"Is this a dagger ...?": "Melissa"

awn is hours away, but until then I must sit here in this small circle of light and write the dream that shakes me so.

The landscape was the barren parking lot surrounding the warehouse. Moonlight sparkled so brightly and beautifully on the snow. I saw my Crow perched atop one of the posts for the tall chain link fence, just above the manufacturer's metal plaque: "W & H Fencing". I don't know why I would have noticed that, but I did. My Crow seemed distant, as if he knew I was there but was more focused on something else. Indeed, he flew off without giving me much more than a glance and that's when I knew something was wrong.

He flew toward the door of the warehouse, all hidden in shadow, but landed in the moonlit snow near three snowdrifts. He stood motionless for a long moment. When he suddenly hopped up onto the nearest drift I was surprised. With singular concentration he scratched away at the snow in an area along the top of the snowdrift until he was able to grasp something in his beak. He hopped backwards and tugged with his magnificent strength and finally lifted off with some sort of pendant.

"My god, they are bodies!" I screamed inside even as he repeated his actions on the remaining forms. I stepped to run and help him, but I stopped short as I saw a figure with a lantern approach from around the corner of the warehouse.

She was magnificent. Her gown and cloak caught and held the night and the moonlight and seemed to flow around her like mist. Hair black as my Crow's plumage escaped from under her hood in waves. I watched the lantern light dance over her earring, a confection of silver and crystal that reminded me of a medieval stained glass window. She was darkness and power, but nothing, nothing about her was grave. She was, I think, only brave. She walked right up to this scene of death - surely violence had been involved - carrying only light. As I write this I think of some lines from "Romeo and Juliet": 'O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!/It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night/as a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear ...' (Act I, Sc 1, 51-53)

When my Crow finished confiscating the medallions the Lady took candles from a purse at her waist and lit them with the flame in her lantern before setting a pair at the head of each body. The six candles aglow She turned and held her lantern aloft. "Joseph," She called, "You may now escort Your little ones home." Silently, backlit by moonlight, Uncle Joe approached. He was dressed as he had been for his wedding. We greeted one another and the Dark Lady, for so I have come to think of her in these hours, with hands pressed palm to palm and the salutation, "Namaste".

As Uncle Joe approached the bodies I saw misty forms rise from them. They seemed puzzled. Uncle Joe touched each one lightly on a shoulder and it was then I saw that they had coats-of-arms strapped to their arms like the leprechauns in the labyrinth! He gently removed these from each figure and, somehow, hung them on the wall of the warehouse. "Our bruised arms hung up for monuments," He explained to me as He escorted them past. "You will see, my friend, that you and She are the only hope for little ones such as these."

I thought to move the candles nearer to the coats-of-arms, hoping to create a shrine of sorts. When I bent over the forms I saw that each one had worn several heavy medallions around their necks, not just that which the Crow had taken. My Crow and the Dark Lady were silent as I carried each pair of candles to the wall, separately. As I placed the last set there in the snow I saw my Crow reflected in the shield before me, three crosses dangling from his beak.

He lifted off and I turned to watch him fly. The Dark Lady walked into the night the way She had come. Before She turned the corner her cloak brushed an object glinting in the snow. Curious, I went to retrieve it. When I pulled it from the snow, a handgun with a most curious brand name, I could only think to say, "Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?"

Musings.9: Barbara

rabbit appeared in my yard nearly three years ago, a beautiful rabbit and a breathtaking moment when the art I was pursuing showed itself in my everyday life. Before I moved to Georgia I lived in Williamsburg, VA in a neighborhood very close to the National Historic site of Jamestown and the Jamestown Settlement. A number of streets and neighborhoods in the area bore the name of the alliance of Native Americans, Powhatan, prominent in the area when Jamestown was settled. So, although I had moved away, in the months prior to the 400th anniversary of the settlement (2007) I read a copy of Paula Gunn Allen's biography "Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat."

"Pocahontas" was basically a childhood nickname for a girl named Matoaka by her people and Lady Rebecca Rolfe by the English. The nickname, as Gunn Allen writes, "relates to a kind of vivacity, mischievousness, and quick intelligence ... at least as understood by the English." The name may also have related to the rabbit, which native peoples "recognized as a trickster," and pointed to qualities of creativity, shrewdness, and a "wild sense of humor."

