Sunday, October 15, 2006
Yet another dream...
I've been remembering my dreams, immediately out of sleep, a lot lately, though most of them have not been dreams to which I've attached much importance, thus I've allowed them to dwindle back from whence they came. They've been fun, since they've all been, up to the one out of which I awoke this morning, of the vacuum cleaner type; you know...brain sucks up all the duff gathering along the edges, sifts through it in no particular order, thus creating some hilarious patterns while deciding what to stow and what to throw.
This morning, though, the dream from which I awoke is refusing to dissipate, so I think I'll write it down. It doesn't appear to have anything directly to do with my relationship with my mother, but I can think of a few ways in which it is peripherally significant to this. I don't, as usual, remember all of it, but what I remember is particularly vivid.
In the dream my two younger sisters and I are together for a reason I cannot remember. Our ages are indeterminate. We talk about going swimming in the ocean, from a shore that now seems to me reminiscent of NCS beach on Guam, a fairly isolated beach just a few miles down the cliff from two of our homes there, to which we often walked, alone and together, for a refreshing mid or late day dip. For some unremarkable reason, which I've now forgotten (perhaps, I'm thinking, I didn't have a reason in the dream, I just made a choice) I decide not to participate. Everyone is fine with this and we agree to meet later.
The dream switches to a shower stall/toilet area, sleek and sterile, typical of the type provided at community and commercial pools, in a blond-wood paneled building. I am walking down the hall toward the communal (I mention this because it is of minor significance) toilet area. I encounter a hermaphroditic figure dressed in a toe-to shoulder, sleeveless leotard. I know this figure is "not of this world" although I hesitate, in recollection, to call this figure an "angel" as this doesn't seem to fit; maybe better stated: Otherworldly messenger. In the dream I take detailed note of the messenger's appearance; rather boyish but, I also notice, otherwise sexually undistinguished; slightly taller than me; lean; medium blond, hair cut in a style rather like the one I sport at this time: Short and lank, parted from the right, hanging to the left over the left ear, short and graded in back, cut and shaped severely over the right ear; golden skin; arms folded over chest, body turned perpendicular to mine, looking across its shoulder at me. I immediately realize that the messenger is here to tell me that my youngest sister has drowned. We have a wordless exchange which confirms my realization.
I return to the beach, followed by the messenger. I enter the water. There, I find the shift that was covering my sister's bathing suit floating in the water by an abandoned blue and white plastic raft, wrapped around a three foot, two x four plank. This further confirms her death. My other sister is nowhere to be seen; this, however, seems reasonable. I take peripheral note of this but don't wonder about it and don't look for her. I retrieve the shift and the plank as is, deposit them on the beach and return to the bathing facility, followed by the messenger.
As we return, the messenger tells me, this time aloud, that it will be with me until my sister, the sister who drowned, arrives, which is to occur within a short period of time while I am at the bath house.
I repeatedly ask the messenger a question, which I cannot now remember. The messenger refuses to answer but tells me I will receive my answer shortly. The messenger also explains that its presence is merely a marker for my drowned sister's presence; sort of like holding her place in line. As well, I understand that she will return as though she had not died, and will be wearing both her bathing suit and her shift.
The messenger and I move to the toilet facility to wait. I sit on one of the toilets, although not for the purposes of elimination; merely to sit and await my sister's return. The messenger moves to sit on a companion toilet (the toilets are not separated by stalls). As it does, it transforms into yet another genderless figure: olive skinned; tanned; bright, burning green, almond slits of eyes; loose, shoulder length wavy brunette hair lightly streaked with silver strands, moving without the aid of breeze, as though the hair is alive; magnificently chiseled, high cheeked face; unsettling, wide-lipped smile; nothing childish about this creature; wearing a shimmering kaftan of such a dark/bright amalgam of color that it appears bejeweled, although I take curious note in the dream that this is a trick of light interacting with the quality of the material and the intensity of the color. This time, I am perpendicular to the messenger who is leaning, full-face and intent, toward me, resting its forearms on its thighs. I also understand that, in this transformation, the messenger is no longer a substitute for my sister's presence, but a distinct entity.
Just as I notice, peripherally, that my drowned/alive sister is entering the area through the door wearing the discarded shift, the messenger answers my question, sotto voce, indicating, which I understand, that this information is for me, alone: "You will find me in everyone you meet." I begin to sob, not because my sister died and is yet alive, but because I am so moved by what this messenger tells me.
Before I can turn fully to acknowledge and greet my sister, I awaken out of the dream, still sobbing.
What I am now left with is confused consideration of why my sister died and returned in the dream, where my other sister went and the nature of the messenger whose existence I will find "in everyone [I] meet." As well, I find it curious that the emotional impact of the dream was not centered around my sister's experience and my discovery of it, nor upon the disappearance of the other sister, but on the presence of the messenger in the two guises and the final message I received as an answer to whatever question I asked.
