Category Archives: dreams

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tracery

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: tracery.

This is the dream that wakes me this morning. Before I went to sleep last night I asked for a dream. It’s when I am writing the dream out this morning that I realize that it’s my sister’s birthday. She died of cancer in 2012. Memory and dreams as tracery.

I am in a group of people on a platform. It is dark around us. It reminds me of a platform from a ropes course. In the ropes course we had to balance it. A rectangular platform on a log roller, held somewhat at the corners to keep it from dumping us entirely. A group version of a balance board. The trick is really that everyone has to stand still and only one person moves, very small amounts, until it is balanced.

But we are dancing in the dream. We are dancing, but people are uncomfortable. I am not sure why. Perhaps because we were dancing all together but individually and now there is a couple dancing. I realize that people are halting, worried.

I want them to be comfortable. I gesture to an older man. He comes towards me. His wife is there. He and I start dancing but I realize right away that this doesn’t make people more comfortable. They are less comfortable and even the other couple dancing stops. We are lit from above with darkness all around. No spot light follows us, so we move in and out of the light.

As soon as I realize that nearly everyone is uncomfortable, I stop my partner. He is an excellent dancer but that is not what is important here. I move with him back towards his wife and I sit on the platform. They sit as well. The other people around us relax. That is what they want, to sit, to talk quietly, to listen. That is what will make everyone comfortable. The others are settling around us, relieved.

I wake up.

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love poem to the monsters under my bed

I am trying to wrap my mind around an aspect of Adverse Childhood Experience Scores. Ace scores.

Raised in war or chaos or an addiction household or a crazy household, kids do their best to survive and thrive. I acknowledge that first. “You survived your terrible and terrifying childhood. You are amazing. You have crisis wiring in your brain. You had to wire that way in order to survive.”

And what does that mean? High alert, high adrenaline, high cortisol, reactive. One veteran says that the military loved him being able to go from zero to 60 instantly.

“Yes, and how is that serving you now?” I ask. “Do you want to change it?”

“No.” he says.

“Why not?” I say.

“Because I know I can protect myself.”

He can protect himself, as I can too. But being on the alert for a crisis, being good in a crisis, being able to fire up like a volcano, is that what I want and is that what he wants? If not, how do we change it?

I think of it as being able to see monsters. Other people’s monsters. My crisis childhood wiring is to pay attention to the non-verbal communication: what people do not what people say. The body language, the tone of voice, what the person is not saying in words, when someone is being polite but the body language is a shut down, a rejection, a dismissal, posturing, aggressive, they don’t like me no matter what the words are, belittling. But if I or my high ACE score patients respond to the body language and emotional feeling, we have named the monster. And the person is being “polite” and will not admit to the monstrous feelings. Those feelings are unconscious or at least the person does not want to admit if they are at all conscious.

In clinic I have learned to dance with the monstrous feelings. I don’t always succeed, but I keep leveling up. It’s a matter of delicacy, inviting the person to admit the monstrous. Some do, some don’t, some don’t the first time or second or third, but the fourth time the monsters are brought out. And they aren’t monstrous feelings after all. They are normal. All I do then is listen and say that the feeling sounds normal for what is happening. It’s like letting off a steam valve.

So how do I and my high ACE score folks learn to do this in social settings as well? When someone is talking to me with a monstrous feeling, meanly, I challenge it. Because I am not afraid of that monstrous feeling. But I have then broken a social contract and the person will like me even less then they already did. And maybe that monstrous feeling is not really about me at all. It’s about their own current life events and the feelings that they try not to feel, are ashamed of, are afraid of. It’s not polite of me to challenge that feeling in a social setting, I am not this person’s doctor or therapist and they didn’t ask me. It’s hard because I feel so sorry for the monstrous feeling and for the person feeling it. I am moving to compassion and love for that feeling rather than taking it as directed at me, taking it personally.

That is my intention. We will see how well it goes.

A natuopath told me to have the intention to release old grief. It’s not old grief though. It’s ongoing grief. Grief for all of the monstrous feelings that swirl around daily and the monsters that are not loved. Most people try to ignore them. I don’t. I love them, because someone has to and because they are so lonely and sad. They are crying. Don’t you hear them? That’s what love is, when you can love your own monstrous feelings and other people’s too.

And our own are the hardest.

ACE study: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childabuseandneglect/acestudy/index.html

I took the photograph in the Ape Caves, the lava tube at Mount St. Helen’s.

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dream about privilege, access, and water

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: dream.

I dream in technicolor with smells, sensations, sounds, all senses. So much so that sometimes I worry about what is happening in the dream and what I should do about it. Then I realize it is a dream.

Other times I know right away that it’s a dream. This one I knew was a dream and it’s closely connected to our reality.

This dream is from August 2018.

I am in a library. There is an archive. I am not allowed in the archive.

There is a man. He listens to me sometimes, but mostly he prefers that I listen to him. He listens less and less as time goes on. He is interested in certain topics, but he likes to do the talking. He doesn’t like or agree with my opinions and prefers that I am silent.

A woman arrives. She is very powerful. Dressed in white, robes, goddess like. She is as tall as the man. They talk and he goes into the archives with her. I am jealous and resigned. Not sexually, but I am just resigned to males coming first, more of them have access to the archives, they expect the attention first, they are rewarded for speaking up where I would be punished for the same behavior. I am sick of it.

