Category Archives: Dreams

I Dream Robert Redford (36)

Posted on by
8

I dream I am ordering a burrito from Robert Redford. He is behind the cutout window of a little makeshift stand inside a large building, maybe a low-rent lobby but more the feeling of a second floor nonprofit, part workspace and part shelter. There is a handmade note attached to the side of the flimsy stand telling what they serve, and there are three different kinds of pork, so he needs to explain them to me. He is completely warm and kind and gives me his undivided attention. There are other people waiting, but he acts like we have all the time in the world. We talk about all kinds of things. The conversation feels flirty and fun. At one point I look at my feet and tell him I have forgotten what I wanted to say. A Mexican woman arrives to tell me the third pork option has something mixed in with the pork. I understand everything she is saying except the Spanish word for what is mixed in. She goes away and returns with this four foot long bundle of branches with dried leaves. I think it is the leaves she is talking about that must be added to the pork mixture, and then I follow the curve of the branches with my eyes and see they are covered with raisins! (After I wake I wonder if they ever do this, leave the grapes after the harvest, let them dry on the vine and then gather them together like this in the pruning process. I look up the word for raisins. Did she say pasas? Uvas secas? I don’t remember now.) At one point in my infatuation, of being so drawn to Redford, I am leaning in toward him while we talk. “Too close,” he says, and then he goes back to whatever he is telling me. There is no judgment of me in his warning, no recoil in him. I am just reminded in his warm, quiet voice to back off a bit. There is such sweetness in it all. I wake up filled with pleasure (and hungry for a pork burrito).

Will You Be Your Valentine? (33)

Posted on by
4

4 tissue paper layer hearts, red/orange and blue/purple

All my cells are dancing today, thrilled to be on holiday after this last big push ended at one o’clock this morning. They are tired, too–my cells, my muscles, my bones–but the joy is oozing through them, inspiring their salsa steps. It’s smoggy and too hot, but it doesn’t matter because every other thought today is alive with relief and pleasure. I grin again and again. Lying in bed this morning, I remembered I’ve always wanted to make valentine cards for people, maybe even move my annual “address” from Christmas to this day of love. I can see the cards in my head, potato prints, artsy water colors of hearts, wild colors. I’ll get paint on my fingers, and they will cover every horizontal surface of the trailer while they dry. I’ve dreamed of them for years. Late last night I sent out animated valentines, my best for 2014. And now, for you, my readers, I send these scanned tissue paper layers of hearts to wish you happy Valentine’s Day. And this morning while I watched the mountains change color with the growing day, I decided this year I will be my valentine. I will tend to me all day with kindness and delight. Will you be your valentine, too?

Another Summer’s Dream (29)

Posted on by
2

I dream I am dreaming. I know when I wake up in the dream whatever is there–whatever I see first–will be what’s important. I open my eyes and the first thing I see are the stars, a whole deep sky of them, the kind you don’t see in the city. And below is a wooden roof that is my mother’s roof in the dream, and there is some sort of art sitting on it like a fancy painted nesting box made of wood. I don’t understand it, but it makes me feel good looking at it in the quiet night.

The Pressure Mounts (25)

Posted on by
Reply

The Friday before last I grumped my way through my morning chores. I felt like I had to rush now that things had amped up again during the first week of the semester. I had to hurry up and get the basics out of the way so I could work on school stuff. I was cranky about not being able to take my time, whether I was pouring hot water over herbs for the cats or sweeping the patio. I hate rushing, don’t know how to do it without getting tense. I could feel myself resisting having to hurry. “So much for sneaking up on high gear and keeping my peace,” I muttered while I washed the dishes with quick strokes. Three nights ago I had bad dreams. In one I came home and found the door standing open, my dog missing. I went out in the rain to find her, stood in the dark and saw someone else’s pet lying dead on the wet street. I remember waking in the night, lying there worrying about whether or not the toilet might fall through the floor, then trying to figure out the best way to approach some temporary online data entry and editing work I’d just begun. My fingers were making little noises as they moved back and forth against the down blanket covering my ear, inadvertent motions, the scratchy sounds of my stress.

