no black and white apocalypse for me

While I was out West the world apparently survived another close call. June 6th, 2006 went by without ushering in the apocalypse, no word was heard from either the beast or the whore of Babylon, and the clouds remained unparted.

I woke on the morning of June 6th oblivious to the significance of the date. I was on vacation, dates are irrelevant--even if they are sort of the sign of the beast.

I stretched on my brother's sunporch and said sleepily, "I had the craziest dream last night. About the end of the world..." My brother chuckled and said, "Well that's interesting. I've been listening to NPR this morning and they're discussing the end of the world. It's today's date, you know, 6-6-6."

Not to digress, but I want suggest that if anything is "the sign of the beast" today, it's global warming. In this scenario the beast is us. But back to my dream.

So it was The End Of The World.

The predicament was manifesting itself in America by the physical "ends" of the world bending up like a brascule drawbridge. As if the globe itself was turning inside-out. All good and concerned Americans gathered to watch. At the pivot, where the ground bent up, sat a kind-looking black woman. She wore a flowing linen suit, her hair in short dreds, and resembled Tracey Chapman. She was leading an apocalypse focus group.

Apparently Americans need to be walked through the apocalypse. We need to have a say--or feel that we do--we want the apocalypse to be interactive and user-friendly. At least we did in my dream.

People around me were airing their concerns and suggestions. And although no one was particularly happy, they didn't seem hysterical either. We had someone to turn to, she here to help us. I raised my hand, I had an opinion as well.

"I feel like this ending is too obvious," I said. "It's too black and white. The world bending up like this is so literal. I'd like to see more mystery, some nuance. I want to appreciate the apocalypse on numerous levels."

That was that. I don't remember anything more about the dream.

But I think I'm going to see Inconvenient Truth this weekend, if only to discover whether global warming as apocalypse is gray enough for me.

the dream of whales

I dreamt I was walking through an older section of a city built snugly at the base of a gigantic, treeless hill. The neighborhood in which I found myself walking was strangely named "Over the Rhine" and reminded me of Oxford or a small European village. Running just above this old neighborhood, cut into the slope, an old stone road served as the boundary between the grassy hill and the urban streets below.

In my dream I headed toward this road. I had the distinct feeling that the ocean was on the other side of the hill, and I wanted to reach it. Curiously, I was unable to get a clear view of the hill itself because when I looked in its direction my sight was blurred. I walked along heading south, so that the hill was on my right and roofs and steeples of the city on my left. Near to the southern slope of the hill a dirt path wound off to my right away from the city. I took the path, feeling it would certainly lead to the ocean.

Once on the path my eyesight grew particularly poor. I couldn't see ahead, the path and hill were indistinct. I sensed that there were people further on down the path, but I could only see vague shapes. I kept walking—feeling my way along—and sure enough around a bend the ocean spread beneath me, expansive and open. The hill below the path dropped off sharply and I stood perhaps a hundred or more feet above the sea. Oddly, the ocean was in perfect focus—blue and white jagged lines of foamy waves formed as the water moved inland. It looked much like the Pacific off the Oregon coast. I watched the waves come in, rocks breaking their formation. If I turned my eyes back to the path everything once more became blurry, so I kept walking and looked at the ocean.

Then noticed something in the ocean. I thought at first it was a person swimming, but I realized the figure was too far offshore for a regular swimmer. I looked closer and saw that it was a seal—my eyesight suddenly magnificent. I watched the seal, and then, to my amazement, I saw a larger shape moving under it. A whale slowly surfaced—its shape something like an orca. Then suddenly there was another orca, and another. I was captivated and stopped walking. I felt fortunate to see the whales, and I forgot about all but the waves and the whales. Then I noticed another whale under the orcas, slowing moving toward the surface. It was much larger—in shape and size like a humpback. It came up and started blowing water. I really couldn’t believe my luck. After awhile I started slowly inching along the path again, looking at the ocean. I had the sense that I should be heading back soon. It became a nagging feeling: I need to go back. But I resisted.

As I stood there, trying to decide what to do and absently looking at the ocean and the whales, I noticed something that made my heart stop. Deep under the whales there was a massive black shape, much larger than any of the other whales, so huge that it stretched beyond my sight. It was clearly a whale, maybe a great blue whale, but it was mammoth—maybe twenty or thirty times the size of the humpback. I was frightened and awestruck. I sensed in my dream that I was seeing something important. I was also joyful—the way I used to feel when I saw a rare bird. I felt I ought to do something, but there was rightly nothing to do but stand and watch. At the same time I was afraid; the colossal dark shape down in the water was not menacing, yet so huge and powerful and beyond comprehension that it made me feel small and insignificant.

