getting a kick

Early this morning I dreamed that I had managed to get my family aboard a special ferry (my family here consisting of Kimmie plus my mother and aunt, and possibly also my sister Mara). In a queue leading up one side of the ship, we can look out the windows on a commanding view of what I take to be the pulp-producing town of Powell River (implying that we're really on a train instead). I point that out, then try to rush ahead so that we can see other views out other windows at the bow of the ferry.

In the forward lounge I try to secure us a table, which is cluttered with other people's dishes and wrappers. An imperious and nasty woman is trying to get the same table for her party, but won't sit there until it's cleared. While she stridently and rudely orders a steward to clear it for her, I simply take the table as is, wondering whether I'll be getting into a fight with this termagant.

My women start to take places here, while I point out the other views available: the Gulf Islands as though from on high. I'm proud because I've done this trip before, while it is new to them. I want to go to the far side to check out the windows there, for I know other great views will be visible if we get to them soon enough--maybe of Salt Spring Island or Saanich on Vancouver Island.

I hurry over, and find I have to squeeze through a small gap between a bar-counter and a wall. On the other side of the gap, by the windows, are a few people and several horses, which I suppose they're transporting. But out the windows here there is indeed another new and wonderful view. I feel a bit intimidated, but think that the horses must be tame and safe to be on board. Having to squeeze through the gap means I must move close to them, there's no help for it. So I quickly squeeze through.

As I do, I see that there is a foal here, and I become alarmed, because the foal's mother will no doubt be protective. The foal scampers near me, curious and affectionate. I try to dodge away, but before I know it I feel a terrific wallop on my thigh--I've been kicked by the mare! It happened so fast. I hurry around another counter, wondering whether my leg has been broken. No, it seems OK. I feel annoyed, but also embarrassed that this has happened to me. I must seem like an inexperienced sucker--the only one here who's managed to be kicked by one of these horses. But maybe I'll be impressive too when I tell my family about it.

This dream is one of a string of strange new dreams I've had in the past few days. As far as I can recall, I've never dreamed about horses before, and certainly never about being kicked by one. A common theme of my dreams since about 2002 has been of trying to catch ferries, buses, trains, and airplanes, sometimes getting them and sometimes not.

I recognize some of the dream's ingredients: my father stopped by to visit a week ago, and he had ridden the ferry over from Vancouver Island where he lives. Recently too Kimmie and I talked about a little vacation trip we took with Robin to the Gulf Islands in 1990, when I had recently been to Salt Spring Island on a solitary meditation retreat and so knew the ropes of that particular route. On that trip we had visited a park on Salt Spring where a cliff-edge lookout overhangs the sea hundreds of feet below, and Kimmie had been too terrified to go near the railing, instead repeatedly ordering us to come away from it.

There was a reference to horses in The History of Technology yesterday. Evidently in medieval times the horse began to replace the ox as the preferred draft-animal for plowing and threshing, its lower strength and higher cost being offset by its greater speed. The changeable weather in Europe made speed increasingly important as more land was cultivated, and people at harvest-time needed to get crops in as quickly as possible. Before that time there had not been any harness that allowed horses to pull heavy weights without choking themselves. Horses lack the powerful shoulders of the ox.

What does it all mean? The horses were pintos.

I've been fascinated by dreams ever since I was a child. They are the primal storytelling medium. And they remain a deep mystery.

the strangeness of dreams

We take most of our lives for granted.

Things that are already in our experience, in our environment, do not arouse our curiosity. In general, we're not really any different from, say, a herd of cattle who come upon a flying saucer resting on a field: they would walk around it to get to the stream to drink. They might glance at it, but it's simply there, not affecting their concerns, so there's no need to pay more attention to it.

In a similar way, many aspects of our lives seem familiar and not worthy of special attention; but if you look at them more closely, they become deeply puzzling.

A prime example: dreaming. This universal and familiar phenomenon, like that of sleep, we take for granted. It just happens. No halfway decent explanation for why either one exists has been suggested, as far as I know. Some people study them, but these things are a profound mystery. Virtually all creatures sleep, but it is inexplicable in our world of Darwinian natural selection why all these animals, who are someone's prey, find it so urgent to make themselves completely vulnerable for long periods each day, and that no creature has appeared which has dispensed with this programmed vulnerability.

This morning I had a long, complex dream. In one part of it my mother's driveway, which in the dream (unlike reality) was long and straight, collapsed, as though it were the roof of an underground chamber: the old asphalt fell in to a deep rectangular trench. In the dream I'd been using an outhouse next to the driveway, and narrowly escaped falling in with the collapse. Then I recalled that my own driveway at home had collapsed in the just the same way, the same day, and in the dream I realized that this must be very significant--an impossible coincidence. It confirmed my sense of the meaningfulness of events.

There was much more to the dream: it involved old coworkers at ICBC, scriptwriting, guitar-playing, and other things. I went through feelings of fear, depression, and hope. But why do I have such a diverse and mysterious--as well as fictitious--other life? What can natural selection ever have to say about that?

I'll tell you what: nothing. The phenomena, real and universal though they are, lie outside the realm of discourse of life science. They're addressed by psychology, but there is no really satisfactory account there either. If we're honest, we have to admit it's a mystery--a flying saucer in the field that we walk by en route to the stream.

I know that the dream-imagery was influenced by my watching another episode of Planet Earth last night: "Caves". I felt awe and wonder as I watched, and could feel the images falling like seeds somewhere deep in the dark of my soul. How strange the world is: huge lightless caverns filled with bats and cockroaches and translucent eyeless salamanders. Huge flocks of birds navigating in pitch-darkness by using clicks like bats, and building nests for themselves on the vertical walls made from their own saliva. Deep, deep into the Earth go the caves, cut by water etching its way through limestone: blind underground rivers and waterfalls and lakes, populated by creatures that have never seen sunlight...

The images became braided with other things in my soul, and served up as a personal adventure in my sleep. It's all so strange and purposeful at the same time.

It's a mystery.

a chilling dream

I woke at about 4:35 this morning from this dream:

of making my way home from somewhere, much like the old Dollarton Highway where it approached the Seymour River. I seem to be with some male companions at a restaurant, a casual kind of place such as travelers go to in poorer countries. There's a lot of camaraderie and maybe some are getting drunk, but it's time to go. It's getting late.

I leave, maybe with someone, and there is a quieter, outdoor spot like a truck yard near where that old gas station was (intersection of Dollarton and Seymour River Place). Maybe my companion wants to stop here for one more drink, to keep the evening going. I don't really want to keep the evening going, but agree to stop.