I have a question for the woman. I wait. I am sitting on a tall stool with a long desk. There are two chairs to my left, empty, and people in the chairs to my right. There is a carved wooden screen walling the other side of the desk off: on the other side are the archives.

I have water. The water is in a bowl. It is to drink and is nourishing and refreshing and it is beautiful too, with herbs and an island of moss in the center. I have drunk enough, and wash my hands in the remaining water.

They come out of the archive. The woman sits by me and the man next to her. I ask my question when there is an opening. She is interested and will take me into the archives. The man is not interested in my questions, as usual, and he leaves. The woman asks for some of the water. I explain that I have washed my hands in it. More people are coming to talk to her. She pours some into her bowl. I am afraid she will be distracted by the people and drink it. I go to get her clean water. I need a pitcher. There is a wall of glass front cupboards with many sizes and shapes of glasses. I get down a large one, but it is very ornate and delicate. I want a plain pitcher but I also want to bring her the water right away. I hesitate, looking for something large and plain.

I wake up.




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painted sky

I took this on Friday morning. The sky was so glorious and changing, a water color in transition. My mother painted watercolors and when I see a sky like this, I wonder if she is up there with a brush. Sending love in this season for everyone who is missing someone.

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Container dream

I dream I am at a concert in a park. Or some very big event. With my significant other. It is a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the grass is green, there are rolling hills and trees. People are arriving.

There is a gasp of horror. There is a large box, like the hold of a ship. We hurry to look in: there are three open containers down inside, tops removed. They are full of children. Smuggled? Immigrants? The containers are surrounded by water. My significant other and I drop our things and climb down the long hold ladder into the water, which is cold, filthy, and comes up to my thighs. I’ve kicked off my sandals. We are wading to the containers. An ICE agent in a black uniform, bullet proof vest, belt with tools and guns, and riot helmet, blocks me and says, “You have to be wearing shoes to help.” He is handing out plastic stretchers. He can’t see my feet. Yes, I know it’s dangerous and my feet could get cut, but this is probably sewage and dangerous even with shoes. We should really be in hazmat gear but the kids could be dying. I just look at him, silent, and he hands me a stretcher.

Enough people have come forward, into the water, that all the kids have been placed in one of the containers. None of them are dead. They are being lifted out one by one, to ambulances. Now the hold is surrounded by rubberneckers. I climb out and find my purse and camera and shoes. I am grateful no opportunist has stolen them. The ICE agents are telling people to back off and give them room to work. The news crews are there and a Washington State politician says, “This is Washington State, we will take care of these children, we will not see them separated and incarcerated, I will see that they are returned to their parents.” Good luck, I think, but at least there are tons of witnesses and cameras and news crews.

I need to find somewhere to scrub my legs down with soap and to find my significant other. It’s getting more crowded.

I wake up.

And what I notice is that the water did not stink and was not full of lumps of floating excrement. As I wake I hope that I won’t catch something horrible and die….usually my dreams have full sound, color and smells too. I wonder where the children were from, and why, and whether they had some sort of sanitation….

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Taking the baby

My daughter is graduating from college. She is not very interested in it, but will go through the ceremony and process, for my sake and the sake of the family.

She and I and my son are going to do a graduation errand, turn in the money for the cap and gown or something like that. There are various errands.

We stop by a daycare. My friend B’s third child is there. A girl, a baby. I make her laugh. I take her with us on the errand.

I don’t tell anyone. I don’t even think of it. My daughter is disapproving, but my children are used to me charming strange babies in restaurants and often getting to hold them. They think that this is weird, but parents are always weird. We get to the van and I realize there is no car seat. That is beyond the pale. I also realize that I have taken this baby, no, kidnapped it, and no one knows where it is. I am horrified. My daughter drives back to the day care, my son in the other seat. “I am the car seat,” I say to the baby, knowing that I am not. It’s a VW van in the dream, with no seats in the back, a high bed to sleep on. I hold the baby and pray.

My kids drop me at the daycare. I go in, immediately bursting into tears of apology and guilt. The baby has been fine through all of this. B has already come and gone, deeply upset. The police have not been called yet, I think they suspected that it was me being an idiot. The woman who runs the daycare takes the baby. I am terrified that B and her family have driven to Eastern Washington and I want to offer to take the baby to them at this instant, but I know that no one will trust me with this baby. Ever again.

And I don’t deserve to be trusted.

A man is there. He says that B is working at a restaurant. I want to go to her, to apologize, but I am crying just thinking about it. I would be disruptive. He will go tell her. He leaves.

I wait, guilty. The baby is changed and tucked into a bassinet, safe.

B comes. She looks grey and worn. I am crying. She sees me and goes down on her knees, covering her face, bent forward. I am crying, “I am sorry, I am so sorry, please forgive me!” I am hugging her, “Please will you still be my friend.” She says nothing.

I wake up.

My daughter has two years to graduation. B does not have a third child. Our van is a Ford, with seven seats. My children are the right ages in the dream, young adults. I have not been in a daycare for years. I don’t know either the woman running the daycare or the man. In the dream they are acquaintances, archetypes, people I know but not specific people from my daytime world.