Petrified Forest Musings

Recently I went to Calistoga for an overnight stay. I like to go there every couple of years, maybe have a mud bath, perhaps do some wine tasting and definitely some gourmet dining. One thing I always do is visit the Petrified Forest.

Discovered in 1870, the forest is a beautiful woodland bristling with red-barked manzanita and white oak, pine and bay laurel. It also contains the fossilized remains of giant redwoods, trees knocked to the forest floor by a volcanic eruption and buried in volcanic ash over three million years ago. Some of these amazing specimens were already 2,000 years old when the volcano felled them.

The petrified trees have always fascinated me, and I never really examined why. This time, I went in the middle of the week with notebook in hand. I sat on a bench in the warm Northern California January sun and wrote about why that might be.

“I come here and feel such a deep peace. Where I sit were once oceans, were once other forests. Where I walk, fish have swum, birds have hopped and flitted, women and men of another age have stood. This place is solid, this land endures. The petrified trees have been here for a multi-million years, and will remain for a multi-million more. In this spot, oceans may rise once more. Where I walk, fish may swim again. Creatures I will never see and would not recognize even if I did may crawl and slither and glide. The next evolution of humankind may know the deep quiet of this soil, the embrace of these trees.

I feel I have left my essence in this place, infused my energy into this manzanita grove, instilled my vitality into this volcanic rock. There is a hum here, the lilt of eternity, a multi-million-year-old music that calls the part of me that is eternal. Sitting on this bench, perched on the sandy soil of the Petrified Forest in Calistoga, California I know I will live forever. Yes, my body will die and return, again, to mud. Yet my soul will go on.

Somehow I feel the truth of those words, and the meaninglessness of time, its artifciality. Time is a ruse. Time’s purpose is to make us wait, to make us fearful we haven’t got enough of it. We are infinite and eternal. Everything ends, yet it begins again. Life is a perpetual circle dance, and even if you think you don’t know how, dancing is what you are doing. I have spun around ancient fires, twirled across floors of packed earth, of baked adobe tile, of polished wood. I have dreamed from a bed of straw, a pallet of woven reeds, a muslin-covered matress stuffed with seeds.”

I felt the desire to share my words with you. Make of them whatever you will. As always, comments are welcome.

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

Good Grief

After all the dreams, and all the thinking about the dreams, and all the writing, feeling, and living in between the thinking and the dreams, I believe I have figured out their deeper meaning. On the surface, I knew the dreams were about the ending of a close friendship. Without going into gory details, I’ll just tell you that this friend betrayed another close friend, and I knew that I had to separate from one of them for a while. The ending of a friendship is never easy, but this one ended with a noisy shattering into fragments rather than the quiet closing of a door, which makes it even harder.

I have been trying, in my dreams, to deal with the shock and the hurt. There was an obvious theme in the dreams of running from someone or something. I had one that I didn’t post here about a snake demon chasing me through a maze of hallways and rooms wanting to devour me alive. At one point he cornered me in a tiny room composed of a child’s building blocks. I tossed a few at him and watched as they bounced off his noggin, and somehow this held him at bay.

As I was saying, there was an obvious theme of running away. So I asked myself, what are you so afraid of? The answer, on the surface, seemed to be “men.” Since the friend I lost is a man, that makes sense on one level. And it seems clear in the dreams that I’m afraid of being hurt by men, which also makes sense. But I knew that wasn’t the whole story, that there was more to it.

To make a long story a little shorter, I realized that what I was running from was my grief. I’m afraid that if I give in to grief, it will devour me; that I will disappear, cease to exist. I have carried this fear inside my heart for many, many years. And here, in cyberspace, in this virtual place, I am letting it go. I finally understand that grief is a good thing. Without it, I cannot be whole. Loss is a part of living, and grief is a part of loss.

After several nights of nightmares, I was confronted with another loss: the cafe where I have been hosting a poetry reading for the last year and a half is under new management. They changed their hours, so I no longer have a reading there, and I found out by going there to put up flyers for the reading that I thought was still happening.

I went to a writing workshop on the evening of the same day, and wrote about grief and loss. That night, I had such a wonderful dream! In this dream, I was walking down a road and I came to a train crossing. I had a huge sack slung over one shoulder and I set it down, knowing that I was leaving it behind forever. After letting go of the sack, I stretched my arms up to the sky, and a long chain of steel links fell away from my wrists. I lifted up my leg to take the next step on my journey, across the railroad tracks, and chains fell away from my ankles. I felt I could leap up and rise into the sky. When I woke from that dream, I knew I had found my answer: make peace with grief.

While at a party on Saturday night, I danced to the rhythm of drums and cowbells, rattles and other percussion instruments. I surrendered myself to the sounds, closed my eyes, emptied my mind and moved my body. As I swayed and rocked, these words came to me: you can grieve and be whole.

I grieve my losses over all the years of my life. Grief is a part of life, a part of me. I have taken off my chains. I am open. I am ready to fly.