Buried Alive (23)

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve always been a little claustrophobic. I want a window cracked when I drive. I remember fighting with Kay when I drove her to work. She wanted the window closed. I never had a good enough reason for insisting it stay open, only the vague sense of not being able to breathe. During the mountain fire last summer, I was driven inside for a week, windows closed against the choking smoke. My claustrophobia mounted as the week progressed, ash like thick gray snow coating the trailer, the courtyard, my sense of not being able to breathe pulsing through my days and nights. Then it came to me, the source of my claustrophobia. When I began sitting zazen in the early 1990s, I dreamed a past life. It’s the only time it was ever more than snatches, this one whole cloth. I was a priestess, or maybe royalty. I was expected to sacrifice myself for the good of my people. They were preparing to bury me alive. I had long brown hair, maybe seven feet of it or more. I lay down in the open grave, the dark, moist earth warm breath beside me. There were helpers who handled my hair. They gathered and folded it with care, laid it with gentle hands in a long narrow box above my head. Then they began to cover me with dirt. I remember being afraid, not of dying but of shaming myself by resisting, of struggling against them at the last moment. The earth got heavier and heavier, and somehow I was able to hold still. I remember my relief when I realized I was going to just lose consciousness from my lack of air, just drift off, not humiliate myself or my family. In my stifling hot tin can this summer when I felt like I was suffocating, I remembered my dream. “Of course I’m claustrophobic,” I mutter. No wonder. I laugh at myself for not putting it together earlier. “Duh,” I say. I roll my eyes. Being buried alive just might do that to you.

Wedded by the Rain (16)

Posted on by
2

The first time it rained last summer made our trailer home in some subtle, indescribable way. I lay in bed in the early morning listening to the rain falling on the metal roof. I reveled in the sound and the smell of it, fresh dirt and wet pavement coming through the open louvered windows. It’s been one of my secret hopes that global warming will mean Palm Springs gets to have monsoon season like Arizona and parts of Mexico. Lying there in bed, listening and breathing, something loosened in me. The rain outside our metal shell made us one, somehow, the rain falling on us together. Later I went for a walk with my lime green umbrella. I stood for a long time beneath a big tree at the school listening to raindrops falling on the leaves. The rain woke me up, had me walking through the rock labyrinth on the way home, each step on the wet dirt slow and deliberate, my lungs outside my body, the wet air breathing me.

Bird Visits (or House Finch Fantasy) (15)

Posted on by
Reply

I love birds. But I’ve always been extra fond of the house finch. Maybe in part it’s because this was the first bird I identified on my own, sitting on our wide stone porch in Hopland watching them busy at the feeders. I combed my little book of California birds page by page more than once until it clicked for me, until I recognized my own birds in the photograph. I remember the childlike glee, the thrill of figuring it out on my own, that dumb grin I get on my face when I’m falling in love. But more than being my first birding victory, there is something so present about them, an awareness I don’t sense in some of the other small birds, a feeling of taking stock of things, of taking their time. I see a kindness in them, too. I think that, more than anything, makes me want their company. I love it when they sit in our palo verde or nibble during a quiet moment in the tray feeder. We have one male house finch who shows a golden orange instead of red, an aberration of some sort. (Did I read once it’s caused by nutrition?) I love the vibrant color, this oddness of his. It makes him familiar, the one I can recognize each time he arrives, and it lifts my heart to see him. I dream of the day when I’ll look up into our palo verde and see a score of house finch sitting there in their calm, considering way, when the bougainvillea will have grown lush and bushy and three score more will be chattering from deep inside their shade. And in the meantime, I’ll be glad each time one comes to visit our courtyard garden, odd or otherwise.