post-date: 12/29/08

The skies have been drawing me upward. Their breadth sweeps over me like the universe is breathing into me. The clouds, the clouds absorb me into them, carrying me out of my so-called self. They are my greatest comfort here, followed by the stars. When they are low and grey and billowy, yet they sweep along on the wind, stretch and smoothed and shaped into new forms. The winds lift my hair and caress it as it passes, until it returns again. At night when I fall asleep, I cast my dream net out the window to lasso all the secrets hiding within the stars. I see many faces here in the trees. And the leaves are like a sea of earth crashing against their stumps. I can hear the divine more clearly here. It is quiet. All the unrest of the City has left me. I can hear my own thoughts, finally. I can feel my feelings, I can dream my dreams. I feel magic. I feel called. I make magic. I make myself anew. I feel myself feeling more and it finally feels real. And yet this is not the place for me to stay. Neither is the City. I am being called toward untouched forests, rich fruitful earth, fresh salty ocean water, clean clear mountain lakes, luminescent clouds, so many stars they crowd the sky, sun burnt stones, red clay river banks, the songs of birds and the expansive silence in which my precious divine reveals itself. I want to streak my face with mud, run barefoot over rocks and paths, become the great mother and take unto me the sun, my husband. I long to discard my symbols of status, privilege, achievement, and ambition. I long for silence and sit in repose with my equal. I long to wear the gems which my mother bestows to me from the earth, to run free and wild like a wolf, wind rustling my fur, the moon causing a shimmer across my silver coat.

a dream vision

Yesterday I was feeling unsure of myself. I turned once again to my tarot cards. I recently bought the deck of the Sephiroth. I have done readings for friends with uncanny results. I had been unsatisfied with the readings I'd done for myself so far. Even when I asked a specific question I would still get an ambiguous answer. However, it was bothering me that I was so caught up on this young man. Certainly I knew better that to let my lust carry me away. What was it me or was it him that was causing this feeling in me? I did a six card linear spread from left to right, and five of the six cards had appeared in the readings I had done two nights before with essentially the same question at heart. It was startling how these pieces had reassembled in the order they had. There minor cards showed a man, the window of opportunity, right will, and nature. The major cards showed the Magician, the cosmic made manifest through the application of will, and Temperance, the tempering of masculinity with feminity and the elements of nature with each other. It was startlingly relevant to my question, with an important reiteration of the importance and power of right willing. So now the question had changed to one of action.

So last night I prayed for a dream vision. I took my prayer stone in my hands and opened my bag of dreaming stones and mugwort. I set the bag to the right of my bed and placed another bag of lavender with two more special stones at the head of my bed. I sat on my bed facing the window and prayed with prayer stone over my heart and head and asked the mysteries for a dream vision regarding what kind of action to take, since I my intentions seemed to be in the right place. I didn't quite know what to expect, as I had never explicitly called out to the cosmos for guidance. I prayed until I felt I'd finished, set the prayer stone beside the dream stones, and fell asleep.

I was a young woman, approximately the same age I am now, perhaps a little older. I was still a student living in the city. My brother lived in another city. In that city there lived a man with whom I was in love. The young man was in love with me, too, but our love lay dormant because of the distance separating us. My brother knew of my beloved, but did not know him. My beloved was a religious man and was, like I, committed to a religious education. He covered his head and appeared to be devoutly Jewish. Secretly I was collecting tokens which reminded me of my beloved. In my room I had collected a small mass of blue, red, and gold items that appeared to be various takes on the Superman insignia.

Quite suddenly an imminent danger appeared on the horizon and was descending upon the cities quite fast. I had no choice but to make haste to my beloved to warn him. We had no time to savor the sweetness of being reunited because of the danger which followed after me. I plucked the outward signs of faith from his appearance and we fled. First we fled through the dark streets, seemingly deserted of all friendly faces, danger lurking. I was guiding him to safety though I didn't know exactly where we would find it. We had no defense except for the swiftness to outrun our enemies. We escaped to a train where we hid from and narrowly escaped our enemies, who would have shot us on sight. From the train we escaped to a house. We ran from the front of the house through towards the back, and as we reached the rear of the house, we could find no way out. Our enemies had just entered through the front and would find us soon if we did not discover an exit. With moments to spare, there appeared the woman who lived in the house. She was large, vibrant, warm, and her skin was honey and olive. She showed us a door on the other side of a mirror, and we escaped through it to the back yard.

Once we crossed the threshhold into the yard, it became my yard and my house. I was older now and there were friends in the house. I stood just outside the house and I held a branch full of cherry blossoms in my right hand. In the middle of the yard between two cherry blossom trees sat a little girl about three years old. She was my daughter, and she sat with a woman and was painting her face with blue, red, and gold paint. As I watched them, my daughter finished painting the other woman's face. But the woman was unhappy. She didn't like the way my daughter had painted on her. I found it very beautiful though, red and blue and gold paint sparkling on her face and a glob of gold dripping through her hair. But the other woman was in fact also me, before I had wanted my daughter, and her discomfort with children had been my own. The other woman left when I approached my daughter because she had never really been there. I gave her the branch which was from her father, my beloved, who was away for important reasons. He had asked me to give it to our daughter to make a bed of flowers. She set the branch down and layed across it. We were happy and in love.

As soon as I woke up, I forgot my dream, but as soon as I sat down for a moment in my living room, it returned to me so fully I immediately wrote it down. It is only the second dream I've ever had that has ended with a conclusion rather than ending abruptly in the midst of action.