dream stories

January says: what is will change

Posted on January 10, 2012 by lbk

Inhabit the pause

The light is the same all day. Whether dim and diffuse under a bed of cloud, or sparkling sharp and horizontal under a deep forgiveness of blue, the days are short and there is a sameness to their span.

I go looking for answers, something to make of this time where the things that once held us together seem to fall like afterthought through the branches.

What if the map is wrong, the road signs mistaken? What if the path we’re on leads only back and down, folding under its own burden, sighing back to a simplicity we thought was the beginning and not the end? What if it all ends here.

I struggle against decline. I want to put up a fight, I want the great animating flush of battle, to be lit with purpose.

January comes. I know it by the absence, the press of air, the space between things.

I ask, “Please. Show me something, give me something to know you by.”

I see a tall pine catching the long golden light on its pillar trunk, holding a fringe of needles up against the blue. Holding.

“Will you speak to me? Will you tell me what I want to know?”

Hush. It is too soon for that.

Too soon to muster the troops and rally into formation, too soon to make language of this, roadways, and plans, too soon to move into action, to make change happen. Too soon.

Hush. Be still. Wait.

The power of January is Trust. To rest the weight of yourself in the cradle of something bigger. To give over the reins. To know that there is more than you know. To welcome the unfolding in its own time.

Though I sense the calming depth of that surrender, I am fretful still. “What’s the good of it?” I ask.

You trade the confines of your own small vision for the vast. You become one with the way. The power is immense and flowing. It will carry you farther than you ever dreamed.

I see that this is true and good. I am not in charge here. There is no call to fight.

“Mighty January, what service may I offer you?”

Be still, smooth your ruffles, make yourself ready.

OOO

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gifted

Posted on January 4, 2012 by lbk

The River Dragon has a secret spring of generosity that does not ask what’s needed, but simply gives and gives and gives.

OOO

Posted in My love | 1 Comment

the necessary fee

Posted on December 31, 2011 by lbk

The ferryman spits and reaches into the water where the roots of an old tree gnarl the bank. He pulls out my head by the hair. Just that – my head and nothing else. My hair is laced with weed and mud and soft bodied water creatures. The ferryman gives it a little shake and carries it up to the beach. He scoops out a shallow hole and sets my head down in it. He lights a small fire and sits across it from the hole, and my head.

“What happened to me?” I stand wraithlike at his shoulder.

“You drowned.”

“Why didn’t you protect me?”

“You went without me,” he answers fiercely. “You just went straight into the water.”

“But why would I do that?”

He shrugs. I answer for him, “I didn’t have the fee,” as if this put the onus back on him for charging a fee in the first place.

“You’ve got the idea all wrong. The fee is not some arbitrary thing I lay over the top – it’s not in service of ME. It’s in service of the crossing. The fee is what you need to get across, it is the means, the vessel. When you try to go without – this happens.” He gestures past the fire to the loneliness of my head.

“So what now?” I whisper.

He shifts the dirt back into the hole, covering my soggy head. “Go into the dark. Be still. Wait for what will grow out of this.”

OOO

Posted in Ferryman | 7 Comments

December comes through the trees

Posted on December 14, 2011 by lbk

The wind blows through bare branches. There is a footfall of approach. A cloud of breath. December takes my hand, lays me down in the leaf bed, lets the cold settle over me, the still and the cold, the snow, the dark.

The power here is surrender, complete abandon. The promise is nothing.

But what about firelight? The bells and the singing? What about ribbons and bows? The liquid holding light, the crush of velvet and fur and sequin?

“All that is an overlay of something else,” he says, “noise at the surface, distraction. I’m only saying what you already know. It all goes.”

“What’s the good in that?”

“It is what it is. Irrefutable”

There is no fight left in me. I am crystalline. “Fog-breathed December, what service may I be to you?”

“Hold nothing back,” he says.

I open my hands.

OOO

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the way of sustenance

Posted on December 2, 2011 by lbk

After some time I begin again. I ask please to help me find sustenance.

Again the wolf comes quickly. Dark gray and shaggy, long legged and lean. Her name is Uru. It means Hungry.

She leads the way and I follow. I have to run to keep up. We go up the dirt track a while, then cut through the trees. She takes me over the top of the ridge and down the other side through places I’ve never been before, some deep tangled places, some places where the green is full of light and the trunks of the trees stand like temple pillars. Once or twice I stop to bask and she has to circle back for me.

The way gets steep and scrabbly, and then we reach the valley floor and the bank of the cold clear river. We step out of the wood into the open. There is a road through the valley, but it is completely blocked with boulders that have come down off the mountain. I climb to the top of the rock wall to look down the road both ways. I have a choice to make: Which side of the blockage will I travel, north toward town or back behind the barrier the way we have come? Out into the world or back where it is private, the entrance now walled off.

I see Uru trotting off in the direction of town. I follow. There is a long line of south-bound cars backed up from the rock fall, stuck, waiting for rescue. We run in the empty north-bound lane. The people in their cars stare at us as we pass. We run and run until we reach the edge of town. Uru sits on the verge at the top of a hill looking down on the rooftops and streets and the sunlight starring off the traffic. “Why have we come here?” I ask. Everything in me shrinks away from this place.

“This is where the money is,” she answers calmly.

“This place shrivels me.”

She turns her grave eyes to mine. “Don’t stand in a place that drains your power. Stand where your power rises up through you.”

I don’t need to be told twice. I take off running, not on the road now but through the grasses and the trees, headed home. The running fills me with joy. Uru is running beside me. We are not alone. There are wolves all around us, running with us. “The other meaning of my name,” she says “when you turn it around it means Family.”

We are family. We run together, hunt together, eat together. We do together what could not be done as one, each fulfilling a necessary part. This is what Uru teaches me.