Some of the elements in the jumble seem obvious: The mutually, silently agreed upon current distance between my sisters and me which I believe my behavior has provoked; the "disappearance" of the one sister, with whom I have had the least and the most mysterious contact over the last couple of years; the message, which, of course, evokes the central theme of spiritual leaders who are transformed into gods by their disciples: That the god is "in everyone [we] meet."
And yet, and yet, and yet, I remain copacetic with the current distance between myself and my sisters. Sometimes, I am even appreciative of it. As well, I was more than aware, in the dream, that the messenger, while other worldly, was not an incarnation of an idea of "god" and clearly meant, when indicating where I could "find" it, that I was to understand that I could find it as messenger, not as god.
I spent about a half hour, while I performed my usual first-thing-preparation-for-mom's-and-my-day, composing myself and considering the dream elements separately. I was surprised, for instance, that part of the dream took place a toilet area, yet I had been awakened about two hours previous by the squawking of our backyard community of Gambol's Quail, taking advantage of one of our last relatively warm mornings, and had relieved myself at that time, so I wasn't experiencing the urge to urinate when I awoke in the aftermath of the dream. Thus, I'm not sure why the last of it took place in, specifically, a communal toilet area. The plank in the discarded shift mystifies me. I continue to be amazed at the startling detail with which the messengers were imbued and my insistence on focusing on this detail, both in the dream and in reality. I wish I could remember the question I asked, as I clearly remember that the answer was unexpected from the context of my question, shocked me, yet seemed so perfectly logical, truthful and relieving that it moved me to tears. It occurred to me that the messenger was a representation of my sisters, especially since the first incarnation identified itself as a placeholder for the one drowned-then-revived. This could be significant of a desire that we should and will be reunited and the message was meant to clarify that during my detachment from them I could "find" them "in everyone" but, you know, my sense of the message as I awoke doesn't fit this and, frankly, I'm not angst ridden over our present distance, nor am I missing them, really, nor do I feel a need to establish pseudo-sister relationships, at this time, through relationships with others.
Could be I'm "in denial". Could also be that since I've begun to experience this Care Free emotional remove when awake, I am confiscating my dreams to the purpose of the emotional involvement and expression in which I normally indulge when conscious. I continue to notice, though, that I am preferring to think of the messenger, especially in its last incarnation, as a distinct entity and am exhilarated at the possibility of "find"-ing this messenger in "everyone [I] meet", thus, getting to know the messenger. I notice I am considering keeping this foremost in my mind and so I will recognize this messenger in the people who flow through my days.
Dream on.
Later.
This morning, though, the dream from which I awoke is refusing to dissipate, so I think I'll write it down. It doesn't appear to have anything directly to do with my relationship with my mother, but I can think of a few ways in which it is peripherally significant to this. I don't, as usual, remember all of it, but what I remember is particularly vivid.
In the dream my two younger sisters and I are together for a reason I cannot remember. Our ages are indeterminate. We talk about going swimming in the ocean, from a shore that now seems to me reminiscent of NCS beach on Guam, a fairly isolated beach just a few miles down the cliff from two of our homes there, to which we often walked, alone and together, for a refreshing mid or late day dip. For some unremarkable reason, which I've now forgotten (perhaps, I'm thinking, I didn't have a reason in the dream, I just made a choice) I decide not to participate. Everyone is fine with this and we agree to meet later.
The dream switches to a shower stall/toilet area, sleek and sterile, typical of the type provided at community and commercial pools, in a blond-wood paneled building. I am walking down the hall toward the communal (I mention this because it is of minor significance) toilet area. I encounter a hermaphroditic figure dressed in a toe-to shoulder, sleeveless leotard. I know this figure is "not of this world" although I hesitate, in recollection, to call this figure an "angel" as this doesn't seem to fit; maybe better stated: Otherworldly messenger. In the dream I take detailed note of the messenger's appearance; rather boyish but, I also notice, otherwise sexually undistinguished; slightly taller than me; lean; medium blond, hair cut in a style rather like the one I sport at this time: Short and lank, parted from the right, hanging to the left over the left ear, short and graded in back, cut and shaped severely over the right ear; golden skin; arms folded over chest, body turned perpendicular to mine, looking across its shoulder at me. I immediately realize that the messenger is here to tell me that my youngest sister has drowned. We have a wordless exchange which confirms my realization.
I return to the beach, followed by the messenger. I enter the water. There, I find the shift that was covering my sister's bathing suit floating in the water by an abandoned blue and white plastic raft, wrapped around a three foot, two x four plank. This further confirms her death. My other sister is nowhere to be seen; this, however, seems reasonable. I take peripheral note of this but don't wonder about it and don't look for her. I retrieve the shift and the plank as is, deposit them on the beach and return to the bathing facility, followed by the messenger.
