Category Archives: Dreams

Hawk Talk (31)

Posted on by
7

On the first day of the Joshua Tree retreat in July, Beth asks us why we are here. Then she asks us why we are really here. “Now,” she says, “why are you really, really here?” Each time to my surprise a deeper answer comes. Later in my courtyard this same kind of layered knowing unfolds for me. I am writing in my notebook about my new idea to begin a second memoir, one that is just about me and not about my big lost love. I dream of committing to writing one piece for this new project each week in addition to my blog post, how making choices about what goes into the book and what goes on the blog might be confusing. (This is already happening to me with the book I’m working on now.) Without knowing, I forget to keep the pen moving across the page. I think about how I have aimed myself at this book contest deadline against all logic. And since the winner won’t be chosen until next summer, how maybe I’ll send the manuscript to Graywolf Press, how I’d like to send it to whoever published All We Know of Love, as well. So maybe I won’t wait for the contest results, only send up a prayer for the best right thing to happen. I drift on to the idea of entering contests again more often, writing new short pieces, too, while I work on my novel. And in the middle of my daydreams a Cooper’s Hawk swoops in. The doves scatter in forty directions. I duck in my chair, shoulders hunched to my ears. The hawk tries to land on the bottom ledge of the wooden fence beside the gate, but she can’t find purchase. So she launches herself back into the air, fanned tail almost close enough to touch, and sails over the roof of my neighbors’ trailer. Everything goes silent in the courtyard. But inside I am whooping. This dramatic whooshing in big strong wings feels like a sign from the universe telling me to keep writing, keep entering contests, begin pursuing publication. And I hear even more than this big “Yes!” beneath the wingbeats. Under them I hear another yes that says this is where your heart leads. This is your passion, your path. Follow. Follow. I am incandescent for a day, this validation shiny and new inside me. And then if I am honest this message feels like a promise. Keep writing. Keep trusting. Everything will be okay. More than okay. This is the right direction to aim yourself. We will help. It makes me want to cry.

They Live (30)

Posted on by
Reply

This morning I wake up thinking about my novel. I lie there drifting in that delicious in between, fuzzy with sleep, still soft around the edges. I realize Seph always dreamed of moving his wife and daughter to California, how he imagined they would stay in the cottage at the ranch when they came back to visit his family, but he never wanted to spend his life there. I wander about in Seph’s thoughts, still not fully awake. I haven’t touched my novel in long months, but I’m working on the third round of my book manuscript almost every day now. Not long hours immersed in it, as I always hope for, but good steady effort, writing in my notebook or typing up the pages, not letting myself linger much in judgment, just building page after quiet page. I think this work has woken up the characters of my novel, has them wanting my attention, too. It makes my heart happy, makes me believe in the depths of my writer self, how much this work means to me in spite of all my resistance. I let myself float where this new information about Seph leads me, and I know what happens to Molly before she dies. The knowledge just comes, all of a piece, like mist parting to reveal a mountain you didn’t know was there. And I revel in it, reassured at my core, grateful and glad. My characters are alive in me again and busy making magic.

The Day Begins, or Fear Softens (28)

Posted on by
Reply

I lie on my back, diagonal across the bed, fear tingling through my body. It reminds me I’ve had two scary dreams in the past few nights. In the most recent, I crouch in the courtyard in the dark and watch a faded blue hatchback park outside the fence. The rear window is covered with stickers like the ones Colleen and I collected when we drove around the country in my yellow Pinto just after high school. In the dream a man gets out and tries to open the gate. I think, having someone try to get inside at four o’clock in the morning isn’t a good sign. I try to speak, to say, “Can I help you?” in the sharp, condescending voice I use for phone solicitors and strangers like this who don’t identify themselves. But the words never form, and I wake up with a jolt, fear coursing through me. Nightmares are rare for me these days. But this morning I didn’t wake from a bad dream. This amorphous fear is just alive in me. There are plenty of possible fronts: loss of income, Mami, Trie, my writing, the future. At one point, I notice the refrigerator is silent, and I worry it has died in the night. Even for me, this is such a stretch I have to laugh. After, I lie still and do a little metta practice, a little tonglen. I breathe in the fear from my body, breathe out trust and ease and well being. It quiets, becomes more subtle. I lie there for a long time and let my mind roam. I wonder if this awakening of fear is tied to the healing work I’m doing with Elana. Could it be only a sharper awareness of the fear that always lives in me? And then for one moment I sense excitement in there, too. That changes it for me, points me toward something maybe I can accept. The thought of living with this kind of fear all lit up in me, maybe for years, seems unbearable, but fear tinged with excitement feels more livable, maybe poised on the brink of the next thing. It softens it, adds hope, promise. I breathe in, breathe out. The refrigerator turns on. I hear morning traffic, building already as our snowbirds trickle back in. The finch begin to chatter in the courtyard. They’re late, sleeping in on this gray, cloudy day. I stretch, yawn, grab clothes. I open the louvered window, reach my hand through to touch the morning air. I relish the sight of the bright orange Mexican birds of paradise, taller than I am now, the blooms showing their wear on this autumn morning. I slip into my worn-soft sandals, ready to greet the day.

