It’s been a while, so here’s another Digital Potlatch item, Chapter Five from BUFFALO LIGHTS, my book about moving from Maryland to New Mexico in ’99. It’s entitled “Dreamwatch,” and this one is a little different: messages from the unconscious during a time of unbelievable fear and stress, folks! Interesting stuff if you’re a Jungian, for sure, and ultimately reassuring. (It’s good to discover that we “know” more than we think we do!)
To access preceding chapters and the introduction, just visit the Buffalo Lights category page. You can read the full synopsis here.
Part I: Maryland My Maryland
Chapter 5: Dreamwatch
I had always collected dreams, but these were different.
Over the years I had witnessed some doozies, all right. There was the amazing dream I had in the woods in Arkansas years ago. In that one I was in a huge, gleaming city with tall buildings surrounding an open plaza. The sky was blue, and there were impossibly tall green trees all around. I entered a building and rode a long escalator up to a desk, where someone directed me down the hallway to a door. I walked through what looked like a waiting room out onto a sunny balcony overlooking the scene below. There were throngs of people looking up into the bright sunshine, and I could hear the sound of an enormous bell tolling loudly, over and over. Definitely a scene of celebration. A Technicolor masterpiece, too, one that I never forgot.
That same fall and winter in the Ozarks, I had the strangest feeling that I could have stayed right there forever, blending in with the rocks, oaks, and persimmon trees, watching the birds and sunsets, and never go into town again. I felt as if I could have shed my human form right then and there and become a resident guardian of the place. As it happened, I saw the fork in the road in my mind’s eye and opted for, well, waffles. Waffles with a side order of bacon, drenched in melted butter and syrup, served quickly and quietly as I sat at a Formica-topped table in a roadside cafe just outside of Fayetteville. Shamanism has a hard time competing with waffles when you’re skinny, hungry, and cold.
The new dreams came when things were getting tense. Our plans for moving to New Mexico were little more than “quit, pack, and go” and I was feeling very much in need of inner guidance. One night after a long, exhausting walk I tumbled into bed and then they came. Here as best as I can truthfully recall is what took place:
I was standing in a house in the middle of the night, looking across the room into a corner. The opposite walls were made of glass. All of a sudden there were tightly packed gray-skinned beasts shuffling past, elephants perhaps, squeezed dangerously against the glass. Then rhinos, more aggressive, heaving their shoulders against the corner! The glass walls shook and threatened to collapse. It was terrifying! I started shouting and stamping my feet to make the herd back off, and somehow, suddenly, they disappeared. That was great, of course, but considering the way they’d vanished all at once, had they ever been there at all?
I ran into the living room. The yellow carpet was scuffed and soiled with dung and urine. The smell was almost nauseating, as strong an odor of piss as I had ever experienced. The tracked path on the carpet, however, led right up to and dead-ended against an unblemished wall. How extraordinary! Even within the dream, I tried to understand the contradiction: the beasts couldn’t have been real and still pass right through the wall. But what about the messed-up carpet and that awful smell?
I then stumbled into a dark hallway and found a mass of naked male demons leering at me. They too were standing tightly packed together and frightened me severely. I yelled and stamped my foot, then grabbed a Freon boat horn and blasted in their direction. The apparition, if that’s what it was, vanished instantly, only to be replaced by a single larger demon, a fat, slobbering, warty-nosed humanoid form that grinned menacingly and blocked my path. I pressed the boat horn up against the demon’s face and honked, over and over again, emptying the Freon canister as the horror faded slowly away.
The next thing I knew, I was walking along with all my friends, heading for an outdoor picnic of some sort. I saw that they were heading for a softball field, but I didn’t want to play. I felt guilty at first but then veered off to the right and into a large circus-type tent, where I sat down at a table and watched a strange band of musicians performing on a tiny stage. I was all but alone in the audience, except for a shadowy figure or two at an adjacent table. The odd but comforting scene was much better than playing softball, I knew for sure.
Finally, I was looking out the back door of our house. A dark squall line was blowing in from the southwest, and I could see a tornado approaching. I called to my wife to come look, since it appeared the funnel would pass by safely to the west, but then I stuck my head a bit farther out the door and saw another twister off to the southeast! This one would hit the house for sure, so the two of us ran downstairs to the basement. Through one of the south-facing basement windows I saw the second twister pass directly overhead, but silently — no roaring, no whooshing, no showering of debris, no nothing! My wife and I stood up and watched through the north windows as the two funnel clouds disappeared.
I woke up with a start, my heart pounding. There are messages and there are messages, I thought. If I ignored this one, I might as well hang my heart out on a fence post for the buzzards to eat!
At the very least, it was bound to be an interesting spring.
Related posts:
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part I, Chapter 4, “Real Estate for Dummies”
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part III, Chapter 3, “Day of the Coyote”
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part II, Chapter 3, “A Little Farther Out of Town”
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part III, Chapter 2, “Wood Heat”
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part II, Chapter 5, “Moving Hell”
