Ark Made of Gingerbread

Another nightmare. Amazing about dreams. I try to crunch the images in them like numbers: "That means this if I add it to that or--." Then, if I stop trying so hard, suddenly, it comes to me, what everything means. The pain comes too if I can stand it, coal hot. Last night, the dream board (see 3/4/09) delivered an exquisite sequence of images. An ark made out of gingerbread with parts that needed to be glued together with frosting. Parts that kept falling off. A project that might not come together in time. A truth sayer. And more. In my early twenties, I read a seminal sentence in The Christian Science Monitor..."Beneath, even the most extensive of any adult incrustation, is, always, the child waiting quietly at the heart." I still love that idea even though I no longer entirely agree with it. My inner child does not wait quietly. My inner teenager, the subject of this dream, does not either. Except today. She is fragile enough to be seen through to all her inner organs, to the blue veins in her wrists. And only I know why. Only I can do something about it.

Night

Night is hard. Can remember few times in recent years when it hasn't been. The darkness feels dense. My night-lite does not shed enough light.

A Continent of Reasons

Today, this wonderful line by Erica Jong, The horses of the spirit are galloping, galloping. Have been wondering lately why I push things in relationship, am often the first to say the Love word, go galloping, galloping with sentiment and observations. I am romantic, honestly feel the words and want to say them. Still, I travel with a core and wildly illogical sense that if whoever it is and I reach a definition of ourselves, based on a declaration of love, I will be safe. She will not leave me. I am terrified of being left for a continent of reasons, divided into little countries, each with their own story.

A Little Oahu

I'm tired of all the pills, the smoothies and other stubborn colin remedies, the teeth guard, the back exercises, all the oil it takes to oil the jaw and joints of my tin woman body. I'm tired. I want a vacation like the brief one I had on Orcas in October, even though it took two buses and two ferries to get there. A pool. A condo. Water. Fish and chips nearby. Plenty of food hauled in. Books. A notebook. Oh, and a hot tub. That was good. I'm tired. The refrain here. Yesterday, Gregory and I gave a talk at an expensive private graduate school and were praised for our courage and forthcomingness, and I was tired of that too. Afterwards, we walked through the Market, and I bought half a dozen hot donut holes. The man who made them, threw the last one high in the air before catching it in the bag and twirled his donut grabber thing like it was a gun because that's they way they do things at the Market. The donuts were marveously warm on my fingers which were becoming pincherlike in the cold. I'm writing about it because it was like a little Oahu to be with a friend I so admire and am so comfortable with and have a sack full of the best small donuts in Seattle and just be walking around with no real agenda or place to be, talking about nothing in particular. A pesky Greenpeace guy had been trailing us for a while, partly because Gregory, who is nice to everyone, made the unthinking mistake of telling him his mother had a windmill so then the guy, who I realize was just doing his job, begin talking to us about solar energy. We entered the area where all the stalls are and I could tell, because I know Gregory, that he was trying (kindly) to lose him so, finally, I stepped in. It's what Gregory and I often do for each other, ballast each other's weaker parts. I said to the guy, "I have to tell you. We are speakers. We just spoke at a graduate school for two hours, and are kind of wiped out. So we are going to need to stop speaking for a while." Gregory said, "Thank you so much for what you are contributing to the planet." Because he's like that. Sometimes, I think Gregory is one of the reincarnate disciples or Buddha's half-brother. But my point is, as much as possible, for the next two weeks, until my job starts, I think I need to stop speaking. Need to at least have a faux vacation. Do all the tin-woman oiling mechanisms I'm required to do, and especially several I've gotten lax about, and spend my evenings making shadow-puppets on the wall.

If I Lived in Venice

I seem to be near the house of possible happiness. If I lived in Venice, my gondola would be a short distance away, and all I would have to do is pole myself there. To a house so full of light it dazzles me. A house filling with people, some known, some new, and one becoming intimate. Music spills from the windows. The clink of glasses. The scent of baking bread.

Girl in the Red Beret

Had a floater dream. Went to bed stressed about a job I really want and will find out about tomorrow. According to my friend, Sara, we each have a dream board, a committee, that sits around in the middle of the night on folding chairs at a table smoking, drinking coffee and planning our dreams. They select what images might be the most beneficial. For me, always a board member in a red beret. A girl. When she checks my mood-o-meter, she nods, and, inevitably, serves up a floater. My floater dreams are not quite nightmares but are close. They come from reality, long periods early on, mostly adolescence, when I floated outside of the spaceship of my family and banged on the windows. Inside the ship, my parents were eating peas, potatoes and steak and didn't notice. (That's how it felt.) Faces appear from that decade. I've seen those people more times in dreams then I ever saw them then, Sandy from junior high, Barb from my sophomore year, David from college. The worst part about my floater dreams is that I have no friends and can't make them. I am a ghost on the school bus, in the grocery store, the church aisle. I have no vocal chords. When I open my mouth, a cold mist comes out. I am alone. A state of being I don't question, a permanent assignment. Why the girl in the red beret keeps sending me back there, I don't know. All I know is I when I wake from such a dream, I want conversation, am desperate for conversation like an alcoholic might crave a drink.

Annoying Disciples

"I like Jesus and all but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples to instance. They annoy the hell out of me if you really want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down." (Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye).