I track dreams. I hand-write them in a particular journal. I’ve learned that when I track dreams, they tend to track me. And so I write. I’m loyal to the tiniest snippets and fragments that appear in dreams.
A few days ago, I dreamed of being at the end of a hall in a hotel. Near the end where I stood, was an open elevator. I was standing in the hall waiving my hand on the elevator door sensor, holding it open. At the other end of the hall was our cat Marmalade. She sat aloof. But watching. I woke.
With linear mind, dreams often make little sense. But it isn’t linear mind that I wish to guide with dreams. It is the integrating mind, and heart, that I wish. That place where the subconscious peeks about the ridgeline, bringing clues from what lives beneath. Sometimes desires. Sometimes fears. Sometimes angsts. Sometimes clarities.
My intuition for this hallway and cat dream points me to desired integration of what is horizontal and what is vertical spirit growing. The cat is agile. I tend her often. I tend to the horizontal agilities in my life. But I also know of the distinct need for the vertical, that which rises above and descends below the human and three-dimensional planes.
Today, MLK, dreams — I find myself needing poetry. To tend to some of my vertical. To tend to dreams. I gave myself permission to sit on the floor in my office, and thumb through a few pages of favorites nearby. I share them here because, well, I want to. I want to feel something beyond the linear.
From Langston Hughes’, The Dream Keeper and other poems.
The Dream Keeper
Bring me all of your dreams,
Your dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
of the world.
Dreams
All night
the dark buds of dreams
open
richly.
…
Richard Wagamese
In the deep snow moons of winter, there are stories hovering around us. They are whispered by the voices of our ancestors, told in ancient tongues, told in the hope that we will hear them. Listen. In the drape of moonbeams across a canvas of snow, the lilt of birdsong, the crackle of a fire, the smell of smudge and the echo of the heartbeats of those around us, our ancestors speak to us, call to us, summon us to the great abiding truth of stories: the simple stories, well told, are the heartbeat of the people. Past. Present. Future.
I track dreams. I’ve learned that when I do, they tend to track me. With poetry too. When I track expressions of the heart, they tend to track me. Nighttime dreams. And dreams of better, more kind, conscious ways of living now.