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

They Just Keep Getting Weirder

 

My dreams, that is. The one I had last night was downright freaky. I dreamed I was in a multiple car accident. I was the only woman involved. The other three or four drivers wore flannel shirts and beat up blue jeans and glowered at me. One of the men lifted up his workboot-shod feet while still in his car and chainsaws — yes, you read that right — burst through his workboots. His feet turned into chainsaws. I knew he wanted to slice me up into bloody bits, so I jumped out of my car and took off running.

As I pounded down the pavement, I noticed that my own feet were bare. Worse yet, the sidewalk was covered with a disgusting mishmash of things — squashed bugs the size of dogs, body parts, and unidentifiable globs of something gross and squishy. I tried to avoid stepping in the gunk as I ran, which was (of course) impossible.

I remember being certain that the men were chasing me, and having the thought that having chainsaws for feet would make it difficult to run. Then I woke up.

Okay, all I can make out of this is that I clearly feel threatened by someone or by a situation involving a man or men. Probably the fear I feel has something to do with controlling my life – being in the driver’s seat, to go with the symbolism of my dream. Taking it a bit further, the message is clear that running away will do no good, because there are plenty of icky and sticky situations out there and I won’t be able to avoid them.

So, what do you think? I am truly interested in your opinion, because I have found that sometimes there is something obvious I miss in my own dreams.

Thanks for reading.

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

A Dream Within a Dream

That’s literally what I had last night. I dreamed that I was lying in bed with another woman. We were both fully clothed and she felt more like a sister than a lover, although she didn’t look like either of my real life sisters. We fell asleep, and began to dream.

In the dream I dreamed I was lucid. In other words, I dreamed that I knew that I was dreaming. I knew that I was lying in bed with this other woman, and that we were both asleep. I was not lucid in the real sense, however, because I did not know that my other self, the one who participates in the waking world, was lying in my bed alone and dreaming.

Now that you’re at least as confused as I was when I woke up this morning, let me tell you what the dream within the dream was about. First of all, the other woman followed me into the dream, which ought to have been my first clue that something was strange. I remarked on how amazing it was that we should both have the same dream at the same time, and be aware of each other during it.

Together we walked through a city that kept metamorphosing as we traversed its streets. One moment we were passing a narrow alleyway that looked like one of the closes along Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, and the next moment we turned a corner and the teetering skyscrapers of Manhattan surrounded us.

As we walked, we found ourselves inside a room with white walls, empty except for a single grammar school desk. I touched the desk, running my hands over the wooden surface. As I felt the smoothness of the wood, I talked with my companion about how my lucidity, how I knew I was dreaming.

As I talked a man wearing painter’s overalls and carrying a bucket of paint walked into the room. That is the last thing I remember, because at that point the alarm began to ring. I would love to know where the dream was going from there! Oh, well.

Thanks for reading, and remember that comments are always welcome. I am especially interested in any insights or interpretations or just ramblings on what you would make of such a dream.

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

A Rose in Any Other Dream. . .

 

. . .would probably be just as strange. And it was actually four roses in my dream, gathered together in a tall, cobalt blue vase. I was receiving them as a gift, and someone — a man, I think — was telling me what each rose represented.

“Red is for passion,” he said. “And pink is for innocence. Yellow is for friendship. Orange is for compassion.”

I nodded my head, gazing at the flowers. The entire time he stood there, I never looked at him — i just kept my eyes fixed on those large, gorgeous blooms.

“When you understand what each rose represents — really understand it — magic happens.”

As he said “magic happens,” I felt a change inside my body, a deep tectonic shift. I lay face down on the floor and whispered, “Yes. I understand.”

I’m very glad that my dream self understood what was happening. Now perhaps my waking self can learn from her. I believe there is much more to this dream than what appears on the surface.

I welcome any thoughts or interpretations you might have. Thank you for reading.

 ~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

So It’s 2007. Now What?

 

I waited for midnight on December 31, 2006. As it does every year on that day, midnight arrived. People shouted “Happy New Year,” and I waited, as I do every year, to feel different.

I am still waiting, even as I sit at my desk and type these words. I’m waiting for all the changes of 2006 to distill themselves, to coalesce into something better, something bigger, something more than the sum of all the parts.

Last year I traveled to Europe for the first time in my life. I lost 60 pounds. I saw my health improve dramatically. I opened to the possibility that I am beautiful. I rediscovered the joy of dancing. I made new friends, and deepened my connections with old friends.

Last year I lost friends to death. I grieved for fading parts of myself. I learned to say “no.” I gave up old, stale hopes. I cleaned out my closet and gave away or threw away many things. I looked squarely at my shadow and embraced it.

My life has changed, is changing, will continue to change. Last year was an amazing year for me. This year has the potential to be dazzling as well, perhaps moreso than last. That terrifies me. It also exhilirates and enlivens me, fills me with joy. In 2007 I will grieve. In 2007 I will laugh. In 2007 I will sing. In 2007 I will surrender to the wonder of myself.

Stay tuned. I have the feeling that it’s going to be an amazing year!

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~