There's plenty of space on the bark-mulch ground under a kind of tent or geodesic dome frame, but few tables. A young couple is unstrapping their baby boy from a high chair. He is fussing, or maybe shouting in high spirits, and they are indulgent. They let him go, and he goes running for some kind of a motorized bicycle. He climbs on and it shoots away. I'm alarmed; babies shouldn't ride motorized vehicles. The noise alone is annoying. Sure enough, he crashes into something, and people go running to see, but he seems happy, and not hurt.

I sit at one of the picnic tables, and here (I think) I find Tracy [a girl I went to school with]. She too is ready to go home after a night of partying. She remembers me and we get to talking.

"What's the earliest time you can remember?" I ask, hoping indirectly to find out whether she remembers me from grade one.

"My first year," she says, seriously.

"Ah, so you remember grade one," I say.

I'm thinking back to when I invited her to my house in grade one, and she was shocked when I took a piss in front of her, in the crawlspace under the house. She laughed and pointed. I would like to rekindle some of that intimacy with her, because Tracy is still attractive. But I'm frustrated and chagrined by my own timidity and indirectness here; why can't I just bring the subject up? What am I afraid of?

Yes, of course she remembers grade one, but the topic peters out there. Tracy is working a calculator of some kind, figuring out her expenses. She is quick and diligent, serious. We talk about accounting or tracking expenses--she seems to have training in this now. I'm hoping that we can go back home together, take the same route and spend some time together.

We do go, and it is as though we're making our way over the bridge toward Main Street. But it's inside a building, a school or college in the vacation period, maybe ready to get opening again. I find it confusing and unfamiliar. We get separated.

As I try to find my way, I come to a thick primer-colored door at the end of a little corridor. It's a big heavy steel door and it has no handle, latch, or lock on my side: just a smooth door with no way of opening it. It has just closed too--wouldn't you just know it. I saw and heard the tail-end of its closing as I got here.

What to do? Go back? I feel a sense of chagrin, but also of hesitation. Now I'm alone, and the door's high-security featurelessness expresses its unfriendliness: like some fire exit at a mall or stadium.

But the door, of its own accord, pops open a bit, as though with a mind of its own, as though to say, "Go ahead--if you dare." I grab it and pull so I can go through.

On the other side is a short, dingy concrete corridor with flaking paint--ugly and unwelcoming. It goes a short distance, then makes a hairpin turn to the right. I immediately realize that this is a dangerous, even evil place--an encounter with a terrifying destiny, a test. That's why I'm suddenly alone now.

It's not clear whether I continue to walk or whether I'm now carried forward, around the corner. I can see a yellow light, and in terror I see the shadow of the figure I'm about to meet: a man. I can see he has glasses and a mustache. The shadow is much larger than life, but I can't tell whether it's his own size or an effect of the light. As terror overwhelms me I wake up.

When I woke from this chills swarmed over my body in the dark. My mind turned toward dark, pessimistic thoughts about my life. The image came to my mind of being aboard a river raft, headed helplessly toward a falls.

Well. We're all headed toward a falls, aren't we?

When I got up I typed this dream into my journal. I haven't made any interpretive notes, but I find that my mind is newly stirred with troubling thoughts that had settled down over the past few months.

I don't care what anybody says, dreams are a profound mystery. We take them for granted, and so do not see the great challenge they pose to our view of the world. In this respect the ancients were much more perceptive and aware than we are. In fact, as I study the ancient world more and more, I'm coming to appreciate the ancients. We can look back on them and see their arrogance and blindness. But if they could look at us, they would see ours.

the sleeping wounded

A mite underslept this morning after awaking at 3:45 from this dream:

Dream of being shot--or rather of having been shot--with a diamond bullet. I'm with Kimmie and others, cleaning out a house or apartment, and I'm putting on a record to listen to: a 45 RPM disc of "Reelin' in the Years." For a lark we're going to see whether we can clean out a certain room in the time that the song plays. I'm expecting the song to last maybe four minutes, but I see on the label that it plays for only 2:59--even less than three minutes! I'm surprised; this won't leave us much time.

And now I notice that I've been shot: there's a bullet-hole in my chest or upper arm, a clean, dark-red hole. I know it's a diamond bullet, but to Kim (or Mom?) I say, "It's a carbon bullet." This is bad, because this kind of bullet does especial harm, maybe blowing up inside one after a certain time. I'm not in pain, but I realize that I may be about to die--a reality I find hard to grasp, and I wonder whether Kimmie and the others realize the urgency, or whether I'll be dead before the song's over.

I quickly typed those paragraphs into my journal when I got up so I wouldn't forget the dream. I can see in the images certain impressions from recent days: I was thinking yesterday or the day before of when we moved Robin into her new apartment down the hill in October; a few days ago something caused the old Steely Dan song "Reelin' in the Years" to surface in my mind--possibly when Kimmie and I were reminiscing about the song "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo" by Rick Derringer, from the same year (1973), and I recalled an anecdote that Fagen and Becker of the Dan had exhausted Derringer in a recording session once by demanding endless repeats of a guitar solo; a couple of days ago I read an article in The Economist about the world diamond trade, and some of the effects of "blood diamonds" on that industry. (Curious side-note: Rick Derringer now appears to be a Christian rocker.)

I've also been reading and thinking about nanotechnology, which relies on carbon nanotubes and the minute carbon polyhedra called buckyballs. Maybe a week ago or so Kimmie asked me what a geodesic dome is (invented by Buckminster Fuller, after whom the nano-balls are named).

I recall too that "Reelin' in the Years" contains the lines "You wouldn't know a diamond/If you held it in your hand." Diamonds, of course, are also pure carbon. And I have toyed with the idea of setting a story in a globally warmed future, with the working title of Carbon. I've been reading about how the complexity of living forms is made possible by the special properties of carbon, its many different ways of making combinations with other atoms. In that sense it's the element of life. To be shot with a bullet made of it is therefore something of an irony.

These are just scraps of impressions and thoughts: the shreds from which the collage of the dream was made. But I haven't thought about what the dream might mean. I felt a sense of sadness and vague urgency in the dream rather than the dread I might really feel if death were so imminent. But it was striking, anyway--and I think a new kind of dream for me. Why that? Why now?

I never did return to sleep. The alarm went off, and it was time to lumber down here and start my day.

more imagination

Yesterday I was talking about imagination, sparked by my reading volume 2 of William James's The Principles of Psychology. Here is some of the text (compressed) from the top of chapter 18:

Sensations, once experienced, modify the nervous organism, so that copies of them arise again in the mind after the original outward stimulus is gone. No mental copy can arise in the mind, of any kind of sensation which has never been directly excited from without.

Fantasy, or imagination, are the names given to the faculty of reproducing copies of originals once felt. The imagination is called "reproductive" when the copies are literal; "productive" when elements from different originals are recombined so as to make new wholes.