One evening in the time frame when I was reading "Pocahontas" my husband called me out into the yard to see a rabbit. All that sprang to mind as I followed him out the door was the sort of brown rabbit our Boxer once loved to chase, so I was puzzled as to why my husband was so eager for me to see this rabbit. Oh, it was a beauty! It sat in the corner of the yard, nibbling something and looking so beautiful that I was afraid for it! Its coat was a silky, shiny black and white which made it stand out there among the trees and bracken. We had seen foxes only a few weeks earlier and I was instantly afraid this gorgeous rabbit with the amazingly floppy black ears would become food for the fox. It would not let me approach, of course, to pick it up and try to find its owner so I was reduced to walking up and down the street, knocking on doors. No one answered. Sigh. (I can say, however, that the rabbit remained safe for I saw it several times later foraging in its owner's flower beds.)

That beautiful rabbit stayed in my mind, always associated with Pocahontas and the trickster, so I went out and found the materials to stitch together a facsimile for myself, which you see here. Later for grins and giggles I gave the rabbit, whose name is Mina, a whimsical top hat. The top hat is the model for Uncle Joe's and the leprechauns' hat in Melissa's last two dreams. Now I see that the hat and the rabbit afford me the context to talk about a culture which centered itself around Dream-Vision.

Matoaka/Pocahontas was born into the Mattaponi/Pamunkey tribe which was part of the Powhatan Alliance who "were the People of the Dream-Vision, which is what the Native word Powhatan means." These people embraced "a tradition immersed in Dream-Vision protocols, lore, practices, and understandings that shaped and directed the course of ... life." Their world view was shaped by "the assumption that this wold we live in is by its nature a Dream-Vision ... the manito are the greater dreamers, the humans the lesser, the manito aki the location of the Dream-Vision as it takes shape and gains sufficient 'thrust' to move into our more physically dense reality."

Such a view was NOT alien to the English of the time who commonly referred to "this realm as 'Faerie' or 'the Underworld,' or sometimes Logres." Roughly 350 years after Jamestown was settled physicist David Bohm described "the consciousness form we usually engage in as 'explicate' and the other one as 'implicate.'" Whether the Powhatan term manito aki, the English terms faerie, Underworld, Logres, or physicist Bohm's terms explicate and implicate are used, the concept "implied in each of these terms is that there is a world within and beyond the one most modern people recognize."

"The state of awareness when one is in or communicating with this realm was long identified as Dream-Vision, or powa, in the Algonquin world. It is allied to the Native Australian concept of Dream Time, a way of organizing reality, including via sensory data, that brings phenomena into awareness that are absent from perceptual fields in another brain state."

"Dream-Visions are maps for navigating one's life path. Composed of messages coded in the language of the manito aki, the spirit world, Dream-Visions came accompanied by a guidebook, the Oral Tradition; and by travel guides: one's guardian spirit, or powagan."
"As the pathway to the spirit world, such dreams cross the boundaries of ordinary time and offer answers to the myriad problems that face the nation, clan, or individual." Adherence to such a world view suggests that people like this, whatever their culture or geography or era "were almost always in an 'altered' state of consciousness," with access to "the manito - the powers, beings, forces, reality, if you will, of a world that is not quite this one, but is bigger, beyond, beneath, before, behind, and above this one." I posit that Dream-Vision people understand that dreams offer clues, guidance concerning implicate forms which are journeying toward the explicit world.

In the time since I read "Pocahontas" I have read other works - "Black Elk Speaks," "The Bone Rattle," "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" - and I usually found myself trying to see the arrival of the Eurpoeans upon this soil from the eyes of the natives. So many sources mention the shock of seeing these huge ships and white, white people, but really, how did they see it? One morning I believe I was given an answer.

I dreamt I was with a native woman. We stood in front of what appeared to be a sea wall. One of those mammoth, multi-storied cruise ships was berthed on the other side of the wall. It was so big that no matter how far back I leaned I could not see the top. Between us and the wall there were bushes, about waist high, decorated with tiny white people. As I wrote out the dream I realized that, apparently, the natives initially associated the fair European skin with the white of the cotton bolls that appeared on plants in the area! I've driven past fields of cotton just across the river from Jamestown Settlement, so the association is even more vivid for me.

I like it. I like knowing the implicate order can pull images out of its hat to connect my vision with that of a people living nearly a half-millennia ago in a place I once inhabited.

[[A bibliography for this post includes:
Gunn Allen, Paula."Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat". New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004.

Peat, F. David. "Blackfoot Physics: A Journey Into the Native American Universe". Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 2002.

Bohm, David. "Wholeness and the Implicate Order". London: Routledge Classics, 1980.

All quoted material is from "Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat" by Paula Gunn Allen.]]

