next, and then the next. If all else failed, I had the boarding pass for the 1:30 flight.
Even though there were 22 of us on stand-by for that 7:30 flight, including half of the basketball team and a young med student trying to get home from Prague, we all made it on the plane, landing safely in Minneapolis while Bonnie was still in the air.
Day notes:
This experience is a pretty literal version of my dream “Abilene TX.”
(Sunday, June 30) I dream I am binding bits of cloth to cuttings from tree branches, sticks about 8 or 10 inches long. I wind thread around the sticks and the cloth, creating little medicine bundles. At first I think that this is an art project and that the sticks symbolize the spine. With a shock I soon realize that they represent witches tied at the stake, waiting to burn. A bigger shock: I remember being Joan of Arc in a past life.
A Teacher appears behind my right shoulder. I don’t remember his face, but his body is tall and lean; he has an air of stern authority combined with quiet, physical power. He guides me to a two-story building that seems to extend infinitely to my right and to my left. There are no windows but each floor holds myriad (infinite?) wooden doors. One is the entrance to a room that belongs to Joan of Arc, my Teacher tells me, as he points to the second level.
There is no staircase to the second story, so we levitate upward together and float in front of Joan’s door. I am intensely curious about my newly discovered past life. I ask if I can enter the room but my Teacher says I am not permitted to see inside. This is bitterly disappointing. Out of compassion for my sorrow he tells me that the room is full of finished compost. The image of a dark, peaceful room filled to the brim with sweet, new earth feels like a great blessing.
The dream shifts to a large, fertile field I am cultivating. I’m growing three crops, one of which is celery, the other two I’ve forgotten. The field spreads as far as the eye can see, over gently rolling hills, under a “black light” sky. The three varieties are intermingled, with no furrowed rows separating plants. This gives it the appearance of a meadow full of flowers.
Gazing out over the field brings me contentment and joy. I sense the health and life force of all the plants. I harvest a few of the celery stalks while they are still tender. I cut them into small chunks and put them into a clear box (like Tupperware), storing them in the freezer to be later added to “the soup.”
From Leonard Cohen’s “Joan of Arc”
Now the flames they followed joan of arc As she came riding through the dark; No moon to keep her armour bright, No man to get her through this very smoky night. She said, “i’m tired of the war, I want the kind of work I had before, A wedding dress or something white
To wear upon my swollen appetite.”
Well, I’m glad to hear you talk this way, You know I’ve watched you riding every day And something in me yearns to win Such a cold and lonesome heroine. “and who are you? ” she sternly spoke
To the one beneath the smoke. “why, I’m fire,” he replied, “and I love your solitude, I love your pride.”
“then fire, make your body cold,
I’m going to give you mine to hold,” Saying this she climbed inside To be his one, to be his only bride. And deep into his fiery heart He took the dust of joan of arc, And high above the wedding guests He hung the ashes of her wedding dress.
It was deep into his fiery heart He took the dust of joan of arc, And then she clearly understood If he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry, I saw the glory in her eye. Myself I long for love and light, But must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?
(Beautiful video versions available on YouTube)
Day notes:
Two days after this dream I received a stock tender (tender stalk) check from my employer (celery/salary) in the mail, which was unexpected.
According to Wiki, most of the charges against Joan of Arc were dropped. In the end she was burned for the heresy of wearing men’s clothing.
The Maid of Orleans becomes St. Joan of Arc through the consumption of her body by flame (spirit). In my dream, Joan’s room is not filled with ash, but with composted earth, ready to sustain new growth. As I work in my clay studio today, I realize my art form is created by composted earth (clay and wood fiber) that is transformed by fire (the kiln).