So imagination, in the sense of creative imagination, is simply the calling up and combining of sensations from memory.

One of my first thoughts on reading this was to wonder about dreams. Dreams contain a tremendous amount of novelty. Last night (well, about 3:15 this morning) I dreamed (again) that I was aboard a bus, actually more like our SeaBus here in Vancouver--a pedestrian ferry that crosses Burrard Inlet. This bus, jammed with commuters in the dream, had the same rows of white plastic seats facing each other, but with the new feature of having a kind of oblong ring-aisle off the main long aisle of the bus. The bus-loop we were approaching was more like an airport in the size and vacancy of the tarmac. So while the sensory elements of the dream were familiar, in the sense of being made of familiar substances and based on familiar objects, the actual objects and their configurations were new. So the "originals" being combined were of elements smaller than the whole objects themselves.

A few nights ago I had a dream of being in a cavern with a rushing river. In the river I saw a monster: a sharklike beast maybe 15 feet long, but with three heads on flexible necks protruding in a triangular array from the front of its body (the heads all had long sharp teeth--a very frightening creature). Again, the elements that went to make up this beast were small parts of itself--the fins, the skin, the necks, each tooth--all put together into a new whole. All the rest of the dream-elements too were new images assembled from much smaller pieces to create a strong sense of novelty in the whole.

I accept James's assertion that any imagined object must have a sensory original; a person blind from birth cannot visualize, period, and has dreams that feature only the other senses. But I suppose I'm wondering where this tremendous, productive, recombinant power of imagination comes from--spontaneously in dreaming, and with some conscious direction in creative art--and what guides it and shapes it.

The author of our dreams rips up our sensory memories and reassembles them into collages that have their own integrity, novelty, and emotional power. The pixels of our sensations are reformed into personal stories that have feeling and significance--that have purpose. It's as though the dream-stuff (known as "subtle matter" in ancient Indian philosophy) is a cloth draped over an otherwise invisible form, revealing its shape. And this shape has a purpose; it is not random or arbitrary. How much effort would it cost me to "write" a dream? To come up with its setting, cast, and plot? Quite a lot. Whoever is writing my dreams is putting out that much effort, while making it seem effortless. It can't be to no purpose, any more than my own creative efforts are to no purpose.

From this point of view, then, imagination is a tool, a means to an end, a way of getting something done. It's a way of seeing the invisible, speaking the unspeakable. The purposes or structuring forces underlying the organization of imaginative elements would be, I think, what Joseph Campbell would call myth. Or the whole process of draping these purposive forces with imagined elements, and showing and sharing the results, is myth.

If this isn't exactly clear, you're in no worse a position than I am. This is me working through an idea, a blog-post that reads a bit like an entry in one of my Thinking documents. There's something fascinating here--and very important for us creative artists, as well as us dreamers.

a dream, a mystery

It's a day of pale sunshine and cool air. I was awake at 4:40 after a vivid dream of traveling by bus with Kimmie and Robin to get to a luxury restaurant in West Vancouver. The bus takes us to a small ferry terminal, like the SeaBus only bigger, with at least three docks under a huge roof. Kimmie and Robin, having great fun with Kim's friend Katie, decide to go their own separate way to the restaurant, leaving me to take a more direct ferry--the one from the leftmost dock. It seems unlikely that we'll ever make our reservation time at the restaurant, and I don't even know whether the ferry goes straight there, or whether we'll have to connect to another bus. I'm determined to catch the ferry, and am among the first there, along with a dark-haired woman whom I was sitting with on the bus. But suddenly a crowd of other passengers arrives to wait on the rickety wooden float. I'm at the front, so it should be OK, but I remember my bag, which I've left behind me, and go back to get it. To show that I still belong at the front I hold up my ticket or reservation that I made days ago--it has my signature on it--but it seems this kind of ticket is old-fashioned and may not be honored anymore. I feel anxiety and frustration at the unfairness of it.

After keying notes this morning from An Introduction to the Books of the Old Testament, I typed this dream into my journal. Buses and other forms of public transportation are a recurring image in my dreams. I've also dreamed before of transferring from one mode of transport to another, as in this dream. I relate the dream to my work, my career. I feel in danger of "missing the boat", even though I was here from the start. Others who are less prepared than I am will jump on ahead of me and beat me to my destination.

Currently at the top of my reading stack is Harold Bloom's Omens of Millennium, a book published in 1996 about Bloom's observations of certain symptoms in society around him of premillennial angst. Along with an American pop-culture obsession with angels and near-death experiences, he finds a surge of interest also in dreams. I'm currently reading his chapter on dreams, and so I feel sensitized to the topic.

Whenever I read books or articles about dreams or dreaming, I feel that people are somehow missing something terribly important, that they are missing the point of dreams. Not that I know what that point is. But I sense that the phenomenon of dreaming is profoundly strange and mysterious, and that all its investigators at some level take it for granted. Because everyone dreams and always has, there is a blindness to the weirdness of the phenomenon. Why would something so apparently disconnected from everyday life, so inexplicable, be so widespread and so basic to life--not just ours, but, it appears, the life of other animals?

Well, anyway, I had some of my own this morning.

getting naked

It's sunny and cold. The sky is clear blue. My office window receives direct sunlight only in three discrete panels on its wide surface, a large one at the bottom and two small rectangles lying near the upper-right corner, illuminated by the beams shining through squares in the latticework of the stairs to the back deck. The sun reveals the double-glazed window to be milky with dust and dribbled with trails of water-drops long gone, plump and translucent like melted wax on the outside of a bottle.

This morning the creative work was hard again: a sense of poking along in notes, following little blind alleys of research. Over all a nagging suspicion that I was occupying myself with unimportant research questions ("was there still debt-slavery in Rome in 47 BC?") in order to avoid the creative vacancy of grappling with story issues. So one's effort is tainted by a feeling of cowardice.

One is a coward, of course. But one doesn't like to think about being a coward, to be presented with evidence of it, especially in real time, while the cowardice is taking place. It's almost enough to put you off.

There's so much I could write about. This is my blog; I can use it as a soapbox for anything I please. Most of its visitors come in search of information on things like how to write historical novels or Iron Age Phoenicia. By and large, I think, they don't find what they're looking for (although some do indeed hit the jackpot).

Last night, as has been happening lately, I read from three books in my stack (Introduction to Books of the Old Testament; History of Greece to 322 BC; Principles of Psychology), then ran out of steam. I sat in my chair gazing across the room. Kimmie was upstairs puttering happily in her sewing-room (her "mad scientist's lab" as we sometimes call it). It was a familiar feeling: my mind wanted to move in some new direction, but I didn't know where.

