St. Clair Shores: "Melissa"

asmine scents the breeze caressing me as I write in the quiet before dawn. After quite a long spell the dreams returned last night and I am very happy; things often sort themselves out better than I can imagine when I remember and listen to the dreams, to the dreaming.

This dream was another set at night. The moon shone in a sky of deep crystalline blue, its reflection glittering on the body of water at my feet and the moist sand along the shore. I looked to my right and to my left for some sort of marker to help me identify my surroundings. In the distance off to my right I saw a building - a cabin? a lodge? - with a sign, so I walked toward that.

The sign simply read 'St. Clair Shores.' Some sort of device had been painted in the middle, but the paint had worn off so the image was unrecognizable. While I stood there wondering what 'St. Clair Shores' could mean I noticed clumps of trash strewn on the sand and afloat on the water. I looked around for a stick or a pole, something to scoop the junk out of the water and up off of the beach, intending to place the trash in some waste bins I could see along the side of the building.

All I could find was my black Waterman fountain pen! While I stood with the pen in my hand, reflecting on the irony of finding a Waterman fountain pen on a beach I heard the call of my beloved Crow and looked up to see him land on the 'St. Clair Shores' sign.

He danced a bit atop the sign, bobbing and prancing, bowing his head to me. He soon began to sing, as he had so long ago in that first dream, "Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble." So I set to work moving along the shore, clearing debris, following my Crow as he hopped and flew away down the shoreline.

Soon I saw where he'd been leading me all along and I laughed to see the little girl from previous dreams. She stood in the shallows, watching an island through a spyglass. At our approach she turned and spoke excitedly, "There are things like bubbles beside the island, but I don't think they're bubbles. I think they're eyes!"

I could imagine a number of creatures whose eyes might be seen just above the water, none of which I felt ready to meet. As I looked out across the water, however, I could see the figures of the Faery Queen and her King, who appeared to be helping little people out of the water and into the cup-like buds of magnolias, bobbing on the water.

The royal couple made signs of blessing over each petite sailor before draping sparkling medallions around the neck of each and letting the tiny floral boats slip into the current. Soon a miniature flotilla was sailing toward our shore.

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!

Tea Party: "Melissa"

h, I wish I knew how I could have lived so long in ignorance of my dreams! Every one has been glorious and leaves me feeling transported for DAYS afterward and I think nothing could possibly top it, but then that is exactly what happens! It is as if the ... the ... the Dreaming Universe is determined to outdo itself.

Last night I was so happy to receive my Crow in my dream. He stood before me and danced a bit and invited me to fly with him, as he always does, but I detected something ... something ... in his manner which piqued my curiosity. "We must fly. We must fly to the western paradise where you shall have tea." We flew and I savored his strength and his beauty. I always forget everything else when he is near and last night was no exception. Our flight path was steep. We soared up above the clouds and I think we flew to a height higher even than his rose-strewn nest!

We flew toward a mountain. The sunlight above the clouds bathed the mountainside in iridescence and I looked at my hands and arms to see if they, too, had such a glow. My Crow cawed, adjusted his wings, and landed on a ledge near a stunning and ancient magnolia tree in bloom. From somewhere beyond the magnolia I heard calls of "kek-kek-kek" and "kalooo kaleeooo" as if in answer to my Crow, who shook out his plumage, hopped onto my shoulder and preened a bit more as I walked in the direction of the bird calls.

Nothing my Crow could have done would have prepared me for the breathtaking sight of the two glorious women who stepped forward to greet me as I neared a table set for tea. They ... They were so rare in appearance that I felt I must have lost blood or oxygen or something because I wasn't certain my eyes were working properly. Both women had dark hair; one of them appeared distinctly Asian in her features and dress. A whooping crane stood next to her, watching me solemnly.

The second woman - oh, dear, how do I describe her? I could not believe my eyes and I feared she could hear my mind screaming, "Manners, Melissa! Manners!" because I could neither move nor speak. All I wanted to do was watch her. She was the Faery Queen - the Faery Queen on the card my Crow gave me! She was like the sunshine bathing the mountain and like champagne and ... my brain is locking up again as I write this!

