Pilachi_Sketch [ BLOG ]

“Learn to let yourself be guided into truth.

We will know what we need to know,

when we need to know that…

“The most growth producing concept

we can develop for ourselves and others,

is to allow ourselves to have our own process.

- Melody Beattie, p.290, The Language of Letting Go

I am not really sure of what to make of all of these things that I am learning about / dreaming about… but it is exponentially building faith and confidence in my abilities to trust my instincts.

I have [most recently] dreamt about corn. I have dreamt about learning to harness the wind… to spread my arms and fly above the land like a winged bird… a hawk… and I have dreamt [among other things] about golden western sunshine.

Now, I have found this… in my ongoing quest for sacred knowledge… now I am beginning to delve into absolutely fascinating dreams about a character defined as “Changing Woman” from Native American culture.

It is safe to say that I have no idea who Changing Woman is [but as I learnt yesterday, I know that I dreamt about her eight years ago this month].

When I read the story of Changing Woman, it is a story that I know… almost as though I wrote the story myself. It is incredibly uncanny. I have no idea what to do with this information.

I have no idea what any of this means… but I am learning to really trust the ramifications of my instincts, almost overnight.

“…The Holy People then said that, after their departure from this ceremony, they would never be seen in person again but that their presence would be manifest in the sound of the wind [níyol], the feathers [ats'os] of an eagle ['atsá], in various birds [naat'a'gii], the growth of the corn [naadaa]…” [article]

Why of all times in life am I having dreams about corn… if not to show me that there is much to learn?

By a seemingly strange sequence of events, I have found the way to release obsession: face it.

You see, for me it is hard to tell what is real and what is imagined; because my dreams are interactive. Usually, as is the case with my writing, I am narrator and participant and observer. There is usually an opportunity to question the outcome and to see what happens based on a series of finite choices or events. More often than not, this involves flying high above the landscape and seeing the world from way above the clouds.

The cues are visual… a colour usually; an object; a detail that is distinctive. It is as though in my mental landscape, I am leaving clues for myself to find in my waking existence; almost as though I am trying to help myself to heal. Read more

Obsessed, abscess recesses proliferate my wanton demise. And if perchance the daylight breaks, too quickly shall descend the night; for in this sleep-by-day routine I wake to find black skies, perforated only by sounds of little children’s cries. The occasional yelp from a stray mongrel dog or a twinkling little star, awaken in my dormant dreams of telescopic fantasies.

I tell myself, these worlds are real, and it is for me to reveal, each passing cue… a visual clue as to what is going on with me. Hello. Hey-Low.

She said that to me a year from birth; an uttering big and small, like all things bright and beautiful. The lord God made them all.

So now I wait, for morning to start; and listen for the crows; or will it be the butterflies or chirping birds or prostitutes; only God she knows.

I listen for the light to shine between the lightly drawn curtains. “Hello. Can you see me?” I did not really say that out loud, so you cant really tell for certain, whether there would really be an actual answer from another real live person.

Guess what? I forgot; not that it would really matter; for this my friends is passing time and a pound of idle chatter.

Poetry disguised as prose and and clearly accentuated nasal passages, attached firmly to my nose. Breathe in Breathe out… oh wait… I lost count… damn-it, start again.

Sorry; it is still too early for the rooster to shag the hen.

There she is; the cock doeth crow; the ritual begins again.

Wow. I just read the most revealing sketchbook of my life; no pun intended. In this sketchbook, I was coming to terms with many of the themes that I am currently addressing in this blog—obsession, abusive relationships, being overwhelming in interpersonal relationships, vanity, deprecation, sleeping for days—and a host of other behavioural patterns… oh, and dreaming… and talking about dreaming.

The sketchbook was very short; half the size of my usual sketchbooks, and covers the period of time in which I lost a very significant relationship / friendship; started a very destructive relationship; travelled to the US to make peace with ex girlfriends; grew completely and overwhelmingly obsessed with the egyptian girl who i barely knew… then flew back to Jamaica three weeks later [meeting the young lady who would later be my wife.]

Also in this is the description of the conversation outlined in “a little bit much,” the connection with an older woman through dance, that became a pseudo-relationship… again too obsessive. All while trying to come to terms with who on earth I am.

Now eight years later, how much has really changed in me, my expectations and my behaviour? I would hope that I have changed a lot; but in may ways, I am still doing the same things.

“You cannot plant corn and expect to reap peas.”

- Jamaican Proverb

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“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering

is worse than the suffering itself.