I thought about events in my life over the past months. I thought about two dreams I'd had the night before--dreams of being naked, which are unusual for me. In one I was in a dining room, a restaurant on what turned out to be an aircraft, possibly a luxury dirigible like the Hindenburg. I was carrying some clothes, but was actually naked. When I was rushed back to my table by Kimmie and some other women, who were excited about celebrating my birthday, I realized I had to brazen it out. They either hadn't noticed, or were pretending not to notice, or, possibly, my nakedness added to their elation and excitement.

"I can get used to this," I thought. "Be bold. It's more other people's problem than it is mine."

the mystery of dreams

I awoke in the middle of the night from dreams. As I got up in the dark to go to the bathroom, I had a thought that I have had many times: we take dreams too much for granted. The significance of dreams is greatly underestimated.

By "significance" I don't mean merely what we think the dreams might mean to us, what their symbolism might be. I mean that we take the very phenomenon of dreaming too much for granted; we don't consider what the existence of dreaming might imply about the world, about reality.

I had this thought: If you were an all-powerful god, about to create the universe, would you think to include dreaming among its phenomena?

I'm sure I wouldn't have. I have always paid relatively close attention to my dreams, and have studied the meaning of dreams for most of my life. But I doubt that even as an all-powerful god I would have thought up the very idea of dreaming. The universe I would have created would have been the dumb, literal place that we generally imagine our own to be.

Dreams don't come with instructions or explanations. They seem to be standard equipment for sentient beings of a certain level of development--although, who knows, maybe for all sentient beings. Do oysters dream? Why not? My guess, and rule of thumb, would be: if it sleeps, it dreams.

Dreams, I believe, are the ultimate warrant of stories and storytelling: they are the natural phenomena from which storytelling takes its inspiration, just as our visual impressions are the basis of painting. Dreams are the original and still ultimate form of story, the form in which we experience ourselves as protagonists and undergo adventures that are in every way real--until we wake up. The sensual and emotional intensity of dreams can be greater than that of life. I believe I have experienced my strongest emotions in dreams.

Dreams, as stories, are made up of events--not of thoughts or words. Occasionally we may remember only an image or a sound from a dream, but a true dream, remembered fully, is always a series of events. A dream has a setting, a cast, and a thread: something that you are trying to do, or a problem. There comes a crisis. If the crisis is big enough we wake up--can't face it in the dream. Or we stay with it, and it resolves for good or ill. We're defeated and griefstricken, or joyful and happy. All story.

In the ancient world dreams were considered one of the main ways in which the gods communicated with people. At the temple of Aesculapius in Rome a sick person would make an offering, then stay overnight in the temple in hope of receiving a dream in which the god would give the cure. In ancient India they recognized that dreaming, which creates a seemingly other universe in addition to the one we know by day, could be described as arising in "subtle matter"--just as our daylight world arises in "coarse matter". For where are those objects of dream-perception, and of what are they made? The stuff of dreams.

Dreams point to the mysteriousness of life. For a life that contains dreams cannot itself be less meaningful or mysterious than they are. The work of art--that is, the story--is a public dream.

Hmm...almost enough to make me think about getting back to writing my own...

the job: a gamble

This is your job: every day you go to an office. You work entirely alone; no phone calls come in, no walk-in business arrives. You have no coworkers and no boss; no one reports to you. The work itself varies from moderately difficult to almost impossible. It is project work; it began almost before you can remember, and there is no end in sight. If people from other lines of work ask you what you do, you are tongue-tied because you don't fully understand it yourself. You get no feedback and receive no pay. The question of why you do it is the most embarrassing of all: there seems to be no adequate reason, indeed no reason of any kind.

This is a parody of the writer's life, but you know, it's not much of one. Lately I have been flummoxed in my efforts to return to writing; I can't seem to make myself do it. I can coax myself out of bed only by promising myself to do something other than writing. I have become afraid of my project.

The night before last I had a dream that I think relates to it. Here it is:

Thu 02 March 2006

6:30 a.m. Awoke at about 3:50 after a dream in which I'm at the racetrack clubhouse with Jackie. I have been doing some sophisticated handicapping, or perhaps I have important tips or some fancy new betting system. In any case, I have decided it's time to bet big. I'm still trying to get my things together, figure out exactly whether I should go through with this bet (I'm planning to bet $4,000), when Jackie says she also wants to bet big--$7,000, and would I go to place the bets.

I agree. I take her money and head for the wickets, turning to the set at the left, which is where the "large bets" wicket is. I feel some conflict because time is running out--it's almost race-time. Will I have time to decide on my bet and make it? Here it is fairly deserted; few patrons bet at this level. One person is just leaving the wicket, but I feel sure his bet is much lower than the one I'm making. I bet Jackie's $7,000, a sheaf of crisp new red $500 bills, mainly. The woman at the till, a fairly attractive woman probably a bit older than I am, in a suit, is impressed and treats me well, quickly fetching the ticket. It feels good to be a high roller.

I take the ticket back to Jackie at the little circular bar-table where we're sitting. I'm worried that I won't have time to make my own bet. As I sit against the wall to make my last-minute preparations to bet, a woman bustles to sit at the table next to us, maybe jostling me as she sits down. She is noisy and seems flustered about something. I am irritated and even alarmed to be interrupted as I'm preparing to make my big bet. Maybe I say something, but in any case the woman takes exception to me and mouths off, taking a swipe at our table, or making some move that bats my crucial document--a little slip of green-edged paper like an old-style bus transfer--off the table and across the floor. Alarmed, I get up quickly but nonchalantly to fetch it, not wanting to engage the woman, who is clearly unstable, any more than I have to. Losing this would mean I can't make my bet.

Not wanted to delay further, I head back to the wickets. Now they are in cleanup mode, with young men, Chinese, red-vested like busboys, cleaning the counters which are scattered with crumbs and scraps as though after a big dinner-party. I'm afraid I'm too late, but they start clearing the counter at the last, "big bets" wicket--they'll take my bet. I'm still just barely in time, if we can do this thing quickly enough.

I've already written in this blog that my project is a gamble. The bets don't get bigger than this.

thinking during domestic hibernation

I enjoy the period between Christmas and New Year. In a novel I wrote back in the late 80s and early 90s, called Truth of the Python (about a hypnotherapist who accidentally regresses a client to a past life as the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras), I used the phrase "domestic hibernation" to describe this week of the year--and it is still apt. For me there is a feeling of true vacation, of hiatus between the old year just past and the new one not yet begun. I feel a lightening of shoulds in my life and a sense of permission to do what I please.