Then again I felt an inner tug, I need to go back... and I woke up.

a park within a park, hidden within a dream

On Monday I discovered a secret dream. A secret dream of a park concealed within a park.

I've taken to going over my dreams each morning when I awake. I'm searching for evidence of a particularly unpleasant reoccurring dream, of which I'm trying to rid myself. Monday morning I ran through the night's offerings. The first dream emerged clear-eyed and relatively whole, then moved, like a run-on sentence, into another dream and then another. I followed these threads to smaller and more obtuse dreams, dissolving as I touched them in the bright morning light. I was pleased: there were no sign of my villains.

I stretched and moved to get up. As I sat up I remembered something from my childhood: a park my Dad took me to on top of a hill, tucked away inside another park. I blinked: but no, there was no such place. Yet I remembered it—dark with pine and douglass fir, a small gate with giant rhodendrons on either side, a mossy and meandering path. And I remembered remembering it as a child, and wanting to go there again. My brow furrowed. I am acquainted with the parks in and around Portland: none fit this description.

As I sat on my bed further details emerged. The land surrounding this particular park was expansive and public and the inner park was well-kept secret concealed within. My father was aware the inner park, and he knew the way to the gate. The surrounding public park was also wooded, but in an open and sunny way. It was a Portlandy park: azaleas, bike-racks, brown information signs, pebbled paths, the fauna a careful mix of deciduous and evergreen. But the hidden park had a private feeling: damp and woody, intricate, personal. Ornate maiden hair ferns grew beside the path, shy trilliums under the firs, red-winged blackbirds called from the trees. It was the park of hidden things, rare blossoms, uncommon birds.

We arrived at the park by car, following some awkward and anfractuous route. In the reoccurrences of the dream our course was different: a back road over a hill in Lake Oswego, or North over the St John's Bridge, or routes that weren't in Portland but in unidentified cities with lacing overpasses and layered bridges. In this last dream it seemed we were headed to Canby, but then doubled-back toward Portland on another road, only arriving at the park after going an unnecessarily long stretch out of the way.

What I find to be so curious about this dream is that I've apparently had it over and over. And yet until Monday I never remembered it as a dream, but as a vague memory of a real park. I only remembered it at the tail-end of my other dreams, after I'd finished going through them and started about my day. The secret park dream itself was hidden within my other dreams, disguised as a memory.

pinecones aren't the clearest arrows

When, as a child, my family went camping with other families, there would be a herd of us children—sleeping in tents and vans, making fires, canoeing across lakes, rolling down sand dunes, spying on each other. In the evening our parents would be eager to be rid of us, and would without fail suggest we play the arrow game. It was a suggestion greeted with enthusiasm because it meant more time without parental supervision. We would split into two teams, one to seek and the other to hide. The first team set out from our camp site and fabricated arrows out of sticks, rocks or pinecones pointing in the direction we were headed. Then about every fifteen to twenty feet we'd make another pointer. The second team waited for 10 minutes, then set out to find us, following our rustic signs. The trick for the first team was to make the arrows clear enough to keep the second team on track, but vague and staggered enough to keep things interesting. The arrows were often hard to find, as they blended easily with wooded paths or crumbling campsite cement. As time went on, and the first team needed to find some place to hide (in drainage pipes, under roads, up trees, behind dunes, in docked canoes, in campsite shower stalls), the more ambiguous our arrows became. Sometimes we would just draw them in the dirt, and by this point we'd leave wide spaces between the our signs. This was a clue in itself to the second team: you've almost found us.

This was by far my favorite camping game. If I was in the first team, I was usually the one constructing the arrows. If I was in the second team, I was out ahead, nose to the ground, diligently seeking the next clue.

All the information I need is before me, the task is to heed it. The twiggy markings and odd pinecone-contructed arrows of life lay at my feet.
Last night I dreamt of children whose torsos were locked inside wooden boxes, with just hands, heads and legs below the knees protruding. The children were indentured servants, they had some sort of debt or duty to pay off. I attempted to help one little girl—to carry her up the stairs because walking was so difficult—but was reprimanded: she must do the work to free herself.

This dream, like Varda's The Gleaners and I, or meeting Gabe, or my current financial woes, are no coincidence. They serve pinecones arrows. It would be foolish to stop following them, more foolish to assume that because I haven't recently seen three sticks configured arrowishly that I can give up the game altogether. The game is being played, and I must continue to walk in its direction.