Themes in dream
I want to know where the beauty has gone. I wonder if it has simply disappeared or if it has setup shop elsewhere. I want to know if anyone is maintaining the beauty. I want to know what constitutes beauty in the first place.
The restaurant in the dream is a combination of Le Pichet, the drama of their sister restaurant Café Presse closing, and my dining experience at The Palace of Versailles (actual). The man I encountered was the spitting image one that first sold me a ticket to a sculpture park in rural Norway and then later picked me up on the side of the highway whistle I was waiting at a bus stop for a bus that would never come, just last September. I got into his van saying to myself, it's a goddamn van I could possibly kiss my ass goodbye.
All the noticing of details--my noticing--I think points to that beauty is within me--within us all--and that it is me and we that create it (co-create it), constitute it, maintain it, abandon it, summon it, place it, replace it, etc. My relating to the man in the dream I think shows my reticence to believe, experience, and feel this fully.
Dream
I'm making my way through a market. It's a outdoor catacomb of places. I walk to tha last place to be reminded that the cute restaurant that was once there has since moved out and an artist has moved in. I see the trappings of an artists unpacked stuff and a ball of canvas drop cloth when I peer in. The walls still marble, I try to remember what the marble walls were like when the restaurant sat between them. I make my way back now but there are all these outdoor sculpture park style challenges that I climb over and walk around and I'm noticing how each are made. One is a scaffolded wall like steps that I climb up and over. Another is a long sculpted rock in the shape of an endive holding pink and white sand like Himalayan salt and I walk around it, noticing that someone has walked through it for the sand isn't smooth. I wonder if someone will come to rake it out and is that a Japanese tradition? Is this a Japanese station?
I'm met by a red-haired jolly man whom I tell to keep his distance. He is jolted and remarks "That's too bad..." almost to himself and passes me by. And when I have to double-back, I meet him again. It seems he is doubling-back too and he can't help but show me what's on his phone this time, which I don't pay attention to because I am suspect about his intentions. What's on his phone seems to be something synchronistic to what I am saying. He's entertained by this. I move on.
The next place I walk through seems to be a summer camp. Kids are here and there, absorbed in various tasks. It's a series of indoor spaces with no roof in places which is really nice. The light is uneven and restful, relaxing. A breeze is blowing easily. I walk across the biggest towel, it's laid out like a carpet over the sand and under a net for an indoor court of some kind like Badminton or pickleball. I walk across this and out onto the beach. I wake.
Integration
I'm not sure I have written about this before or not but I was reminded as I sat at the symphony last night. The music comes into me and I come into it in such a way that there are no barriers. At this sensation, I look to feel where my skin is at and I can't feel it there. I look to sense myself and I see that I am as much the music as I am the energy I feel animating my body and that there is no difference between the two, that the energy is the same. Intellectually I get this but experientially it is a whole new ballgame.
The ride home, my teenage son spontaneously opened-up about some interpersonal relationship conflict at school and he cried. In the dark car I heard him sniffling through the story and I reached over to place my hand on his as he poured out what poured into him. "Get it out," I said. "You don't want to keep that stored in you. Feel your feelings, have experiences and feel these feelings." I told him that this won't last for long, that it will change. "When will is change?" he asked me. "I don' know," I said. Then I talked about how experiences of all kinds make him a richer person, more valuable in a way because now he's a knower of what that feels like , and this will inform his choices and how he himself shows up in the world. Furthermore, that he has an intelligence, a wisdom, in order to conduct himself in the world that doesn't create more harm. On and on.
Swimming in my perspectives of many colors, we stopped to tread water. Then he went to recollect the details of the painful story again and he found he couldn't recall a particular detail. "What was that thing I mentioned before? That thing abut the thing?" "See?" I said. "It's already going." We laughed together, astounded.
We're such precious creations and this has me wanting to leap up and out this morning to kiss and embrace every person I meet. It's either that or this coffee my son made me that is so strong I'm certain I'm going to have sprouted hair on my chest by the time I'm through it.
Let this story be an embrace to you--fortifying, acknowledging, and a celebration.
-mp
