Monthly Archive for January, 2005

I am staying in a semi-outdoor tent/cabin near a small, sluggish creek up in Humboldt county out in the hills.  I have been living there for quite some time, while the big house across the draw is being renovated.  I am watching an old female cat, all moldy and feeble, picking her way slowly over the stream bed.  She looks like she’s dying, but all’s right in my world.  Lying in the big comfortable bed with a splashy spread of spring flowers on white, I feel a sweet sense of ease and well-being.  My big tiger cat jumps up on the bed & is very loving & affectionate.  Then, two young male cats, who are similar in coloration to my childhood cat named “Shadow” but with longer fur, jump up on the bed and are all rowdy and playful.  I am thinking life is good, and I feel a new sense of contentment and renewal.

I walk up toward the big house, where the verdant green field slopes between the country lane above & the little creek below.  Several massive black horses charge toward me, and I feel vulnerable in the open field, but they look friendly and veer off toward the house without trampling me.  They are so big and powerful I feel a little scared, but they have a good vibration.  Then, a single, even larger and more massive black horse appears from over the rise toward the road and runs right at me.  He is more frightening and seems less likely to stop or change direction, but at the last instant, he, too, veers off as I stand my ground, trembling a bit.  He has a vertical white stripe on his nose, and runs up toward the big house, disappearing in the direction taken by the other horses.  I look up at the house, and it appears to be bigger and better-built than I remembered.  I think I could live there again, and it might be time to move out of the tent/cabin by the creek.

Then, I am back in my bed by the creek, waking up and feeling good about a new day. I am thinking that life is looking good here, unexpectedly good, and maybe it’s time to move back to the house, when I hear a sleepy voice next to me echoing my sentiments.  Surprised, I turn to see M, who built the main house with me in the old days, waking up alongside me.  I say, “You know, that’s what I was just thinking, too.  Isn’t that amazing?”  He looks like he did back then, a long-haired hippie, not the successful retired businessman he is now.

We walk out into the sloping field again, this time farther up near the dirt road – a mere country lane, with a wobbly string of small power poles along it.  We are talking about the regional climate.  I say, “This area is notorious for summer being late.  Sometimes, summer doesn’t come until it’s nearly winter!  But, the good thing is, there is this long, protracted springtime… “

I am visiting Athena in New York City. We are in her apartment on the ground floor in an old neighborhood of brick and stucco buildings. I open the front door and look outside. The street is very narrow, like an alley, and since it isn’t wide enough for sidewalks, the door opens right onto the pavement. It is a quaint but grimy little area, which somehow manages a bit of charm despite all the hard surfaces and absolute lack of any exposed earth or plants.

In the living room, I see a large framed drawing hanging over the worn, yellowish velvety couch. It stands out strongly on the dingy violet-grey walls. It might be charcoal or watercolor or both, but it is composed entirely of dark grey lines, without any areas of color, and looks to be on high quality paper. It is as wide as the couch, but only maybe 18″ tall, giving it a very exaggerated horizontal format. Along the bottom is drawn a range of distant mountains; very far away because the horizon is so low. The rest is sky, composed of rather loose and energetic lines which appear to depict a massive jumble of clouds.

As I walk close to the right hand end of the drawing, I see it in a highly foreshortened view: The wide rectangle is nearly a square from this position. Then I see that this is a very unusual drawing. What looked like random cloud shapes viewed straight on from a distance clearly becomes the face of an old Native American or Mestizo woman when seen from this foreshortened perspective! The view is as if gazing upward from below the jawbone of a massive head, somewhat Mount Rushmore-like. She looks ancient, wise, and very strong. She wears a shawl over her head, and some beads or jewelry at her neck. I think this must be Grandmother, whom the Dreamer described in “Corn Woman Sings.”

Interpretation: On one major level, a divine being is announcing her presence to me. On another level, the dream depicts the current state of my spiritual development: I have learned to see the charm of the hard and narrow way that leads within, despite the grime and bleakness. Inside, things are getting pretty comfortable, and powerful Art depicts the grandeur of Nature, which is all the “God” I used to be able to conceive of, and all the “God” many will ever need. But it’s all in the way you look at it. From the right perspective, the face of divinity is revealed. Natural beauty is only the beginning of the spiritual realm, a signpost pointing the way to the divine.