This year, that has meant delving into the question of identity and what it means. My philosophical self has emerged with full force. I have been spending the early mornings keying notes from the books Acquiring Genomes, Identity: Youth and Crisis, and In the Name of Identity. Yesterday I created a new Word document in a folder labeled Thinking, where I file notes of my thoughts on various topics; the new document is entitled Identity.

Why am I so thirstily in quest of identity? I have long realized that the issue is a central one in my novel. As I was structuring my story I came to recognize how much it was making its presence felt, and as I have drafted the prose it has pressed forward more and more as an issue. Finally a kind of ignition temperature has been reached: the question has caught fire and become urgent to me. I recognized that I don't know very much about identity. What is it, exactly? Where does it come from?

When I typed the phrase "caught fire" and "become urgent", I see the connection with a dream I had last night. I have already written the dream down. Here it is:

I'm with Dad, heading up through the Edgemont area toward a fire alarm, seemingly at Handsworth High School. I may have been talking about the necessity of having drills, at least weekly, in order to have orderly responses to fire alarms. People need to practice in order to be proficient in an emergency. Now the alarm is going--but is it a drill, or the real thing?

Somehow the talk of fire drills and volunteer firemen makes me think of Carisbrooke Park and also Deep Cove: as though these are places where there are local firehalls, and where therefore people need to practice. I'm thinking that three hours a week would be enough, maybe on Saturday mornings.

Traffic is jammed in the reaction to the emergency. As though from on high, I can see the main street (Lonsdale? Edgemont?) become jammed with cars, and on-ramps get backed up. I see cars accumulate in a herringbone pattern on one ramp, the last few are taxis who try to surge ahead and there is a rear-end collision by the last one. "It figures," I think, disgusted.

We get out of our bus, figuring we can make better time on foot. It looks like 1st Street between St. Georges and Lonsdale, but is maybe supposed to be higher up, like at Balmoral in upper Lonsdale. I run, jumping up over obstacles like boulders and concrete debris on the old, broken road. Dad keeps pace with me, and Kimmie is also with us, trying to keep up. I can't wait--this is a civic emergency, and I have a role to play.

Dad and I are in cheerful, friendly spirits. We're talking about meteorites hitting the earth. Meteorites rain down all the time, but small ones get burnt up in the atmosphere. We're joking about being hit by one. I say something like, "Even one the size of a rice-grain would feel like you’re being shot by a BB gun." Dad flinches comically at the thought of this, and I picture being hit by a small meteorite--what would it feel like? Would I survive?

I make my way through the traffic snarl-up in Edgemont Village (or a place like it), perhaps leaving Dad behind too because of the emergency. I might be a journalist, working on a feature that relates to the emergency, and so may get special attention or access. I get to the high school, which is full of normal-looking kids (no sense of emergency here), and run up the stairs, knowing that the emergency room, bell room, is on the second floor.

I'm on a landing of the stairs, wondering which way to go. I ask a student, a teenage girl, where to find it. She may direct me, or she may try to get me to go to another room, where another event is happening that she supports. I am impressed with her calm, mature, intelligent demeanor.

I might finally make it to the room where the alarm is controlled; but I forget what happens...

The issue of identity has deep roots. Here are some thoughts from Amin Maalouf, author of In the Name of Identity (slightly compressed):

My identity is what prevents me from being identical to anybody else.

Each individual's identity is made up of a number of elements. These factors include allegiance to a religious tradition; to a nationality--sometimes two; to a profession, an institution, or a particular social milieu. But the list is much longer than that. A person may feel a more or less strong attachment to a province, a village, a neighborhood, a clan, a professional team, a union, a company, a parish, a community of people with the same passions.

None is entirely insignificant. All are components of personality--we might almost call them "genes of the soul."

While each of these elements may be found separately in many individuals, the same combination of them is never encountered in different people, and it's this that makes each human being unique and irreplaceable.

From this point of view, one's identity is the intersection of all the sets to which one belongs, in my case male, white, North Vancouverite, (sometime) Buddhist, and so on. This intersection is unique for each person.

As I thought about this yesterday, I arrived at the idea that these sets do not all have the same value in identity-formation. Maalouf says as much in passing, before turning to a few that are of special importance for his main topic. But in my thinking I figured that the important sets will be of those qualities that are inseparable from oneself (such as one's sex or place of birth), and those that are deliberately chosen (such as a faith one has converted to, or a country one has emigrated to).

But sets are conceptual constructs that do not exactly coincide with reality. I'm a Canadian--but what after all is a Canadian? The conceptual category seems clear, but on the ground it is not. I was born in Canada and am a Canadian citizen, so my Canadianness seems solid. But what about Quebeckers and aboriginals and landed immigrants? What about children born to Canadian parents abroad, and who are therefore citizens of that other country? Or at sea? What about children of one Canadian parent? What about someone granted Canadian citizenship by mistake or through fraud? What about someone born in a place where Canadian sovereignty is challenged by other countries? In at least some of these cases the boundary conditions of "Canadianness" are being tested; such individuals may feel a diluted or conflicted or incomplete sense of being Canadian.

My point: while the category "Canadian" seems clear, its application is not. Concepts do not and cannot match reality exactly. Therefore an identity that is forged purely of concepts is inherently mismatched with reality.

This got me thinking about another angle on identity: ego as understood in Buddhism. I spent time in my office yesterday going through my notes and books from three years ago, while I was studying at Gampo Abbey and Nitartha Institute. I couldn't find what I was looking for (a stack of vocabulary index-cards with definitions on them), and felt a vague sense of loss and chagrin. But I certainly remembered that the whole project of Buddhism, at least for the beginning practitioner, is discovering the emptiness of ego: that the thing we call I has no absolute existence. Does this mean identity is a non-issue?

There is, as always, much more to say. Another time...

hermaphrodite dream

A night of dreams. Here is one I remember from shortly before I woke at around 4:45:

I'm with Kimmie. We're at an exhibition or a theme park. The particular locale seems to be a kind of football or soccer field. It has historical and maybe archaeological exhibits on it, like ruined portions of buildings. I see that off to one side of the field are the great stones of Stonehenge. I'm surprised to see these here, since we’re in Israel; why would Israel have the stones of Stonehenge? It might be incongruous, but I feel awe. Don't others feel how special they are?

K and I go into an annex at the side of the field, a kind of trailer for museum exhibits (more like a ferry-terminal waiting area). A few tourists are trailing out, having seen the last screening of the film they show here. It seems we're just in time to catch the next showing--something to do with the overall exhibit: the history of the area or country.