And that no heart has ever suffered

when it goes in search of its dreams

Because every second of that search

is an encounter with God

and with eternity.

- Paolo Coelho, The Alchemist

What are my fears? and do I project them willfully on the unsuspecting passersby. Do I live in a glass case of my own design–a gorilla of insurmountable mass–tormented by the reflections as night begins to fall? Who have I become in this narcissistic mumbling of emotion and long distant yearning for pain and castigation. Having learnt how to let emotion flow freely, how do I release my own emotions from the proximal gated community within which I live?

This impregnable glass showcase, this very merry zoo on a lonely London street: did I build it for my own protection, so my wares would not be pilfered? Did I place myself on an upscale street, so that my value would improve with the stature of my neighbours. Did I build my house from storefront glass to contrast with the neighbours limestone flats… adding to my importance and visual appeal? Was it because I thought, this building faces north, so I should catch as much light as I can?

The stage it appears, is set, and I have invited myself to dinner.

As a material, glass is phenomenal; because one’s experience of its material properties change between day and night. In the daytime, assuming the natural light source on the street is brighter than the light within your own cavernous recess, then–from within–you can see everything on the road with a profound and almost transparent ease. You become a participant observer in your own life: a watcher of storefront television.

At first a few cars may pass, a taxi may be parked, the building across the street will not move, and the people going about their merry way, with Jack Russell Terriers or laden bags of groceries will not matter… because they will not see you; they will only see their adjacency reflected.

You will on the other hand, remain invisible; hidden as it were, by your own pane.

Alas, this is a transient place: wherein autumn quickly falls, on the dawn of your own imaginings, as immutably long nights approach with errant haste. Read more

Remember this dream it will change your life; thought the author with consternation. The visual cues were profound and visually stimulating, the undisclosed recipient was a lingering shadow lurking about in her own life.

The setting was an old colonial house, quite like the one in which for a fragment of his shattered life, he was raised. There was a large earthenware pot; a clay pot with a firey stain emblazoned on the upper left… horizontally displaced across the rim. He was working quite hard and the graphic on his design was a black star, impregnated with a textured monotone finish, on the shoulder of a musical performer… all rendered in shadow. The words at bay a mask, revealing the shadows of the dreadlocked [flowing hair character behind].

There was a black ford explorer and a taxi waiting down the footpath to the right. She was off to work again, though on a weekend it was close to night. The only thing he said, before I backtrack in looking at her transluscent blouse and flowing linen pants, almost above the drawstring line at back, revealing the almost dinstinctly hidden crack.

“Do you think that is appropriate?” he asked, “Given the circumstances?” A question shared openly in the obscurity of the unknowing mass; for their were people around, family friends co-workers, it is hard to say; for the only thing visible, were the lingering shadows of his shattered existence. There as nowhere within that house to run. The back steps, behind the kitchen, revealing the back yard… offered no sanctuary. It was two weeks before their scheduled departure, and with no more than the burden of guilt, it was revealled to him, that while working hard and late one night, she was intimately involved with her boss. A man who’s face I know, behind pane glass and dim night light, vertically against the furniture, whe gave herself to him by night.

She mentioned it in passing, as the grief became too much to bear… she had become vacuuous again, as if her numb sould had lost the will to care. On autopilot, she walked between two worlds… empty and defenseless.

She changed into a black print blouse; almost akin to a kimono, with little flower blossoms… he thought well this is it, I must leave her… but where on earth will he go.

Her relationship, as it were, would reveal fissures previously unheard of, unpoken and still… a woman was also lurking… and the forebear of their relationship revealed to have stalled uphill.

His only memory, aside from the pangs in his stomach… was the emptiness, the cold and the everpresent chill. What was he to do… as she walked out to face the inevitable: he was powerless to start and to stop.

Could he stop it? Was that his lesson? Or was he to prepare himself to respond… prepare himself to learn, at best… before facing the open beyond.

*****

Maybe I had this dream because I watched a BBC program called “Mistresses” last night, in which many of the same circumstances came to pass.

It was two days ago. I set off with the sunset, to muster my energy before nightfall. My watch said 3pm. My watch was wrong.

Just as Harold Crick a few days earlier, my watch has been going a bit nuts: turning the entire face clockwise 30 degrees at a time; which was cute when the 12 moved to the position of the one and the hands and little window for the date, still worked quite well. That allowed me to see that by glanicng down at my wrist watch, with my hand in a natural position, I could read the watch quite well, without having to bring it up to my face. A brilliant design, I thought. Then when the 12 moved to the position of the 2, things got a bit abzocky. Read more