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.

Musings.6: Barbara

Ahh. I welcome this sweet respite in blogland, a pleasant distraction from the chaos of setting up a new household, the approaching holiday, and the sudden, unsettling need for my husband to undergo surgery for a detached retina. Yeah. See what I mean?

'Melissa' and her dreams are ever in my thoughts and I've finally cleared a space in time so I could return to writing about this character and my response to her dream stories as they have evolved.

As I wrote months ago when I launched this blog I discover things about the character 'Melissa' or the creative process as I write these posts. The process begins with a rough sketch of events in my mind. The sketch fleshes out and takes on life as I write. Something about every post surprises me, and this last time it was the surprise of seeing the creative process merge dreams, art, and life.

I was startled when the reference to the Five Rivers Winery surfaced in the last post because, well, that was my experience coming through in 'Melissa's' life. While my dream was not as colorful and detailed as 'Melissa's' I, too, dreamed of standing in a river holding a single oar. Who can forget a dream like that, so enigmatic, so intriguing? Months or perhaps even a year or more after the dream I bought a bottle of the winery's merlot to share with a friend (also named Barb) because I liked the bit on the label encouraging me to "Discover the goddess" at their web site.

My jaw dropped when I saw a graphic depicting a woman standing in a river holding a single oar. I had no idea such a story existed, but there she was and I had dreamed of her. It is thrilling to see something come through from the ephemeral, mental realm into the physical although we are trained from childhood that if there is no hard evidence, nothing in hand, what's in our head and in our heart is fleeting, insubstantial.

Some people like 'Melissa', like myself, like Robert Moss practice attending to dreams. We draw pictures, write poems, take photos, write books. We dream, and we practice and very often we experience physical manifestations of our dreams.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche wrote in September, 2005 (www.shambhalasun.com) that 'Practice means "bringing it into experience."' We have been taught that to practice means 'do it over and over and over again until you get it right.' Now we see another meaning. What this practice of acknowledging, noting and contemplating her dreams has done for 'Melissa' is to bring something she has encountered in her mind through to manifest in her day to day life.

For her, and for me, that bottle of chardonnay is 'no more yielding than a dream.' Will Shakespeare composed that line very cleverly. When Puck speaks those lines at the close of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" we nod and agree that the whole thing seemed insubstantial. It has no basis in reality for us.

'Melissa' is showing us that we need to think again. Crops yield harvests. Investments (usually) yield returns, but "no more yielding than a dream." Nothing eclipses the yield of a dream put into practice.

So far 'Melissa' has a bottle of wine, her drawings, and her journal. What more will her dreams yield?

Chanteuse: "Melissa"

ou know, I think I am rather surprised at myself. I had another warehouse dream last night and it only adds to the puzzle of all these dreams for me, but I am not getting crazy about this.

Control has been an issue for me in the past so it is really hard to believe sometimes that I am just letting these dreams be what they are. They intrigue me, but they also comfort me and so I am willing to let them show up when they will and show me what they will.

In last night's dream I was back in the warehouse. This time the little girl I'd seen standing on the back of the blue carousel horse as it galloped down the street in another dream was there, as was the carousel horse, and the King of the Faery from the last playing card my Crow gave me. My Crow was there, too, perched on the arm of His Majesty's throne.

This King is extraordinary and I wonder if there has been a human monarch who is his equivalent? Power and intellect radiate from him and I saw as I watched him watch the little girl play with jack-in-the-boxes that he could see more in an instant, more quickly and more clearly, than anyone I have ever met, even my father.

I guess the word I would use to describe this monarch is 'formidable'. When I hold that thought in my mind and consider how tenderly he watched and, later, held the little girl, I feel honored such a person wishes to show up in my dreams. Maybe that is why I feel comforted and easy about these dreams?