Uncle Joe's Wedding: "Melissa"

ast night - oh wow! I am still buzzing with this dream! - I went to a wedding with my Crow. A wedding! It was bizarre at first because I was at one of my father's carnivals and it was night and I was watching the lights on the roller coaster cars speed and twist above me in the starless night. Then, suddenly, my Crow was on my shoulder whispering, "We've been invited to Uncle Joe's wedding." Before I could find my voice I was following him over to the roller coaster.

Without delay a train of cars appeared with animals seated in all but one of the cars - horses, bears, swans, a few rabbits and a falcon or two - oh, and some lions and the little black cat. (It sat next to me.) There may have been more, but those were all I had the chance to identify before the ride shot off above the carnival. My Crow was obviously having a blast leaning into the turns, but I have no idea how he was able to hang on because the speed at which we traveled was amazing. The lights, too, were fantastic as they seemed to leave streaks, spiral streaks, in the darkness as we flew.

When we landed and I saw the venue for the wedding my breath caught and my heart skipped. There was a simple wooden stage set in the clearing of an ancient forest. One impossibly tall pine, almost as tall as my Crow's tree but not quite, stood center stage at the rear. A white crane sheltered and a stag grazed under the tree. We who had just disembarked from the roller coaster train found places before the stage just as the Groom, 'Uncle Joe', came to stand before the tree and a long line of bridesmaids began to process to the stage. The weird thing, however, is that all the bridesmaids were dressed in white bridal gowns! The gowns were fashioned to fit different historical periods , among them Ancient Greek, medieval, Renaissance. They could have been costume brides, nothing more, but for the fact that each blew 'Uncle Joe' a kiss and addressed him as 'husband'!

The groom himself was dressed in attire from the nineteenth century I think; very handsome attire for a very handsome gentleman I must say. I was intrigued, however, when I saw that his waistcoat was a wonderful deep forest green. Well, I should say I was intrigued until I saw the Bride. Her gown was fashioned from the same green silk as her groom's waistcoat, but her gown seemed to be a 21st century interpretation of a nineteenth century gown whereas 'Uncle Joe's' suit appeared to be genuine for the period. His boutonniere and her bouquet were of stunning white roses. They were a gorgeous couple and obviously very much in love.

It is funny when I consider it, but I do not remember the wedding ceremony at all! They just seemed so right together that all I wanted to do was celebrate. (I think everyone, even the animals, felt the same way.) There was a great buzz - oh! Bees were there, too, but they did not ride the train, just flew on their own - when four men in Oriental dress came forward to present their gifts to the couple. They carried a banner embroidered with the yin/yang symbol for the couple to hang in their doorway to prevent the entry of malevolence, or 'devils'.

I made myself wake up and write down the names of these gentlemen so I could look them up and find out why they caused such a stir. They turn out to be four immortals: Liu Hai and the 'Three Stars of Happiness' - Shou Lao (longevity), Fu Shen (luck) and Cai Shen (wealth). I also found that the pine tree, the crane and the stag are symbols of immortality. The immortal Liu Hai presented the bridal couple with a string of gold pieces (these were made to look like roses) and he murmured something about a philosopher.

The last person to present a gift was the little girl in the vivid blue dress I have seen in previous dreams. She presented each of them with a peach. As she stood before them I was stunned to see that she bore a striking resemblance to the bride. When she bowed and said, 'Namaste', all of us cheered.

Oh, and then the music began and I could not believe my eyes or ears. Angels were singing. The Faery Queen and her King were singing. The Groom and his Bride were singing. My Crow was singing. All of us danced to"Love Is My Religion" and "Have Your Really Ever Loved a Woman?"

I cannot describe how wonderful it felt to see such love. I simply drank it all in - the people, the animals, the setting, the music, the words - and I was totally content. Nothing prepared me, however, for the bridal couple's exchange with me before they departed. They had been mingling, greeting each and every guest. When they approached me 'Uncle Joe' tipped his top hat (a whimsical affair I have drawn here) to me and bowed. He thanked me for coming and then indicated his Bride and myself with a gesture before saying cryptically, and with a wonderful smile, "You and she will work well together."

The chords of Mendelssohn's Wedding March from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (Op. 61) sounded and they turned to wave to everyone. The Bride threw her bouquet. We guests showered them with rose petals as they boarded the train.

My heart is so full when I think of this dream. I do not know any 'Uncle Joe' nor have I any idea who this Bride may be with whom he has stated I will work well. I cannot imagine anything lovelier than a wedding for such a couple who start off on their life together accompanied by music written for one of the world's best loved plays from the inimitable William Shakespeare!