K and I take seats in a row that is getting full, hard-plastic bucket-type seats on fixed racks, as at an airport or bus depot. A group or family next to us is taking seats. One woman, a plain-looking woman in glasses and a gray sweatsuit, but energetic and lively, is dropping off her stuff, trying to get her friends and family to save her a seat while she goes to do something. For some reason she has to fetch something from or put something in a big cloth duffel-bag that her female friend has in front of her on the floor. I watch while the friend opens the bag wide, and the woman tugs down her sweats a little to produce her large, semi-erect penis with black pubic hair. She flexes her legs to point her penis into the bag, as though the bag provides cover so that only--or almost only--her friend can see her flash it. Her attitude is saucy and mischievous. Is it a joke? Is she relieving herself somehow? She covers it up and whisks away.

Now K and I arrive at the couple of little rows of seats facing the TV screen where the museum film is about to start. There are just a few tourists and bored kids here. We take our seats and the film starts: maybe previews featuring old black-and-white documentary footage.

I typed up this dream during my morning coffee session, and made some interpretive notes. The image of a museum or theme park made me think of my recent reflections on theme, in both my work and my life. Theme = meaning. So a park (it was set up on a playing field, actually) to do with the meaning of the past. My work is historical fiction, and the dead hand of the past reaches through my life as well, as through everyone's.

The park is in Israel, and my story is about the ancient monarchy of Israel: the "Holy Land". I'm treating it as a place of origin for some of the most important cultural and mythological strands in our world today.

The sight of the monuments of Stonehenge was awesome (I in fact visited Stonehenge in 1978) in the dream. They were not in their circular formation, but standing in a row discreetly at the side of the field, near bushes and trees; and they were not being paid particular attention by the rest of the visitors. I'm reading about henges (ancient circular ditches that were used for astronomical purposes) in Uriel's Machine by Lomas and Knight; there are 40,000 megalithic sites in Britain--more than there are modern settlements. The megalithic structures date back to 4000 BC and earlier. The authors are making an argument that the megalithic monuments were the products of a culture that practiced relatively advanced astronomy, and that these astronomers were the ones referred to in the Book of Enoch, a core spiritual text of a Jewish tradition that never made it into the Bible. In my dream the stones have been brought to Israel; the connection has been made, but is not being paid attention to.

As for the hermaphrodite in the annex, this was a powerful and uncanny moment in the dream. The duffel-bag made me think of the magic wallet of Perseus, in which he put the severed head of Medusa to hide it after he cut it off. The bag, like his other accoutrements, was owned by Hades, and kept by the three Stygian Nymphs--the women who shared a single eye and a single tooth, passing these between themselves. I had a unique point of view into the bag, and saw a strange sight. I was witness to a secret, a mystery.

Here's what Cirlot, in his Dictionary of Symbols, says about the hermaphrodite (compressed):

The hermaphrodite is a consequence of applying the symbolism of the number two to the human being, creating a personality which is integrated despite its duality. The hermaphrodite is, above all, a god of procreation, closely linked, and ultimately identified, with the Gemini archetype. Psychologically hermaphroditism represents a formula of "totality", of the "integration of opposites". In other words, in expresses in sexual terms the idea that all pairs of opposites are integrated into Oneness. In addition, it is a symbol of an intellectual activity not in itself connected with the problem of the sexes. Blavatsky says that all peoples regarded their first god as androgynous, because Primitive humanity knew that he had sprung from "the mind", as is shown by traditions such as that of Minerva springing from the head of Jupiter. In alchemy, the Hermaphrodite plays an important role as Mercury; he is depicted as a two-headed figure, often accompanied by the word Rebis (double thing).

If the hermaphrodite is Mercury, the transformative agency of alchemy, then the bag is the alchemical vas, the vessel in which the transformation takes place.

Things are changing within me. I already know this. But I don't know from what, or to what.

feeling heavy

This morning the same heavy tired feeling in bed, a sluggish desire to sleep on after Kimmie had risen. The song filtering through my earplugs: "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2.

No further progress of cold symptoms, so I dosed myself with more echinacea. Then, in the cold gray of morning: back to the writing rockpile.

Morning notes: Peoples, Nations and Cultures and Alexander the Great and A History of Warfare. Kimmie angry and irritable as she came down to leave.

"Here it is eight o'clock," she said, "and all because of my fucking hair."

"Hair happiness," I said mildly, "it's so hard to find."

She wrenched a black winter coat from the closet, yanked it on, looked in the mirror closet-doors, and tore it back off.

"That coat's hideous. I'm giving it away."

She ripped another coat from the closet and angrily thrust her arms into the sleeves. I helped her into her backpack and she was out the door and gone--a single crisp salute to me as she strode down the sidewalk, tripping briefly.

I took extra time over my morning stretches, since I've had back pain again (mild) for the past couple of days. I've been procrastinating going to the chiropractor, in fact have been procrastinating everything. (I did make an appointment later on.)

Then, feeling heavy, back to chapter 19: the chapter that just won't go away. More tinkering with the notes: how does Menahem feel? What is the train of his thought? Type type type. Then back into the chapter itself: modifying the opening stretch yet again, changing Menahem's outlook and thoughts. Can't be bothered to smooth the new stuff in properly; it would waste even more time. I'll just drop it in and fix it all up later in draft 2. I have a strong feeling that the new material is not better, merely different.

I meddled with it rather joylessly until about noon. Then I sat awhile trying to pretend I was going to do more. Eventually I opened up my journal and quickly typed in a dream I'd had in the morning. It was a new variation on a recurring dream about trying to use a public washroom, and finding it awkward/exposed/filthy.

As I type these words it's 2:48 p.m. I'm scheduled to provide Kimmie with limo service from work to her hair stylist at 4:00. Maybe I should do some dishes.

disturbed night

Awoke at about 2:45 this morning after a dream:

It ends with me hiking into a wilderness with a couple of companions, but then just one: a woman. But I am a woman too: we are very close, maybe lovers. We're in the mountains of B.C. and it's getting dark. Others, maybe Mike and Mara, have turned back or been left behind. We want to go on, want to go farther up this dark mountain valley below high snowy peaks and the night sky.

Are we returning to a camp we've already prepared? I don’t think so. Or do we disagree about the status of our camp? She is blonde, in her 30s or maybe 40-ish, and wears a blue vest over a white long-sleeved sweater. I am dark-haired. We press our bodies together, side by side, as we step forward into the increasing darkness, to show each other how we won't abandon each other, how much we really love each other. Where can we bed down for the night? What lies in this dark wilderness?

The darkness is total. We step ahead into complete blackness, seeing nothing.

As I noted in my journal, where I wrote the dream, I woke with feelings of fear and strangeness. What could this mean? I'm not sure whether I've ever dreamed of being a woman before, I think not. The utter blackness at the end of the dream was also new. It was frightening, and yet we had each other; whatever we faced, we faced together.

