TheDreamstersUnion

Friday morning 11.30.12

Chris and I are at home in our very large house. The building’s plan is open and there is an atmosphere of muted, golden twilight because the floor and the furniture are made of oak.

We have been busy, maybe with holiday events, and I have come down with pneumonia. Chris has invited one more guest, Scott, his boyhood friend from Chicago. Scott has never seen the house. So I understand why he has been asked to come but I feel so unwell I plead with Chris to delay the visit. It’s too late, however; Scott is on his way.

I have to call in sick to my old high school. Of course I can’t remember the phone number; I graduated in 1975. I open my clamshell cell to dial 411. The keys are full of red clay and I have to brush off the mud to see the digits.

After the call I stand at the kitchen counter and hear clattering noises in the basement. I go downstairs to investigate. The basement is as generous as the upper level, uncluttered but clearly used for storage, not for living space.

I find an old gift box under the staircase that seems to be the source of the disturbance. It’s a long, narrow box, almost the shape of a florist’s box for long-stemmed roses. The box top and bottom are still encased in giftwrap, many seasons old. I hold the box in my hands and I see the shape of a face pressed into the lid, “looking” at me. Frightening. I lift the cover; there is nothing but tissue paper inside.

I tell the spirit inside the box that I am going to tear the tissue into the tiniest bits, dissolve them in water and wash them into the ocean. But I hear Scott arriving, so I run up the stairs. Exorcism interrupted.

I greet Scott. The three of us catch up near the kitchen. I turn to my left to see a giant, black, velvety sow. The spirit in the box has transformed into a creature with luxurious, shimmering fur, like a domesticated rabbit or a sleek black cat. I am gripped by this vision. The sow stands quietly, patiently, peacefully: luminous with power.

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Day Notes:

Thanksgiving was at our house, a tradition that I love. Tiring, though.

My chronic childhood bronchitis and respiratory illnesses came up in conversation yesterday with the woman at Pathways who was helping me write my healthcare directive.

Lola chased a mouse all last night (clattering noises), bounding up on the bed occasionally, to no avail. Right now she is crouched on the floor to my left, facing the bed, waiting for the mouse to reappear. Silky black cat.

Last week when our regular Tai Chi instructor Eddie was in Australia, his Master Teacher Rob was our sub. Rob asked us to notice the chi “shimmering” through and around the body.

We worked in red clay at the workshop I just attended in Santa Fe.

Female pigs, bears, badgers and hedgehogs are called “sows.”

From the web: Sow is considered a very powerful being in the Otherworlds and a creature of death and rebirth, according to the ancient Celts/Druids. She’s associated with the Sacred Cauldron and bestows wisdom and inspiration.

My Welsh step-grandfather raised hogs: black, white, black with a white stripe at the shoulder, red.

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Evening Notes:

Chris and I saw Lola’s mouse! I screamed; we were both horrified. It’s the biggest deer mouse I have ever seen, the size of a chipmunk, with huge black bug-eyes. It’s a pig of a mouse, a mouse monster!

I know these animals can carry hantavirus (the lungs fill with fluid). I head to Home Depot for a live trap. The one I buy, “Havahart” Live Animal Cage, is shaped like the box in my dream. I bait the trap and open the front door of our house wide to the outside. Mouse Queen ends up running through the door on her own, escaping cat and cage.

Friday 10.26.2012

Chris and I have recently purchased a second house, a vacation home on the bay of a lake. We have invited my family over for the first time. It’s a grey, overcast day. My sister takes off in a small speedboat with my nephew as we all watch. (When I wake from the dream, I’m not sure if it is my sister Jo or Jamie, or both of them. Or which nephew, though I think it is Jeremy. But in the dream I know who is in the boat.)

We see the boat cross a channel into the larger lake. Soon a fog descends, and two huge ocean-sized cargo ships sail past us. I panic as I realize that this lake we are living on is actually an inland sea, or perhaps an ocean. I’m afraid that the boat my sister(s) are driving will be capsized by the huge wakes of the giant ships, or be hit by them in the thick fog. Everyone assures me that the small boat has lights and that my sister(s) know how to navigate in the fog and dangerous waters.

So I go inside the house, which is full of guests. I look around, almost a guest myself since the house is so new to me. (Yet when I wake up, the house and its location are vaguely familiar.) People are in the kitchen; we prepare food and eat together.

Then I head to bed in the upper floor. The bedroom is like an attic, large and open with a vaulted ceiling. I lay down next to Chris in a double bed that has a fabric canopy with a triangular peak. The bed is located under the vault of the roof. So it feels like the bed is inside a double pyramid.

I fall asleep and awaken to a lucid dream of a male voice. The voice is loud and stern, the voice of a Master Teacher. He instructs me to curl my body into the tight ball we use as a warm-up exercise in Tai Chi, holding my knees tightly to my chest. This opens the spine and activates the light-body. As my spine opens, I feel the Teacher grab me from behind, under my armpits, and lift me. We rocket into space at the speed of light, or faster.

I don’t have any memory of our journey. I do remember returning to an empty bed. Chris is sleeping in another bed. I wake him and we investigate a hidden wing of the house. We can see into the wing via a small peephole in the attic wall. There is no furniture, no doorway, and the floors are bare concrete. Chris is the only one who has been inside; no one else in the house is aware of its existence.

Day notes:

Everyone is waiting for Sandy, the Perfect Storm, to make landfall along the eastern seaboard.

08.28.2012

I dream that groups of workers are summoned to meeting areas at the bottom of a gentle slope. There are two meeting chambers, both underground caverns. We are required to wait until called. The people called to one chamber will be told they are losing their jobs, being fired. People in the second room get to keep their jobs.

As I sit waiting near a large boulder, an awareness grows that I will be allowed to continue working.

When finally summoned, this is indeed the outcome. I’m given a small pistol to hide in the cuff of my trousers, a protection from the anger of the people losing their jobs. This seems preposterous to me, I protest. But as I leave the cavern, an enraged man with long, thin legs kicks me in the ass.

Day notes:

I found out yesterday (10.11.2012) that a young man who used to fix my computer at work was fired last week. He is very tall and slender.

The sad, recent events at Accent in Minneapolis (September 27) come to mind. Six workers were shot. The gunman, who had just been fired, turned the gun on himself, bringing the death count to seven.

They have been implementing new workplace lock-down procedures at my jobsite. Now I realize it may be partially a preventive measure in anticipation of a series of layoffs (going on now and probably into the new year).

A gun has firing chambers.