As we return, the messenger tells me, this time aloud, that it will be with me until my sister, the sister who drowned, arrives, which is to occur within a short period of time while I am at the bath house.
I repeatedly ask the messenger a question, which I cannot now remember. The messenger refuses to answer but tells me I will receive my answer shortly. The messenger also explains that its presence is merely a marker for my drowned sister's presence; sort of like holding her place in line. As well, I understand that she will return as though she had not died, and will be wearing both her bathing suit and her shift.
The messenger and I move to the toilet facility to wait. I sit on one of the toilets, although not for the purposes of elimination; merely to sit and await my sister's return. The messenger moves to sit on a companion toilet (the toilets are not separated by stalls). As it does, it transforms into yet another genderless figure: olive skinned; tanned; bright, burning green, almond slits of eyes; loose, shoulder length wavy brunette hair lightly streaked with silver strands, moving without the aid of breeze, as though the hair is alive; magnificently chiseled, high cheeked face; unsettling, wide-lipped smile; nothing childish about this creature; wearing a shimmering kaftan of such a dark/bright amalgam of color that it appears bejeweled, although I take curious note in the dream that this is a trick of light interacting with the quality of the material and the intensity of the color. This time, I am perpendicular to the messenger who is leaning, full-face and intent, toward me, resting its forearms on its thighs. I also understand that, in this transformation, the messenger is no longer a substitute for my sister's presence, but a distinct entity.
Just as I notice, peripherally, that my drowned/alive sister is entering the area through the door wearing the discarded shift, the messenger answers my question, sotto voce, indicating, which I understand, that this information is for me, alone: "You will find me in everyone you meet." I begin to sob, not because my sister died and is yet alive, but because I am so moved by what this messenger tells me.
Before I can turn fully to acknowledge and greet my sister, I awaken out of the dream, still sobbing.
What I am now left with is confused consideration of why my sister died and returned in the dream, where my other sister went and the nature of the messenger whose existence I will find "in everyone [I] meet." As well, I find it curious that the emotional impact of the dream was not centered around my sister's experience and my discovery of it, nor upon the disappearance of the other sister, but on the presence of the messenger in the two guises and the final message I received as an answer to whatever question I asked.
Some of the elements in the jumble seem obvious: The mutually, silently agreed upon current distance between my sisters and me which I believe my behavior has provoked; the "disappearance" of the one sister, with whom I have had the least and the most mysterious contact over the last couple of years; the message, which, of course, evokes the central theme of spiritual leaders who are transformed into gods by their disciples: That the god is "in everyone [we] meet."
And yet, and yet, and yet, I remain copacetic with the current distance between myself and my sisters. Sometimes, I am even appreciative of it. As well, I was more than aware, in the dream, that the messenger, while other worldly, was not an incarnation of an idea of "god" and clearly meant, when indicating where I could "find" it, that I was to understand that I could find it as messenger, not as god.
I spent about a half hour, while I performed my usual first-thing-preparation-for-mom's-and-my-day, composing myself and considering the dream elements separately. I was surprised, for instance, that part of the dream took place a toilet area, yet I had been awakened about two hours previous by the squawking of our backyard community of Gambol's Quail, taking advantage of one of our last relatively warm mornings, and had relieved myself at that time, so I wasn't experiencing the urge to urinate when I awoke in the aftermath of the dream. Thus, I'm not sure why the last of it took place in, specifically, a communal toilet area. The plank in the discarded shift mystifies me. I continue to be amazed at the startling detail with which the messengers were imbued and my insistence on focusing on this detail, both in the dream and in reality. I wish I could remember the question I asked, as I clearly remember that the answer was unexpected from the context of my question, shocked me, yet seemed so perfectly logical, truthful and relieving that it moved me to tears. It occurred to me that the messenger was a representation of my sisters, especially since the first incarnation identified itself as a placeholder for the one drowned-then-revived. This could be significant of a desire that we should and will be reunited and the message was meant to clarify that during my detachment from them I could "find" them "in everyone" but, you know, my sense of the message as I awoke doesn't fit this and, frankly, I'm not angst ridden over our present distance, nor am I missing them, really, nor do I feel a need to establish pseudo-sister relationships, at this time, through relationships with others.
Could be I'm "in denial". Could also be that since I've begun to experience this Care Free emotional remove when awake, I am confiscating my dreams to the purpose of the emotional involvement and expression in which I normally indulge when conscious. I continue to notice, though, that I am preferring to think of the messenger, especially in its last incarnation, as a distinct entity and am exhilarated at the possibility of "find"-ing this messenger in "everyone [I] meet", thus, getting to know the messenger. I notice I am considering keeping this foremost in my mind and so I will recognize this messenger in the people who flow through my days.
Dream on.
Later.