I lay awake a long time, becoming embroiled in emotional thoughts, worries; my heart felt agitated. I lay awake one hour, two. I expected to remain awake until 6:00, when I decided I would just get up. But I must have dozed off, because I had more dreams, culminating with this one:

I'm about to leave or go out with a woman, seemingly my girlfriend. She is an older woman, at least in her 60s, with long white hair. She is slim and very feminine, with dark eyes. I believe she's wearing a pale yellow sweater-vest, and white shirt and pants. She's concerned about getting going, maybe that we'll be late for something.

Maybe because I remind her of some detail, she hurries back to go past me. As she comes close I hear a sound, a wet sound--and wonder whether she has accidentally lost some bladder control. I feel a little mortified for her, so draw no attention to it. We embrace, maybe for a kiss, so I can distract her from looking down at herself. She scolds me a bit, but gently, for she does love me, for delaying us.

Now there is a much more pronounced sloshing sound--there's no ignoring it. It splatters through cloth onto the carpet. I look down and see that it is not her but me: I have some kind of illness that has liquefied my bowels. I can't even feel it, but a kind of stew of vegetable pieces has spewed from me to the floor, and now a larger mass bulges out of my backside, which I can somehow see--so large that I wonder whether I'm beingdisemboweledd. I obviously have a very serious, messy, and degrading illness.

When I woke from this I again felt fear and that same sense of strangeness. I had never dreamed anything like it before. Something new is happening, agitating my soul. Being transformed, transgendered,disemboweledd--these are strong images.

When I finally rose at 7:15 I decided to write out my dreams and make some notes on them rather than attempt working on my novel.

I have always paid attention to my dreams, the primal and natural form of storytelling. I have become quite good, I think, at interpreting them. But these are so jarringly new and strange I don't know what to make of them.

Now: a walk in the quiet, gray, damp afternoon.

the bridge

I'm back. Today is dark and rainy, but Summerland was mainly sunny, with yellow leaves blowing along roads and through the clear sky.

Kimmie is on vacation for four weeks, so my routine is also on vacation. I don't want to stop writing, so I'll have to find a way to accommodate that objective with the more relaxed nonschedule of the coming days.

Today I thought I'd reproduce a journal entry I made on 21 September 2004:

7:21 a.m. I lay awake last night, from about 2:15 till maybe 4:40. I had a glass of whisky in the dark. Kimmie had got up earlier to have a glass of milk for her hurting esophagus.

Just before I woke I had this dream: I'm driving (with Kimmie?) toward what seems like the Grantham Bridge. There is construction here, roadwork with heavy machines that block the way, so traffic is backed up and being directed around it. Impatient drivers want to butt in and get around the woman directing the traffic. I feel good about the fact that I stay in line and make it onto the bridge.

I realize I'm all alone on the bridge, which has hardly any deck, just a couple of beams with cross-beams, like a railway bridge. Other traffic apparently has gone around, on separate improvised trails leading down under the bridge. It seems I misunderstood the directions being given. Now I come to the end of the bridge: it just stops, pointing into space, a huge, deep valley. There is no possible way we can get off the end of this bridge; we can only go back.

When I woke I didn't feel good about this dream. It seemed to echo my worries in the night that my project, The Mission and The Age of Pisces, is a hopeless one. A bridge is something positive, it takes you across the uncrossable. But this one is out; it's just being built, or rebuilt. Is it the novel?

The Grantham Bridge was notable because it was a one-way bridge: traffic could go only one way at a time: like life. The arrow of time. Others are trying to butt in: I perceive others as getting unfairly ahead of me, or trying to. But it turns out not to be an issue: they're not actually going the same way I am at all; there is no actual competition. They're taking an easier, marked (and possible!) way, the collective path. I'm on this big project, but it's not finished, in fact it's scarcely begun. And I feel disheartened that I've come the wrong way. Those butter-inners are ahead of me, if I want to go the marked way.

Since I made this entry I have come to see this dream as positive. The bridge is under construction, and I'm the one building it. My work, the bridge, is still unfinished. And, like a bridge, it is no use until it is finished. That cannot put off the builders of bridges. They--we--must be sustained by a vision. Once the bridge is built, the traffic rolls across, now oblivious of the rugged, impassable terrain that existed there before. Someone had to have the vision and patience to make it possible for everyone to cross to the yonder shore.

spider dream

Feeling annoyed. I finished this post, then my browser locked up ("performed an illegal operation"--why are browsers permitted to attempt this?). I was forced to close it, and there is no trace of the post at Blogger.com. Nothing for it; start again.

I woke at about 5:20 and lay in the dark of morning (personal rule: no getting up on weekends before 6:00). I rose, took coffee to Kimmie in bed, and came down to key notes from A History of Technology. Then I remembered I'd had a dream, and keyed that instead, along with interpretive notes:

Sat 17 September 2005

7:00 a.m. I woke a few times in the night, partly from dehydration after the lack of water (I supposed) when I attended Kimmie's work barbecue at Tyler and Charito's. One dream:

I'm in the ensuite bathroom, maybe brushing my teeth, and I notice a little spider in the sink scrambling to escape the rushing water. I try to help the spider along without hurting it, maybe trying to move it with a piece of paper or cardboard, but the spider is quick, and gets itself into more trouble.

The water does hit it, and I quickly am able to push it (toward me) to a dry place in the sink. Is it drowned? No: it quickly springs to life and scrambles up out of the sink.

Somehow it gets itself on me, and I try to get it away from me by moving my hand and arm so that its defensive thread of silk drops away from me, sending the spider to the floor. But it is much faster than I can react to, and I hear its minute legs tapping on the counter as it scuttles quickly, trying to defend itself. I don't want to accidentally crush the thing after all this effort in saving it, and I feel irritated that its defensive instincts are what stand in the way of its rescue, since I mean it no harm. I also feel the fear of having a bug on my body, when I don't know where it is--will it bite me? Is it actually dangerous?

I think I manage to ensure it's off my body.