On the Loom (27)

Posted on by
2

Tuesday gray skies open, and we have long hours of that steady, quiet rain that tastes like peace. I take my lime green umbrella and walk in the late dusk, the soft pattering of raindrops balm, honey, music, salve. Wednesday is Mami’s birthday, and she and Auntie Gardi come to celebrate. The rain stops just before they get here. I bring dry cushions out to wet chairs, and we sit together in the courtyard. They drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, fascinated by the birds thronging the feeders after the rain. It makes me glad to watch them watching, feel their pleasure. I don’t often get to share my courtyard birds with anyone. Today the sun is poised to sink behind the mountains as I write. I have a small glass bowl of water beside my bed with one dark orange Mexican birds of paradise blossom, two yellow tecoma trumpet-like blooms and a sprig of scarlet bougainvillea. They broke off from the small bouquet I picked for Mami’s birthday. This little bowl of color and the candle I light are the only outer ways I mark the equinox, but I feel it with me all day long, the perfect balance between night and day, between darkness and light. Maybe that’s why the funny longing that springs up in me, my crazy dream about going to Arizona on Saturday for a daylong retreat Amma is offering there stays alive so long in me today. Maybe this gateway in the turning of our world makes everything feel possible. The birds are quiet now, yesterday’s celebration a memory. But on this magic day when light and dark lie balanced just before the tipping point, Tuesday’s rain and the sweetness of our time in the courtyard yesterday feel like they are all of a piece, rich threads woven into soft, supple cloth. I feel lucky and content, writing now in the last light of the sun. Happy autumnal equinox, everyone.

I Bring Back a Poem from a Dream (25)

Posted on by
Reply

Little by little I ease back on how much I demand of myself. It isn’t new, this reaching for a place that’s different from always having to do more. Sometimes I worry about going too far in the other direction, the pendulum swing to not doing enough, this effort toward kindness turning into sloth. But this week it’s felt right, like maybe I’m finding a balance, cultivating that kindness and having it bear fruit. I entertain the possibility of actually running out of nyger seed for a day or two. (The mourning doves would still have the mixed seed, and there is still some nyger in the tube feeders for the goldfinch.) I let my bed go unmade and the floor unswept this week because I am focusing on my classes, on my writing, on the Canvas training, on fitting in daily yoga and sitting practice again, on eating well. Last weekend I let myself not follow through on changing the bed, mopping the floor, tasks I prepped for, clearing things away at the beginning of the long weekend and then running out of steam. Tuesday morning I have this lovely dream come to me where I am writing a poem in my head about something that happened in the dream, and then I’m at a writing workshop with a handful of women sitting on beach towels spread on the side of a hill. I wake up and grab my notebook to write down the poem I began in the dream. I marvel that this, this magic feeling of being connected to both worlds, arose from abandoning my dirty floors and watching too many episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. It came, I think, because little by little I am letting go of things I don’t need to carry anymore. I haven’t looked at the dream poem since I scribbled it down with one foot still in that other world. Maybe I’m a tiny bit afraid of what I might see, afraid some harsher part of me might find it lacking. Or maybe I am only savoring the wait before I read it, because in the meantime when I think of it sitting there—just pages before the one I write on now in my notebook, dove wings beating beside me in the courtyard—the thought of the poem is a small magic stone pulsing with life. It’s secret and glowing beneath a mound of feathers, cradled on warm, moist earth, just waiting to be uncovered.

