Seven Lean Cows

Last night I had a dream that both of the toilets in my apartment were overflowing. The plunger was not helping. Soon there was shit* all over the floor. Where is all this shit coming from? I asked myself. How am I supposed to deal with all this shit? The shit just won't stop coming. I had no idea there was this much shit down there.

Sometimes my subconscious is about as subtle as a pole-axe to the brain. YOU'RE DEALING WITH A LOT OF SHIT RIGHT NOW. STANDARD MEASURES WON'T WORK. I wish I'd been able to stay with it long enough to see how dream-me managed to get all that shit back into the sewers where it belongs.

But this is unusual. Typically my dreams are about as cryptic as a politician on trial. "I'm glad you asked me about my alibi on the night of May 17, 2007; I'd love to answer that, but first let me digress by telling you this anecdote about a young girl I once knew who was fleeing uphill through the woods in a rickety car packed full of dozens of family members and their ancient suitcases, so that laps and shoulders and trunks were all full, while behind them pursued nameless and mysterious bad people in slick blad porsches. Once that's done, how about we talk about this other time where there were two moons in the sky, see, and one was red and one was blue, and they were on a collision course, and when they hit--poof!--one of them turned into a tennis ball and plummeted into the hands of a little boy sitting in a stone stadium that just mysteriously appeared in the midst of the Grand Canyon. Does that help you at all? No? I'm afraid I can't be any more clear. Let me speak to my lawyer."

Though now that I think about it, that first dream makes more sense than I gave it credit for, considering that at the time I was desperately trying to make a rickety marriage work as the vehicle for running away from a whole lot of personal problems. Go figure.

In The Twelve Wild Swans, Starhawk & Valentine write:

"Of course, it would be impossible to make lunches, drop off the kids, run to the grocery store, get to work, pick up the dry cleaning, make dinner, and catch a video if all these glories and monsters were swimming about in our heads all day long. The internal economy of our souls includes healthy boundaries that (usually) prevent our childhood conflict with our kindergarten teacher from causing us to snarl at the very nice lady who looks like her at the grocery checkout counter. Maintaining and policing these boundaries is an effort that ties up some of the energy of our spirits.

"And from time to time we may experience border wars, in which urgent and nonnegotiable information from our own depths comes spilling over, disrupting our ordinary lives. If I can no longer stand living with my partner of twenty years, if I aboslutely must quite a high-paying job or die of stress, my internal economy may be thrown off. If an endless round of consumerism is leaving my life meaningless, and I must find a purpose for my life or jump off the bridge, Younger Self may create a crisis.

"Younger Self may begin sending guerilla bands and spies over my boundaries in the form of disturbing dreams, accidents, reveries that keep recurring. I may find myself constantly humming a pop song about leaving my lover or learning how to fly. I may experience some disorientation, moodiness, inability to sleep, while my soul energy is bound up with the ever more difficult task of preventing entry of the unbearable insight.

"People often call these breakdowns, but they are equally breakthroughs."

I tagged that passage in the book as I was reading it in the latter part of 2006 and early 2007, and grappling with the Monster that eventually broke my marriage apart. Prevent entry of the unbearable insight indeed. But eventually the border fell; borders have been falling ever since.

Sometimes a dream is just a dream, a random firing of neurons that makes a good anecdote but means nothing. Sometimes the meaning of it is clear the minute you wake, like a hallway full of sewage. Sometimes a dream is an SOS whose meaning can take months or years to come clear.

If only there was a door to welcome the Younger Self through, some way to communicate directly between her pictures and symbols and my letters and words.

~~~~~

*expletive-heavy post. Sorry.

Posted by Andrea at June 17, 2008 8:35 AM under Witch

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