What might this mean?

in the ensuite bathroom: Bathroom: place of privacy, cleansing, hidden from the world. Ensuite, connected. I've told people that a big attraction of this house was its master-bedroom suite, with the generous ensuite bathroom and walk-in closet. A sense of inner sanctum: so almost a citadel or home within the home. This is where even guests to our house do not come: so truly our "inner world". So: my inner world?

brushing my teeth: Water, cleaning. I've read recently about the power of water to wash away sin: baptism. Brushing teeth: cleansing the mouth, what I eat and speak with. Teeth are for chewing: crushing food for digestion. Hygiene = health.

a little spider scrambling to escape the water: As I've seen lately--is it there, in the ensuite? Or in the kitchen? There is somewhere here in the house where I've been noticing a tiny spider hanging around (on the kitchen counter? or maybe it is in the bathroom), and think about what a scientist said in a documentary: wherever you are on earth, you're probably no more than one meter from a spider. Their surprising ubiquity struck me. The dream-spider is not so tiny as the one I've seen lately: this one was about the size of maybe a ladybug. (I also recently--yesterday?--found a bunch of cottonlike fiber stuffed in the channel in which the bedroom window slides, which I took to be some kind of spider-made egg-yarn, or something, apparently empty.) Spiders are attracted to sinks and tubs to drink, and then find they can't get out. Trapped. I recently wrote in my blog about the Waste Land, and the desiccation described in Eliot's poem: so water as life, including spiritual life. From Cirlot:

Spider The spider is a symbol with three distinct, sometimes overlapping, meanings: (i) the creative power of the spider, as exemplified in the weaving of its web; (ii) the spider's aggressiveness; and (iii) the spider's web as a spiral net converging toward a central point. The spider sitting in its web is a symbol of the center of the world, and is hence regarded in India as Maya, the eternal weaver of the web of illusion. The spider's destructive powers are connected with its significance as a symbol of the world of phenomena. Spiders, in their ceaseless weaving and killing--building and destroying--symbolize the ceaseless alternation of forces on which the stability of the universe depends. For this reason, the symbolism of the spider goes deep, signifying that "continuous sacrifice" which is the means of man's continual transmutation throughout the course of his life. Even death merely winds up the thread of an old life in order to spin a new one. The spider is a lunar animal because the moon is related to the world of phenomena, and, on the psychic level, to the imagination. Thus the moon, since it holds sway over the whole phenomenal world (for all phenomenal forms are subject to growth and death), waves the thread of each man's destiny. Accordingly, the moon is depicted as a gigantic spider in many myths.

Ah: continuous sacrifice which is the means of man's continual transmutation throughout the course of his life. I see an echo of the symbolism of the tattoos on the girl the other night [another dream]. The eight-leggedness of the spider can't be an unimportant part of its symbolism. From Serpent in the Sky:

Thoth (Hermes to the Greeks, Mercury to the Romans) is Master of the City of Eight. Thoth, the messenger of the gods, is the Neter of writing, of language, of knowledge of magic; Thoth gives man access to the mysteries of the manifested world, which is symbolized by Eight.

Eight corresponds to the physical world as we experience it. But the physical world as we comprehend it is still more complex. The interacting functions up to Eight do not permit of pattern or plan--of the ordering of phenomena. Nor will an eight-term system account for the source of order or pattern--for the pattern-maker, as it were.

What is a web but a pattern? The spider is indeed the "pattern-maker", using its eight legs, among other things, to weave its web.

Here in the dream, the spider has no web: the web-spinner is something that I suddenly notice as being affected, endangered by my so far unconscious focus on my own oral hygiene. The small living thing comes into consciousness. It is scrambling to avoid being drowned. I think of "drowned out": a signal or message that is overpowered by surrounding noise. It has come to my attention just because I am unconsciously endangering it by my actions. What does this describe? The "pattern-maker" in my life? My "acorn"?

I try to help without hurting it: I don't want it to drown, to be the accidental author of its death. This requires delicacy, for the spider is vulnerable. I need to be skillful and gentle, and to act quickly. Time is of the essence here. The moment is now.

try to move it with a piece of paper: Not sure whether I remember this correctly. If so, paper is for writing. I'm trying to get it on paper: write it down. Capture the intangible through writing. Something that's alive and in danger of being lost.

but the spider gets itself into more trouble: My effort fails, or partly fails. It can't be caught that way--does this mean I can't achieve this "rescue" via writing? It's too "quick", —i.e., alive? I mean well: my conscious intentions are good, but my method is not effective for what needs to be done. Suggests that writing is not the answer for this? It's more existential than that? The situation in the dream was dynamic, fast-moving: like a real rescue. Every moment counted. Some part of me would have thought too, Is this worth it? Is this little spider worth all this trouble?

water does hit it: The water of life paradoxically seems to kill the living spider. Water a paradox like the spider: life and death. Also paradoxically, this gives me the opportunity to save its life, by slowing it down. Just as the little web-weaver is knocked out of commission, I can (consciously) move it to safety.

it quickly springs to life and out of the sink: Surprises me again: it's got more vitality than I bargained on. It's alive all right--and coming right at me!

it gets itself on me: Although it isn't "trying" to get me, its instincts have sent it straight at me, right on me. It sees me as the way to save itself. Is it my Self? The acorn--that which "spins" my life, my thread--my story? We were separate, but now we're united--and I find it frightening. The non-frightening spider has become frightening by coming into contact with me. (Last night at the barbecue a wasp hovered near me while a woman looked on. I stood calmly, an example of how not to panic around wasps.) It can't really harm me, I don't think, and yet I feel icked-out and alarmed. Maybe it can bite me--again not because I wish it harm, but because it doesn't know better.

it drops away on its silk: I use my knowledge of how spiders like to escape to try to get it away from me. Now it is spinning: doing its spider-job. I'm relating with the spider skillfully, not in panic.

it is much faster than I can react to: I'm simply too slow for it. It's not at my mercy; it moves quickly under its own power. Autonomous.

I hear its minute legs tapping: I don't expect to be able to hear the spider--but I do. Again from Cirlot:

Sound In India, the sound of Krishna's flute is the magical cause of the birth of the world. The pre-Hellenic maternal goddesses are depicted holding lyres, and with the same significance. There are traditional doctrines which hold that sound was the first of all things to be created, and that which gave rise to all others, commencing with light, or, alternatively, with air and fire.

Yes: even in the Bible light is created because God says "Let there be light". Sight is the sense of reason, consciousness, but hearing is a way of sensing the remote but invisible. Hearing lets us position things in space all around us. In the dream I found it unsettling to hear the spider; it made it so much more real and immediate. From Cirlot, it seems sound is connected with phenomena as the spider is: they go together, even though spiders are usually silent. I remember years ago Jackie talking about how she could hear spiders crossing her bedroom floor in the basement at St. Georges. So I hear the action of its eight legs. I'm involved with the spider via sight, touch, and hearing now. It's here and now.

I feel irritation and fear: Emotions, negative ones, after my attempted positive actions. I was only trying to do a good deed—which I thought I could do without risk. But I was wrong: there is a risk: I get "involved". This little thing that almost died turns out to be a big deal. Will it wind up killing me?

I think I manage to ensure it's off my body: The crisis has passed, but the spider is invisible again. Where is it? I don't know. It might be on my body after all--a disquieting, uncomfortable thought, but one I might have to get used to. Have we merged in some sense? (I seem to be in pajamas in the dream--which I don't wear, haven't done since childhood.) Have I take my acorn on board?