Lift Off (20)

Posted on by
6

Today I wonder if my memoir is complete crap and needs to be abandoned. I decide to make a list of the things I want to write about again for this new manuscript, this third round. I make a list, but it isn’t very long. I like the first piece in the book, so I decide to keep it. I find a zillion pages I don’t like anymore. I delete them. I end up removing two thirds of the book. It reminds me of years ago, sitting on the bed at my place on Avenida Ortega when I began culling the original manuscript, making piles of yes, no, maybe. There was almost nothing in the yes pile. This feels the same way. Most of the writing seems dull, boring, lifeless. No one would want to read it. I’m not even interested anymore. How could anyone else be? How could this manuscript have been one of nine finalists for a national book award? Did they receive terrible submissions? Was mine never actually in the running, only chosen as a matter of formality, better than even worse writing? I don’t want to be mean to myself, but I don’t evade the questions. And I don’t know the answers. I wonder if this is natural and right, that after a period of time we become more objective, a sluice to separate the sand and gravel from the gold. I wonder if I am throwing away good work. I wonder if I need to leave this book behind. I know enough to know I am not the first writer to feel this way. I tell myself it is too soon to give up. I point out I have kept more of the manuscript than last time, but this argument is weak. I am only certain I want to keep a handful of the pages I’ve saved. The rest are maybes. I’ve written two new pieces, but they don’t sing. That doesn’t mean the fourth one won’t, I insist, or the seventh. I think again about turning this into a work of fiction. I decide to keep going, to trust myself to know what is true. I recognize fear, a clenching in my belly. But I’m pretty sure there is excitement rolled up in there, too. Maybe when I get inside the writing it will open up. Maybe it will fly. I think about what an odd and funny beast writing is, what quirky creatures writers are. I notice I can breathe again. I send up quick prayers for lift off, for flight.

Starting Over Again (19)

Posted on by
5

I’ve decided to rewrite my book. This will be the third time I’ve begun again from scratch, or almost scratch. (Might it be a charm?) This is the manuscript that was one of nine finalists for the New Rivers Press Many Voices Project award a couple of years ago. (The winner receives $1000 and publication by their university press.) I submitted it earlier this summer to New Rivers, as well, for their general submissions, and I’m still hopeful to hear good news. But I always come back to feeling like it isn’t quite right. A fellow writer read the manuscript, and he thought it may be “droning.” (Eee gads. How do you not cringe to hear that?) Because I wrote it over such a long period of time, I’ve always wondered if the voice was not consistent (in spite of all revising). And I’ve always wanted there to be more lightness in the book. I think it leans toward the hopeful and the healed, but maybe not enough to satisfy me? This is the story of my lost love. My big love. I began writing it much too soon—I know that now. I wanted it to be a book when it needed to be only one of the ways I moved through my grief, came back from despair, put my heart together again, just pages shoved in a drawer somewhere until a later time. I know now to write like mad through something like this but not try to shape it into anything when it’s still raw, has not had time to sift through me, time to drift down to bedrock.

On Tuesday I closed my laptop from a round of work and set it aside. I sat on the edge of my bed spacing out before I got up to take a shower, to toss the cabbage salad I made for lunch. And I fell into a newer, deeper sense of how to approach rewriting the book. It isn’t new for me to envision including more in the story about my life today, but sitting on the bed I felt it more fully in my body. I saw into it, felt into it more fully than I have before. The book is written in second person, me talking to him. Even though I wonder if I need to just let this manuscript go, to finish my now ancient novel and let myself finally move on to new projects, I still resist. This pile of pages has some of my best “material” in it, so I become stubborn. And enough time has passed that I can return to that material without reliving it, can picture the new retelling from a place of joy. It seems the perfect thing to “use” this framework of me talking to him as a kind of scaffolding for writing what might become a “real” memoir, one that goes beyond my story of having loved and lost. The timing couldn’t be better, too, because I’ve been flailing about a bit, not sure what I wanted to focus on at the August writing workshop I get to go to. I’m pretty excited about it now (both the book and the workshop), so I wanted to let you know. I can feel you wishing me well even as I write. Thank you for that, now and always.