Not So Big

Starting in the fall of 1998, Sarah Susanka created a series of books focused on "creating homes that serve both our spiritual needs and our material requirements." You may know them as the "Not So Big House" books.

Little did I know, as I dogeared pages in Creating the, and Not So Big House, that Architect Susanka speaks dream pretty nicely too:

Really!

Sure does - from her Not So Big Life site:
"There are many ways of doing dream work, and none is right or wrong. The magic of the process is that once you start, it will guide you to the materials and approaches most suitable for you. We often get so hung up on finding just the right tool, and trying to find the "best" option, that we never actually get started. With dreams, if you simply start somewhere, the process will unfold of its own accord."

And You Can Know Yourself

And you can know yourself if you'll recall
the hazy pictures of past dreams
on this sad day when you are going about
with open eyes.
For this alone is memory to be prized,
this signal gift of calling back old dreams.
-Antonio Machado: Selected Poems, #23

Idling In a Dream

Wanted to share a tasty poem with you, with some dream in it:

Idling once in a dream,
the hand that sowed the stars
plucked a single string of the vast lyre.
The long forgotten music came to life
and a humble ripple ended at our lips,
carrying some few brief words of truth.
-Antonio Machado: Selected Poems, #22

Question: What few brief words of truth might land on your lips at this moment?

Were they suggested by a dream?

Maybe you'll find them in your next one.

My Exquisite Tarot Consult

When I have a fab experience with a consultation of any sort, as is my practice, I share it here (James Wells, Readers Studio, Dena DeCastro, to name a few).

Yesterday, I had a consult in PERSON with the esteemed Anya Weber in the Boston DMA. I was drawn to her work because of her grounded writing style at her blog (Check out the Questions I Hate series) and the fact she teaches in the adult ed community (Next month in fact at Brookline Adult Ed - a don't miss! I'm already signed up. For the trifecta, sign up for Dreaming Out of the Box and Diving into Your Dreams as well - hee.]

Anya had prepared for me a custom spread to address my issue (seeking clarity on a certain life task). We started with one core set of three cards and we reached the end of the hour with insights generated off just that core. There was certainly the option to draw more cards, but the work we did with the triad felt good - sufficiently juicy, thorough, and complete, and we simply didn't need to. Pretty tremendous, I must say. The insights built upon one another like a Rodarte Knit. We kept doubling back as each card was revealed, drawing mohair-soft threads between cards in different directions, and yes, there were punctuating shimmering moments of "oh yeah!"

Indeed, the reading continued to give gifts today. As I was leafing through my notes and the helpful spread printout Anya provided, things I didn't fully take in during the reading, but retained in memory, gained new prominence and relevance, and shed new light on my issue.

Thanks, Anya! See you in class soon ...

Chuck Lorre Productions #134

This one describes a juicy dream about Ellen DeGeneres and how she found him (Mr. Lorre) irresistible and progressed in a very sensual way.

One of my favorite dream resources, Gayle Delaney, wrote a whole book on the subject.

To paraphrase some of her wisdom, dreaming about being intimate with someone who is gay if you are straight or vice-versa is less likely to be about some unrealized sexual desire than about a coming-together of opposite parts of the self or a coming-toward a desired goal or end-state.

"I'll have what she's having."

Recurring Dreams: Hair Washing

So I seem to be having recurring hair-washing dreams myself. Ha, doctor, heal thyself.

This time, the dream of 1/19 was set in the middle of a vast creamy yellow kitchen, with five old-time stoves of different sizes and shapes off in a room to the left. I needed to wash my hair in a shower in the kitchen and I needed soap. I had to use my parents' Dial soap.

This has something to do with the deconstruction of my family household - maybe.

We'll see if the recurrence ends after I've travelled home and done what needs doing.

To be honest, it's tiring to have a dream's symbolic action appear over and over, with seemingly no inroad into its meaning. This is why sharing dreams with someone can be helpful. It's funny, though, sometimes I'd rather work on the more pressing, entertaining, or meaty dreams than this long-term hair washing scene.

That little statement of "not wanting to deal with it" may have more meaning right now than the repeating hair-washing scene itself. Maybe it's time to bring it forward into the light now.

In My Dreams

by Stevie Smith

"In my dreams I am always saying goodbye and riding away,
Whither and why I know not nor do I care
...
I am glad the journey is set, I am glad I am going,
I am glad, I am glad, that my friends don't know what I think."

Not Dreaming and Want to? Read Margaret Visser.

"This is the dark, we would say today, of the "unconscious," where the secret of each person's destiny lies hidden. We must make contact with this darkness; it has a great deal to teach us. It does this in dreams, whose night-enclosed, enigmatic messages we must take care to hear and comprehend. In the seeming "death" of sleep, we come in touch with the roots of life."
Margaret Visser
The Geometry of Love

Margaret Visser is the very same who delved into the levels of meaning of the rituals and the ingredients of dinner. In the Geometry of Love, she puts her attention on a church, specifically Sant' Agnese fuori le Mura, and leads us from the entrance into the depths, explaining the meanings of objects and placements that would catch our eyes as we move along.

Reading Visser's work somehow makes me dream more floridly, maybe because she shares information in language that stimulates layered meaning-making; maybe because she speaks of dreams in a learned way, referencing the Aeneid for one; maybe because she shares her own "mystical experience" in a way that allows for anyone to recall their own.

Dreams offer us a gateway to the roots of our own lives. Let us be open to them.

Chuck Lorre Productions #110

It's about dream analysis.

I wonder about the expensive raisin bread, myself.