Both women were wonderfully gracious, especially in the face of my thunderstruck appearance. They bid me welcome - their voices were just as beautiful as all else about them - and directed my attention to the table set for tea. I noticed two things then: the table was set with six place settings, and the Faery Queen stopped to feed a falcon on a perch. "Xi Wang Mu," the Fairy Queen nodded toward the other woman, "insists I spoil him, but he is a love and we work so well together. A morsel now and then is a treat from my heart."

"Our hostesses have arrived," Xi Wang Mu spoke as the sound of wings reached us and foliage rustled around us. Three women borne on the backs of three swans landed and walked to us, their faces wreathed in welcoming smiles. I think they were dressed as Amazons. Their golden hair shimmered in the sunlight and their creamy skin glowed.

How can I ever describe the experience of a tea party with goddesses? I hosted tea parties as a little girl with my tea set spread on a tree stump before my stuffed bears and ponies. This was beyond anything I could ever have imagined. Is this somehow connected to the Chardonnay I bought? Is it possible? The label did say, "Discover the goddess", but nothing prepared me for this!

The Valkyries brought mead - with gratitude expressed to the Faery Queen for her industrious bees - and meats and insisted upon serving me - me! Xi Wang Mu, whom the Valkyries addressed as "Queen Mother," brought peaches, like miniatures suns, from her own beloved garden. To my surprise the Faery Queen brought cakes made with Guinness and cakes made with oats, and honey. She winked and smiled sweetly before she told me she knew Guinness to be a particular favorite of mine.

The scent of the magnolias and the buzzing of bees were a perfect complement to the company and the light. We each plucked a bloom from the tree and tucked it between our breasts. They read poetry, some of it about wings. I knew one of the poems, T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." I remember untying my tongue enough to ask them, seated around me, "Do I dare to eat a peach?"

Oh, how shall I presume to speak my dream of tea with the goddesses? "I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was". Here I am, now, with human voices outside on the street below, "And the afternoon ... sleeps so peacefully!" I cling to this dream even when "after tea and cakes and ices" the Crow bade me climb on his back and I looked up to see those goddesses, their arms "braceleted and white and bare," blowing kisses.

Wings: "Melissa"

Last night I was translated. I was transported into the strongest most dizzying dream yet and the first thing I thought when I woke to hear a crow call at my bedroom window was "Maybe this is how Bottom the Weaver felt after his midsummer night's dream?"

Seriously. As my dream began I found myself inside that warehouse again. There was a searing pain in my shoulders, I could not feel my hands, and I was completely baffled why I felt that way because I was upright. I seemed to be standing so the pain made no sense. (Then again dreams are hardly ever logical on the face of it.) When I tried to move, to shift, I realized that my wrists were bound behind me, against the warehouse wall. I could not understand what held me to the wall as I felt no shackles, no chains, no straps. No restraints.

A hideous evil cackling exploded and echoed throughout the warehouse. When I recoiled from the sound pain ripped again between my shoulders and I heard a thumping or a scraping noise behind me. I willed my hands to work and dug frantically at the wall to grab whatever was behind me. All I could feel were feathers. I took a breath against the pain and twisted to my right, to my left. I saw what held me to the wall. I saw, but I couldn't quite believe it.

Wings. I had wings. They were my restraints. Barely had I realized this when the cackling reached a fever pitch. I picked out two voices, shouting near a greenish glow several yards away, and I tried to identify what I was seeing.

I saw wings silhouetted against the glow. The glow was from a screen of some sort. A rope or a tail twitched on the floor beneath the screen. It sounds crazy but the only way to describe it is to say that the pair of demon-cats had turned "the bitter glass" on its side and "programmed" the labyrinth design from the wall to be the field for a video game they found wildly entertaining.

As near as I could see, their sport was to taunt and torture and obstruct the progress of some character as it made its way to the center of the labyrinth. When my mind shut out the various taunts I began to hear the game character's voice - MY voice! Here I was hanging pinned to the wall, seemingly helpless to stop their taunts, a life-size version of their game.

