The Process of Convergence in the Ethereal

An interpretation of dreams

               A few days ago, I had a dream. I woke up, my back aching from either the rigorous exercise regime forced upon me by the imperative of lowering government health care costs or some other physiological condition. The dream itself wasn’t important, simply my subconscious justifying sensations of my conscious. However, conversing first with my sister, and then Simona (my wife), I realized there were similarities in all our dreams, experienced at approximately the same time. Since it seemed a little strange for coincidence, I examine several similarities and apparent themes and thought I’d write them down. I know admittedly little about the interpretation of dreams and capitulate that this may just be another huge helping of my characteristic confirmation bias.

               In my dream, I was going somewhere. I was with a few others I didn’t know. We were compelled to depart our meeting place, I vaguely remember, to alert another household of something. Time was of the essence, so we jumped into a beater American pick-up. An older model made of steel. We were careening down a gravel road in a sparsely settled outpost, one not unlike the skeletal remains of mining towns in the Rockies on I-70 west of Denver. As we rounded a corner, the back end slid out and I apologized as we, first slipped, and then tumbled down a hill. I woke up after acknowledging that I and my comrades had survived relatively intact. Just a few scrapes and bruises, and my twisted back.

               Simona also had a dream with an automobile as the focal object. In her dream—details, of course, less vivid in translation—she was driving down a stair case. As she approached a landing, another car obstructed the path. She hit the gas and wedged herself between the wall and the impediment, badly damaging both, but succeeding in her passage.

               My sister explained that she, and I and others, were the prey of a vicious serial killer. She spent most of her dream trying to avoid a certain death. However, she confronted this menace on more than one occasion. When she did, it transformed into a mouse that resembled Brain, the comical menace hell bent on conquering the world, a quiet genius of dubious motive. 

               She also explained that her life-partner had a strange dream of his own. In it, he transformed periodically, under what conditions he did not disclose, into dog. And every time he strutted off to his own rhythm, he would encounter more and more dogs until, together, they formed a formidable pack.  

               Now, If I had to employ speculation in the interpretation of these dreams—and in hearing of these second two from members of our tribe separated by the expanse of the continent, I determined there must be some story of which these comprise chapters—I’d give them a revolutionary twist. And I would order the pieces into a narrative as follows.

               *We are being pursued by an evil force that seeks to destroy us. But when it is exposed to light, those that cannot chisel the façade see something smart. Capitalism seeks to consume us and we are made ignorant by the myths of efficiency, progress and inevitability.

               *To fight this menace, we must seek those who share our passions, our ideologies and our vision for true equality through transcendent love. We must build our army from these volunteers and we must embrace the fierceness of wild dogs. 

               *On our road, we must make hard choices. We will certainly have to choose sacrifice, of our possessions and of our comfort in maintaining order through easy choices. It is, after all, our own fear and inability to act in faith that has thus prevented our congealing into a coherent revolutionary force. 

               *Finally, we have little time. We don’t know when the bend in the road is going to be too tight for the speed at which we must move. We don’t know if we are going to make it to the future unmolested. However, if we can fall back onto the resilient communities (this is how I interpreted an old steel pick-up truck from the age of good craftsmanship)—our families, churches or whatever institutions we find most humanizing—we will have no trouble crawling from the heap of a mistake and continuing on toward the journey. 

               Reading some words of Emma Goldman the other day, it occurred to me that my own growing interest in the spiritual mystery teachings and anarchist political thought and practice are really two sides of the same coin. 

               The mystery teachings and anarchy are not ends, but processes of learning and love.    

 

A world apart...

Trappings of the Rio Grande Valley, NM

There are autos.

They scream about the traffic-pocked asphalt, scattering miniature sand dunes whence they came.

Drivers .. phones squawk that beautiful edifice of nearly five hundred years' history -- that syncretism – paying little attention to the mire of open range. Survivors pen obituaries – "in loving memory of" – but scornfully ignore the hoofed commodity, although her death was much slower, from lack of water and exposed bone.

There is a romantic sense of insignificance.

And the sage rustles when the wind calls. Storm clouds abruptly smother the sun, as if god finds some time to acknowledge this place . . . damningly shaking a lightning bolt finger.

Angels must live somewhere north, in the scrub pine forests. And hell must be somewhere south of Santa Fe. Purgatory is only significant to those riding the fence.

There is a disproportionate proneness to sociopathy.

Las aguas sucias del rio cannot carry it all away; it slows at conjunction with the arroyos of the flats. Somewhere in this unholy matrimony, poets find praise . . .

I smell sewage.

The green belt (a rarely exercised forethought) commands the floodwaters of the monsoon season – the blood of the Pueblo peoples, the tears of god herself. Yet, still, they fail to wash away what has been built here. Like a reflection of the night sky stored in sand, the day reveals stars of broken glass glistening. And the plastic syringe caps and torn t-shirt sleeves, knotted at an arm's circumference, act like satellites beaming the ailing condition to astute observers from more pleasant planets. But we quickly turn the channel.

There is a legacy of exploitation.

But is that any different than all the other legacies of written, or even human, history? The Spanish sought riches, their intentions slyly hidden behind a crucifix. Coronado did not find Eldorado. He found dolores. The Mexicans were preoccupied with maintaining their new state and unwilling to set aside the libertarian values with which Americans were quick to dispense with erections pointed toward the gold fields. The Hispanic era is no doubt visible.

And then came the bomb, in its simple package. No security door can keep the junkies contained to their huddled shanties. Like lions starved at the Coliseum, salivating for the Corinthians to be speared forward, an entire economy is so cast. The hungry war giants seek to rape these people (as the first Anglo-Americans defiled the Pueblo) at the consenting spear of national defense. And we, away on our greener planets, may gape our eyes, but we unclasped the lion's chain.

There is a sociological cost.

Neighbors lock their doors. The afternoon sun casts stripes across the stone floors, through bars to keep them in. A dozen cars clog the driveway, but they use stamps, not cash. Children learn the names of the uniformed police guarding the exits from the instituted program of indentured servitude. To graduate, they must evaluate a piece of paper. Nombre y apellido. Horas quieres trabajar. Usas drogas? They tear it to scraps, but can't get past their empty future here. Like the sage, they are destined to watch time pass from the roadside.

Everyone in the ergonomic chairs raised above the podium at city hall share names with everyone on staff. There is an ethics committee, but no one knows who sits on it. The newest policeman, who seems to be the only afforded expense, has been accused of gang rape in his teens, probably not a problem down at the station. It is a lesser demon . . . and it's not threatening outside of the closet. 

There is an awful simplicity.

Grasshoppers scurry into the shade of grass leaves as a car lazily meanders to the Wal-Mart, the northward destination of a weekend cruise that comes full circle from its apogee at the Sonic Burger. As the river wanders on a strictly southwestward path, so do the minds of the townspeople. The pine pole fences hide a truth. The adobe huts house another. The red ants mine mounds to mark their territory, while teenagers seek the same from the tips of aerosol spray cans. Lost in this desert, no spiritual sustenance abounds. 

[23 AUG 08]