Symbols of death

[vaneramos]

My bedroom is uncommonly neat. Last night I dropped my notebook and pen ceremonially on the empty floor beside my bed. This morning I sat up, saw it, and remembered.

My dream world was foggy. I suppose we have some deeply buried instinct that still knows the weather, though it only manifests as headaches, sore joints and bad moods, cut off as we are by cognitive clutter and removal from the land. My bedroom curtain is too thick to reveal anything besides sunlight or gloom. I didn't see the real fog until I came into the main apartment to make coffee.

I was driving around the countryside with Marian looking for a place to pick strawberries. We entered a lovely rolling farm with a stream cutting through the hills, draining into Lake Erie. Beautiful evening light slanted through the fog. Someone who reminded me of Nancy H (probably supposed to be moonkop as a young woman) was overseeing the plots. We had forgotten baskets, but I found some discarded plastic ones like those used in supermarkets, found a patch all to myself, and soon filled four quarts, enough to make a batch of jam and then some. The strawberries were lavender-coloured, which normally would be bad, but in the dream they were lovely. The Nancy person returned to give everyone instructions, and a large group gathered to listen. She showed us a folding cardboard apparatus like an easel, which I had apparently dismantled. "You don't need to take these apart when you're finished," she said. I felt embarrassed and irritated.

I dreamt this in the first person. Usually I dream in the third person, identifying personally with whoever happens to be the main observed character.

Next I wandered around Toronto's gay village, foggy and wet. I had just called Dad to let him know I planned to drop in on Nana (Mom's mother). As I walked south on Jarvis Street, Mom phoned. I didn't carry a cellphone, of course, but my point of view shifted to Mom sitting somewhere, talking to me, so I don't know how. She asked, "Do you want me to call Nana and let her know you're coming?" My parents can't handle spontaneity. I said yes and hung up. I turned right somewhere around Carlton, but the buildings were all different, then right on Church Street, and right again into a shopping mall that doesn't exist, where the parking lot behind Zipper's really is. Mom hadn't called back, and I was impatient with the delay in my plans, so I found a pay phone. I picked up the receiver, ready to dial, but immediately heard a busy signal. I figuring Mom must be talking endlessly to Nana, forgetting about me.

The busy signal was my clock radio waking me up. As soon as I remembered the dream, I realized it was about death. Nana died two summers ago, and Mom is "busy" fighting cancer. I admire my mother's relaxed attitude about dying, but not her caution about living. I turned west off Jarvis Street to avoid the corner of Jarvis and Shuter where I had an accident and totalled the car in November 2000 (the closest to death I ever came). The lavender strawberries were beautifully embalmed, and the disassembled easel relates to my recent endeavour to break death down to something I can understand. Nancy presented another friend's argument that we need not worry about these things. What matters to me is finding a way to face it so that fear and caution (and grief over lost loved ones) won't distract me from living (picking strawberries and visiting the village represent taking pleasure in the moment). I was not particularly fond of my grandmother and wouldn't care to visit her, so the distractions and anxieties of the dream were all unnecessary.

Dream metaphors usually make plain sense to me. It's weird, considering how ambiguous real life can be, and even when my dreams turn fantastic I rarely realize that I'm dreaming.

This snake picture seems to fit here well enough. Marian found this elegant little ring-necked snake, Diadophis punctatus, at the cottage on Saturday. These are widely common but nocturnal, secretive, and rarely seen. My whole family, beginning with my mother, likes snakes, but Marian is the only one inclined to handle them. It secreted a musky mucous that made her hands and clothes stink. We waved Dad down from sailing to see it. I posted a striking closeup of its scales in texture. I've put seven images of the snake in my reptiles and amphibians gallery.

My two busy days are done. Now I have two open days stretching seductively before me, time to work upon whatever I choose.

Comments

[clairenolen.livejournal.com]

oohhhh a snake, a snake........:-))))
thanks for posting the snake pics, Van!!
and your dream is interesting......
enjoy your "open days"!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thanks. This is where I need my schedule actually written out so I can visualize the day in chunks of time devoted to exercising, writing, cleaning, drawing. I better go draw one up, before morning ends.