Anyway, as I mentioned, he sat watching and smiling as the little girl played with a row of jack-in-the-boxes arranged on the floor before his throne. She managed to play a new tune with them by playing them in some sequence only she knew, sorta like a hip-hop dj these days. When she finished her song she stuffed the jacks back in their boxes, stood up, held her hands in the yogic prayer position and bowed to him, murmuring 'Namaste'.

To my surprise the monarch, with a twinkle in his eye and a small smile, returned the salute before he patted his lap and motioned for her to sit with him. "Your Aunt Chantal has been waiting to sing for us. What should we ask her to sing, ma petite enfant - hmm? Quel chanson?"

"'The Rose', Granpere, s'il vous plait. I love when Aunt Chantal sings that one."

Suddenly my Crow flew the short distance from the royal throne to me with a slip of paper the king had given him. As he has done before my Crow perched on my shoulder, gurgled in my ear and combed his beak through my hair - all as I read the message: "In the wasteland it is the soul afraid of trying that never learns to leap."

Before I could process those words a woman, stunningly beautiful, stepped from the shadows holding a bouquet of white roses. Her beauty and her voice were breathtaking. It was a while before I could put two thoughts together, or even remember my name, but once I could I realized she looked just like the Faery Queen - minus the wings. I had to draw that card over again because she deserves a better job than the one I did back in the beginning!

When I realized who this chanteuse, 'Aunt Chantal', resembled I thought to look at the King of the Faery. I almost cry now as I remember that everything about that formidable monarch evinced love, a world of love. I knew then that his queen was his world.

I still cannot find the words to describe my shock at the king's next gesture. When 'The Rose' was finished he descended the dais, took a rose from the bouquet, and crossed the floor to present it to me! I was stunned. I fumbled rather clumsily to salute him as the little girl had. He smiled, returned the salute, and held up his left hand for my Crow to return to that perch.

In a daze I noted that the king left a trail of red footsteps marking his path as he returned to his throne.

Now, in the light of day I sit in the embrace of that dream wondering what message its depths hold for me. I went out today expressly to buy some white roses. Something nudged me while I was out to see if I could find a bottle of wine I might want to taste. Nothing could have prepared me for the shock of seeing one of my dreams on the label of a chardonnay! The chardonnay from Five Rivers Winery sports a graphic of a woman standing in a river - I presume it's a river! - holding an oar over her head. The label says, in part, "Discover the goddess at www.fiveriverswinery.com

Musings.5: Barbara

When I look at Melissa's last dream I see that some most interesting things have emerged. First, it is notable that a man appeared in the dream, whereas the only other human figure to appear among the flora and fauna in her previous dreams was a little girl.

What I notice, however, is that very soon after Melissa ripped herself away from those formulations pinning her to the wall of the warehouse, and very soon after her Crow has given her solace, these figures appear.

Nor are they static figures. The little girl, singing, rode the carousel horse down the street. Melissa watched the man sweep up the broken "pieces of yesterday's life," her yesterdays. We do not yet have any clues about these people. Who are they? Why do they show up after she took to heart the Crow's message "People aren't made to be broken" and severed herself from the wings that weren't wings at all?
why
Who is the man whose back is bloodied and why does he seem so bereft? What is he signaling to Melissa and to us with his wrenching gesture, a heart traced on the wall between those abandoned wings, a heart drawn with her blood as the medium?

It is especially interesting to realize that Melissa's dream included some lyrics, what the Australian aborigines call 'songlines.' These aborigines believe that the 'world' was created in the 'Dreamtime' when their ancestors, the dreamers, sang it into existence. Their ancestors walked among the chaos and, singing, gave the world form. Later generations of aborigines know that in the world they walk the songlines of the Ancestors' dreaming.

Now Melissa is dreaming songlines. She has chosen to sever herself from alife of brokenness and the song begins - the opening lines, opening cords of a new life still unformed. It is tempting to think we have no clues about what is in store for Melissa, but we do. We have the other dreams. We have the song.