Stand in your place of power. Find your family. Do your part.

This is the way of sustenance.

OOO

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the mouth of the wolf

Posted on December 1, 2011 by lbk

I have been standing on the edge staring into the darkness.

I have been up against the wall, thinking: Wait for it… Wait for it…

What does a train wreck sound like? Do you hear it all at once? or is it a symphonic that unfolds in your deepest dreams, little by little, over a lifetime? The sound of everything breaking.

There is something I can’t look at. It’s right there. I can’t see it.

What is this thing with money? What IS money? Where does it come from? What does it do? Why can’t I look at it? My attention slides off like twin-poled magnets. Can’t. Touch. That.

I asked for help with this. I asked for help seeing. And for repairing whatever it is that appears to be broken.

The wolf came right away, dark and shaggy, loping across the meadow on stealth-paws. She carries all her magnetism in her jaws so that it’s hard to pull focus to her eyes. She can watch you and watch you and all you can do is think of her teeth and tongue and the saliva warmth of her breath. This is not quite as scary as it sounds.

She wanted me to follow her, and so I did. We ran back through the meadow. I was happy because I was going to get help. There was so much authority in the way she moved through the grass, I was so grateful that she had come to help me, I almost laughed.

And then I stepped in a noose. The trap triggered, snagged me by the ankle and hoisted me up like the tarot’s hanged man. Everything fell out of my pockets. My skirt opened like an umbrella blossom. Petals rained down to the ground. I spun slowly. Ridiculous.

The wolf stopped, turned and returned to sit facing me, eye to eye, her breath playing through the fall of my hair. “I’m sorry,” I said. I thought she would be put out by my silliness. I thought she would brook no delay. But there was none of that in her face.

“It’s ok,” she said, “I can wait.”

And all at once I understood that she was smiling at me.

OOO

Posted in Wolf | 13 Comments

last leg

Posted on November 27, 2011 by lbk

I near the end of a long journey. A vast rocky plane is at my back. Ahead in the distance, the spires of a city make music against the blue. The city calls to the pack on my back. The weight I carry longs to reach its destination.

The road passes by a dip in the land, a curl down to water not seen from the road. Along the river bank there is a shallow cave, a dark and quiet place for resting. I would go there. I stand undecided, resisting the temptation to leave the road and seek the riverside.

A dark figure approaches, leaning on a stick as he comes. He comes abreast and stops. We face each other in the road. “I am weary,” he says. “Come, sit with me awhile.”

The city has its urgency, but it is tempered by the whispering dark of the river cave. I remember that wherever I am is my destination. I follow the dark man off the road to the shade of a tall, broad canopied tree I hadn’t seen before. We settle ourselves into the sweetness there. The breeze plays in the leaves and grasses. Birds go about their starry business overhead. I remove my heavy pack and rest against it. My feet are sore and aching from the journey.

“Agh. How my feet ache,” the dark man grumbles. I help him to loosen his shoes. “I am thirsty. My mouth is parched,” he says. “Go down to the river and bring me a drink.” I stand. He hands me a bowl to fetch the water in. I hesitate to leave my pack unguarded, but my service seems to anchor the dark man’s allegiance. I make my way down to the riverside. The water song teases and soothes. I fill the bowl and climb the hill slowly, carefully, not spilling.

When I reach the tree, I find the dark man gone, along with my heavy pack. He has taken everything. Everything but the bowl and the water in it. Everything but the tree and the breezes and the birds.

I am free. Nothing now calls me away from this spot. I sit in the hollow between two roots. I look into the light shining off the water. I drink my fill.

OOO

Posted in dreaming | 1 Comment

November silence holds nothing

Posted on November 14, 2011 by lbk

It is late, the days tick by. I want to find the spirit of November, but it eludes me. All around the air is clear and bright. I am weightless in this light.

I cup my happiness and set it out before me. I kneel and touch my head to the ground. I wait.

I remember how the mountaintop holds its face to the sky, these elementals, stone and light. I see a grey slab of rock turned horizontal like a table holding nothing. The wind blows a single twist of leaf across the surface, a small scritching sound.

November is not stone and it is not wind. It’s not the leaf blowing over the stone. It is the memory of the touch of the leaf after it is gone. And then it is the forgetting.

OOO

Posted in Seasons | 2 Comments

divine intervention

Posted on November 7, 2011 by lbk

I find myself pinned to the page, right through the middle. My hands open and close around the silver shaft, struggling to pull it from my chest, but to no avail. This requires divine intervention.

A lovely woman bends over me, her face mild and untroubled. There is brightness all around her. She smiles. I am butterfly to her in size. She pulls the pin, and releases me.

How can I recover from having been impaled like that? Am I done for? No.

I flutter. I fly. I land on the hand of the great lady and she laughs in delight. Out of her laugh the universe is born.

OOO

Posted in Divine Light | 3 Comments

how it begins

Posted on October 18, 2011 by lake water woman

Buffalo Man leads Lake Water Woman to story

Buffalo Man breathes over the water and smiles. There you are, he says, holding out his hand to me.

I say, I think I’m ready.

He says, Yes, I think you are.

I follow him, over a ridge and down a steep incline. The path is narrow, the sun intense. I watch my feet. He leads me to a place he knows, sheltered and forgiving. We rest there. When the sun goes we make a fire. Come, he says, I will tell you the story.

I settle into the space under his arm, my head resting on his chest, the rise and fall. We watch the fire a long time, waiting for the story to gather in him. While we are waiting, I fall asleep.

When I wake it is morning. Light floods the valley. I am alone.

This then is the story. To wake up lost and alone in a strange place, full of longing for what you have lost. This is how it begins.

OOO