On dreams and being someone's dream
Making space for the things that inspire dreams, shore up hopes, or fire up or make peace with your Black Moon Lilith when needed is something to encourage both in the young and in the ripening elder who has dreamed and gone too deep asleep while waking.
I'm thinking about these things on a bright spring afternoon, thinking about birth and children. And one of those favorite books beckons me to turn to a page for company.
Bailey, is a young boy torn by the expectations of his father who is dead-set on Bailey taking over the family farm (with apple orchards and sheep) when he is done with high school. His grandmother wants Bailey to go to Harvard. This passage from Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus situates Bailey and his grandmother having one of those turning moments in a person's life.
"I do not particularly care whether or not you attend Harvard," his grandmother says one afternoon, though Bailey has not mentioned it...He adds another spoon of sugar to his tea and waits for her to elaborate.That last paragraph is encircled with pencil in my much-read paperback. I love it that much! I am one of those readers who don't see dog-ears or pencil marks as bad but rather see these as a bond, a tattoo that I return to because the ink stains are a pattern I'd wear on my skin if I could. My real-life skin is thinning and as I age the tears, wrinkles and indentations are their own tattoos. The penciled squiggly circle around "Follow your dreams, Bailey" is a tattoo I encourage. My books wear my dreams in the marks I leave.
"I believe it would offer you more opportunity," she continues. "And that is something that I would like you to have, even if your parents are not enthused about the idea. Do you know why I gave my daughter permission to marry your father?" ...
"Because she would have run off with him regardless," she says. "That was what she wished. It would not have been my choice for her, but a child should not have their choices dictated for them. I listened to you read books aloud to my cats. When you were five years old you turned a laundry tub into a pirate ship and launched an attack against the hydrangeas in my garden. Do not try to convince me that you would choose that farm."
"I have a responsibility," Bailey says, repeating the words he has begaun to hate.
His grandmother makes a noise that may be a laugh or a cough or a combination of the two.
"Follow your dreams, Bailey," she says. "Be they Harvard or something else entirely. No matter what that father of yours says, or how loudly he might say it. He forgets that he was someone's dream once, himself." - Erin Morgenstern
In Western astrologically, I've come to learn the 11th House in a person's Natal Chart is the penciled tattoo for hopes, wishes, and dreams. Elizabeth Rose Campbell wrote in Intuitive Astrology:
"When you throw a stone into a body of water, it creates a ripple that goes on and on. Likewise, every action and decision we make has a long-term ripple effect. The eleventh house encourages us to have foresight and to plan for the future; to throw the stone consciously with the goal of a particular ripple effect." Campbell goes on to say, "The Eleventh house can be fun if you cultivate patience. It is not about instant gratification but rather lasting achievement."I'm thinking about these things today on a day filled with both the amazing quality of Nature filling the air with winds that blow strong and swift, pollens coat the tops of our car, the many trucks and rigs now covering the campground where once empty space gave Rabbits, Bunnies and Hares open range.
When I drew the picture of the vardo, the golden wagon had become a dream-come-true. In a time not too much earlier, that same picture on a beach of sand somewhere else held space. Marks in sand are just as real as ink-made runes. Tide comes in. Tide goes out. The energy of that drawing disappears, but. The energy of that image, that dream? The ocean takes it. And the ocean has a very, very long memory.
The ocean is where all life began.
I'm an old woman born into a family who pays attention to dreams. Still I remember sitting at my parents' Kuli'ou'ou kitchen table to have a dream remembered over instant coffee turned caramel in color. Evaporated milk. I needed this outlet to understand, or harmonize my dreams. Maybe my Ma and Daddy knew, instinctively, a thumb-sucker like me needed talkstory time while awake to practice flowing from moe'uhane (soul dreaming) into waking.
Like Bailey's grandmother my Ma did not stop me from following my dream. She would have rather I stayed in that valley, but I have an Eleven House stacked with Venus and Jupiter in Sagittarius. My dreams would be that of different/foreign places, different loves (Jupiter). My son's father hooked me into my first Pacific crossing. There were adventures to be lived, Time would and did pass.
Dreams change with time but that's no reason to give up on dreaming them. And can you prevent dreams without major alterations?
Outside the closed wagon door I hear Pete outside. He's rattling and banging things: glass jars, dishes, a stomp on the step. He's doing the dishes I 'dirtied' up to make the midday meal that's sitting so nicely in my opu. Once upon a time Pete and I had dreams: first of each other, and then of a small wagon home we'd share. We threw a stone into those ponds, drew pictures in the sand. There is no guarantee what those ripples will meet on their way. The edges of ponds aren't really the end. Banks, shores and land love to be part of being someone's dream.
These photos were taken on a winter's day at Double Bluff, on Whidbey Island.
Are you a dreamer? What happened to one of your dreams when it met a shore? How do you encourage 'flow' between dreaming and waking?
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