"All Along the Watchtower" was recorded and released by Bob Dylan in 1967 and within a year Jimi Hendrix had recorded his singular cover of it. Like Melissa, until her dream I had always considered the "watchtower" of the title to be a fortification. Now it seems to take on a double meaning. I don't have the sense that Melissa is meant to abandon the notion of watchtower as fortification in favor of watchtower as clock-tower. These two perceptions are likely to merge I think, but how?

How will the concept of Time figure into this new, embryonic life forming for Melissa?

Footsteps Dressed in Red: "Melissa"

y Crow visited me in my dreams again last night. This time we had music during our flight, "All Along the Watchtower." He flew me to the top of a clock tower - oh wow! Wow! Clock-tower, watchtower, clock, watch - when I heard the song in the dream I looked for a medieval sort of watchtower for knights and arrows and boiling oil and such, but it wasn't that at all. It was a tower that tells time! Cool. Interesting.

So, my Crow and I perched on a ledge just beneath the face of the clock where we could look down on the surrounding neighborhood. I saw what seemed to be footprints on the street perpendicular to the watchtower. This was strange because they looked wet and for as far as I could see they remained wet.

The Crow hopped onto my shoulder, gurgled at my ear, and combed his beak through my hair. I turned towards him, then back again and saw the petite black cat (le petit chat noir) following that trail of footsteps, staying in the shadows of the buildings. I think I said something like, 'Okay, I guess I'm following the footsteps, too,' because the next thing I knew I was on the street studying the footprints, horrified to discover they were footsteps of blood!

I followed. The sun was blazing atop one of the buildings, bleaching out the sky. I couldn't imagine how it must feel to be bleeding so and walking those streets. To my surprise - to my great surprise - the trail led to the door of the warehouse in all my other dreams! Some voice of caution whispered in my mind so I climbed up that spiral ladder covered in white roses to survey the scene inside that building.

It sounds somewhat gothic to say my heart was pounding furiously but that was definitely my response when I saw a man inside sweeping the floor even as he left more bloody footprints. He was very tall, likely over six-foot-three, lean but muscular, with hair black as my Crow's plumage. I couldn't see his face, but he seemed ... he seemed bereft. Before I could form a thought or question about the reason such a man would feel bereft as he swept the floor of a warehouse he moved around something - the blue carousel horse! - and I saw his back. I choked on a scream. His white shirt was soaked with blood!

Beyond the realization that his must have been the blood that stained his footprints I could not form a single coherent thought about this sight. Now, to look back on it, I remember feeling that the world seemed to have stopped - my heart, my breath, everything stopped. The man, however, did not stop. He swept some more then leaned the broom against the wall and raised his head.

My god - he looked straight up at those wings, the wings I'd left pinned to the wall! He stood there so long before he bent down and took a feather from the pile of sweepings. I thought for a moment he meant to write something with the feather, but he used his finger. He touched the part of a wing that had been attached to me and traced a partial heart on the wall between those two wings.

I didn't know what to do or think, so I simply sat there on the roof of the warehouse. In the end, just before I woke, my Crow flew into the warehouse and returned to me with a third playing card. This one looks like it is meant to be the King of the Faery, Oberon.

How could Oberon possibly connect to that scene in the warehouse, not to mention my Crow and a watchtower? Why am I being given these cards? It cannot be that they are simply beautiful. They are beautiful, but, well, dreams are hardly simple!

Why is this man bleeding? Has he ripped himself from some wings and left them on a wall somewhere? Who is he? Why is he sweeping - Why is he sweeping up the debris of my yesterdays? Why did he trace a heart between those abandoned wings?

And now I realize something else - this man had a key to the warehouse!

Musings.4: Barbara

Melissa, as I wrote some weeks ago, is a character who popped up in the midst of a plot I was sketching several years ago. While I did not question why she had appeared, I did wonder how she came to be there. She just appeared out of nowhere, from another brief story and my questions about her led to this blog.