You know, I am not quite sure how I did it or when I decided to do it, but I did it. With a heave and a howl I ripped myself away from those wings. I felt more outrage than pain - so much more outrage - and I just kept whispering with every painful gulp of air, "People aren't made to be broken. People aren't made to be broken."

The demon-cats were silent at first, stunned, but when I picked a scrap of paper from the floor and plucked a feather from the abandoned wings they stood and began to close in on me. I dipped that feather in my blood and scratched the words I'd been whispering onto that paper. Those demon-cats swiped at me, but I was faster. They howled and hissed and scratched when I dropped my little message onto the mirror and said, "Game over."

Their howls were canceled by the breathtaking sound of rushing wings as the crow landed between us and stood to face them. Somehow I knew I was to climb onto the crow's back. I did and he lifted us out of there into the moonlit sky. We flew forever it seemed. I didn't care at all. The flight was magnificent; the crow's power was formidable. I cannot describe how it felt, after the scene in the warehouse, to be flown through the moonlight. Even as we spiraled up and up and up around the tallest tree in the world toward the crow's nest I felt only wonder. (Imagine that. At my age I felt wonder!)

He watched over me. He tended me once I'd climbed from his back to stand in the nest. I was astonished to see the nest lined with white roses -- white roses from the warehouse! I cannot even think how many times he must have flown back and forth with the roses he needed to do this. Why line his nest so? Why bring me to his nest? Even with those sorry wings I abandoned I was no bird! Who is this crow to me?

The top of the tallest tree in the world swayed in the wind and the crow's nest became my cradle. From under the shelter of his wings I watched the stars swirl above us, higher still. I heard his heart. I fell asleep. He moved his wings and combed his beak through my hair to wake me. He had brought me back to the warehouse. The demon-cats were gone and I smelled the roses at the window. The crow hopped away then back again with a playing card in his beak. He flew to perch on my shoulder. I took the card and he gurgled in my ear before he flew off out the door.

The card doesn't look like any I've ever seen but I love it. My crow - I've begun to consider him mine! - is perched near a woman who is maybe the Faery Queen -- Yes! She is the Faery Queen who fell in love with Bottom! She took him to her bower; the crow took me to his! It is a twisted up version of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"! But why? Is my crow meant to be the King of the Faeries? The way he cared for me I don't think he's playing a prank, even though in Native American lore crows are pranksters. I will have to study this.

Maybe if I run through the pieces of the puzzle I have so far I'll find a clue of some sort. I see "the bitter glass the demons hold" maintains the reference to Yeats' "The Two Trees." I think the crow refers to "Macbeth." Maybe the symbolism of the crow's nest in the world's tallest tree is meant to connect to the symbolism of the two trees of Yeats' poem and that of the trees at the end of "Macbeth"? But why the dream play? Why? How does that play connect to any of this? I've seen the play and the movie, I even have a-- Yes! I have a copy of it to check! It was my grandpa's. My dad gave it to me. It's about a hundred years old this copy, maybe older.

Now this is interesting. This is very interesting. It doesn't explain anything - yet - but it is interesting. In the cast of characters of Shakespeare's dream play there is a Duke Theseus. Since the image of myself as a sort of Medusa appeared in the last dream I've been brushing up on Greek mythology. If I remember correctly Theseus, with the help of Ariadne, made his way into the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur. The labyrinth again. The 'fingerprint of a god.' The key to the warehouse. Labyrinth .... warehouse... they must connect somehow.

Wait. I just remembered something else associated with the labyrinth. Daedalus designed the labyrinth and showed Ariadne how Theseus could escape. After that escape the King (Minos) imprisoned Daedalus and his son Icarus in the labyrinth. The only way for them to escape was to make wings for themselves and fly away. Warehouse ... labyrinth ... wings?How am I to understand all of this? What does it have to do with me?

I'm glad I like puzzles. Need to work on my drawing though.