Most of this material about Melissa is a revelation to me and I find it very interesting indeed that this character is beginning to ask, basically, "Who am I?" She has been trusting and following her Crow although she does not know what he symbolizes and she is beginning to realize he may see something about her she would never have guessed.

If the Crow is suggesting that she consider herself one of a trio of "sisters," wise women, women who possess 'big medicine,' I think she is right to wonder how he came to this conclusion. I wonder about it as much as she does! Then, too, Melissa may be wondering why the Crow is calling her to see herself this way. Her dreams have been rather insistent which could indicate some persistent issues. If that is the case, why does the Crow care?

Melissa is compelled to trust and follow the Crow so she may not hesitate much, if at all, in seeing herself as the Crow sees her. She was pinned to the wall, wriggling under the eyes that fixed her with formulated phrases (see Musings.3:Barbara) for a very long time, maybe all her life. The Crow flies into her dreams and brings her beauty, brings her truth.

She may also be asking herself "Who am I that this Crow should care to notice me, not to mention seek to bring beauty into my life?"

I Blame You: "Melissa"

ince I began, well, studying these dreams I've wanted the drawings to be a part of it all, but I have been happy with only a few. All the others were just reminders that I never learned to draw. I wasn't taught and I had no interest in even trying - until now! Browsing through books, trying to find a suitable model for my crow, I remembered The Book of Kells. I mean, if 'Macbeth' is figuring in this somehow why not let Celtic art inspire my drawings? It just feels right. So, I will stick to black and white for the sake of convenience even if this means it is not technically an illuminated manuscript. I like it. It feels right.

So, anyway ...

Last night's dream was rather short all in all. I was at the warehouse once again, outside, looking at the roses when I heard a child singing very happily - not something I expected to hear around this place! When I walked around the building and looked up the street I saw that wonderful blue carousel horse riding the wind while a little girl stood on its back perfectly at ease! The sun shone behind her, dancing off her wheat-colored hair, caressing those waves.

The child wore a top and skirt in ultramarine blue (my favorite) with white nautical stripes. Her shoes were little red sneakers. Her arms were raised at her sides to shoulder level and I saw the crow, my crow, perched on her hand, silhouetted against the sun. (Who is this crow that a Faery Queen and a singing child can hold him?)

The crow saw me and flew to me. Something in his beak caught the sunlight and a beam of light danced toward me as he flew. Very sweetly he perched on my shoulder and dropped the object into my upraised hand. I gasped, "It is beautiful," and he gurgled in my ear and did a little two-step, ruffling my hair.

I have heard that crows like 'bright, shiny objects,' but this was a unique piece of work - a horse cut out of a discarded pie plate! Seriously, I think this unknown little girl must have found an aluminum pie plate in the trash somewhere and decided to cut a horse out of it. How or why she did it I would love to know. She must be fascinating. This tells me something about my crow and I find him more and more endearing.

When I thanked him for the gift I told him, too, "I blame you for all the beauty in my life. First the card, now this -" He bobbed so joyfully I could almost think him a bird of paradise.

I don't seem any closer to understanding all these elements, however certain I am that they mean something. The beautiful carousel horse is back and brings me a new element - two new elements: the girl and the metal horse.

My crow is always present in these dreams and somehow I trust him and I trust where he leads me in this labyrinth of symbols. I have been reading 'Macbeth' hoping to figure out how it relates to all of this. "Double, double, toil and trouble" must be a part of it since he urged me to stir up the river, but I'm not sure why. Does he consider me a 'witch,' one of the three Weird Sisters? I am only one woman if that is the case. Who are the others?

I don't think of the witches in 'Macbeth' as witches, either - not cackling, curse-throwing hags. I think maybe they are just women who were especially attuned to Nature, and human nature, wise in those ways. Maybe they were noted for their wisdom or their 'big medicine' in the manner of Native American seers or shamans?

If my crow really considers me to be a woman like that, who are the others? What gave him the idea I belong with them?