In this video I share bit about the concept of the map maker in dreams and spiritual experience. I talk about why I think that sharing these experiences matter.
The video shares a recent experience triggered by somebody else’s dream. Whether you consider this second-hand dream guidance or a synchronicity, I think it says something about what is available to us.
I also talk about my nonfiction project which is a part AuDHD memoir and part spiritual journey. Probably the most interesting thing about all of this, is how it helped guide me back to that project.
I think that matters.
Thank you for watching!
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The Long View
In the days leading up to the new year, I like to think about where I’ve been. What I’ve accomplished. And what I’ve yet to do.
Normally that involves looking at the year just passed. This year I took the long view.
This year, a friend shared a video on nine year cycles. I shared a poem I’d written nine years ago, on the very first day of a brand new cycle. The one that began on January 1st, 2017.
I wasn’t thinking about cycles when I wrote that poem. I didn’t realize that 2017 was number 10 year or that it reduced to 1 which made it the start of new cycle. I’m not sure if I even knew what a nine year cycle was then or why it was important.
But I knew a new start when I saw one.
January 1st, 2017 was a Sunday. I was standing on the back porch looking out into a dead yard, just coming out of a ten year spiritual journey that had begun with an incredible dream and ended in disappointment and confusion.
But that moment, that Sunday, that January 1st felt like the beginning of everything. Not in a hopeful happy way. In the way of grim determination.
I had no idea where I was going. So, I went in and wrote the poem.
My Last Cycle
Over the next nine years I went from metaphysics to Christianity. I rejected people. I closed my card reading business. I stopped blogging.
I worked my way through three very different Christian denominations. And when I finally sat down to write my return-to-the-church testimony, I found I couldn’t reconcile any of them to what I already knew to be true.
So I took some courses at the Rhine Institute. I learned something of the science of what, for want of a better word, I call spirit. I began to dream again. I noticed a wonderful synchronicity.
The mystery of the big dream I had in 2008 at the beginning of the cycle before this one began to make sense.
Things happened.
I enrolled in dream school. I returned to tarot and everything that went along with it. I read Jung.
I put my heart into a story and saw it fail. I wrote and wrote and didn’t publish and I began to understand how I tell stories—and why.
I was diagnosed with autism in 2022. In 2025 I was diagnosed with ADHD. I began to see my life through a completely different lens.
And I went back to blogging.
2008 was a year of wild optimism and excitement—hard on the heels of the worst decade of my life.
2017 was a do over I didn’t want but could not avoid.
2026 is the start of another cycle. None of us can predict where the next nine years will take us—but that won’t stop us from trying.
Where (I Think) I’m Going
When I look at cycles past, it occurs to me that one of the easiest ways to figure out where we’re going next is to look at what we’re on the brink of now. In my case, that means publishing.
My vampire story is finished. After one last proof, I’m going to publish my first. I understand now why people didn’t like draft 1 and why those same people probably won't like the finished product. I know it’s not really about vampires. Whether it gets read or not, I’m glad I wrote it.
My memoir is almost done. It has helped me piece together all the cycles. Over the course of writing it, it has become a very different kind of testimony. Figuring it out was part synchronicity, part muse.
Which is, as it turns out, my process.
To me, this year and this cycle was a year of planting, not of harvest but I’m okay with that. Because I am on the brink of putting things out there and that has been a very long time coming.
A Card Reading
And because every new year and new cycle deserves a card reading, here is mine:
This reading is for the entire nine year cycle. Death is appropriate for the past. The 4 of Swords makes perfect sense for where I’m at right now. The 10 of Wands is what’s coming and it is not unexpected. My “need to know” card is the Hermit which is a card of great personal meaning to me. The 6 of Wands jumped out with it.
I encourage you to take some time today to take a look back at the year and cycle you’ve just completed and think about what’s coming. This is where the magic is.
Wishing you a wonderful new year and a meaningful new turn around the wheel, however you measure it!
You can read my 2017 poem and my post on the Hermit card below:
This has been a tough week for a couple of different reasons. Chief among them, was the confusion I was feeling over a creative project. Luckily for me, a dream, a couple of synchronicities and some good friends helped me make sense of things.
This post is about where I was at, the dream that came at just the right time and the synchronicities and good advice that followed.
Where I was at
I had been struggling with the memoir I sometimes mention for some time.
You've heard me mention it before. Depending on how I'm feeling about it on any given week, I might consider it a spiritual memoir or autism memoir or both. This is only part of the conflict.
I had decided to include a 2012 dream I believe to be a visitation dream in the memoir and had started to think that I should also write about the relationship it referenced. This turned into an entire chapter on a very difficult time in my life. By the time I was done with the chapter, I saw the full impact this relationship had for the first time.
It was a lot to process and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue with the project, at all. I talked about this in my autism podcast which I'll add below.
What I didn't talk about in the podcast were all the associations with the divine feminine I'd been making all through the memoir writing process. Anyway, almost two weeks ago, now, I was feeling good about that, thinking that maybe that it the major theme.
I had even started re-reading When God Was a Woman and had a couple of relevant insights I put into the manuscript. I started to get that feeling I get sometimes, thinking that maybe I'm getting to the bottom of things, that maybe this is what my life experience (and by extension the memoir) is really about.
The more I thought about failed relationship chapter, however, the more I second-guessed. Eventually, I took most of the divine feminine insights out and resolved to focus on autism and brokeness and eventual wholeness as seen through an autistic (instead of a spiritual) lens.
For some people this wouldn't have been a big deal. Project change direction. But this is a thing for me. I build stuff creatively and then I tear it apart. I have come to think of this building-shredding process as a form of self-sabotage
Then as sometimes happens, I had a dream.
I called it the Rusty Key Dream and I couldn't help noticing how it referenced a 2012 visitation dream, now expanded to share a fuller account of relevant dream events. You can find the expanded account here on the blog at Lost and Found.
Anyway, that was the situation. Here is the dream:
The Rusty Key Dream (9/6/2025)
Scene 1. I have a booth at an indoor flea market. There is an outdoor sort of fair, then the building where I have my booth. I think the building is masonry painted white with a large opening (like a concession or covered veranda) where a woman sits behind a counter or long table in the shade. She is probably in her 60s. She owns the business and is responsible for the leases. She has a rough voice like a smoker and short dark hair. I think she might have dark cat’s-eye sort of glasses. Either way there is something kind of 1940s or 50s about her. She seems harsh or abrasive. I tell her I am not renewing my rental agreement for the next month. It is summer and I have a sense of sun and greenery behind me as we talk.
Scene 2. I have just attended some kind of event at our local mall and people are filing out of the venue. I have the sense that the fair / flea market is on the second floor. I am leaving with a man and a child (possibly ten or eleven). I have a vague sense of them but recall no detail. I remember that I have the rented booth upstairs and that I will need to get my things out before the lease is up. I have a table, my mother’s cash or strong box and a green crocheted tablecloth (I own this tablecloth in real life) still in the booth. I am worried I won’t get these items back once the agreement lapses. I wonder if I can get the table down by myself but then decide I can manage.
“Go get the car,” I say to the man. “I canceled my booth and need to get my table before they throw it out.”
“I thought the key didn't work,” he says.
I pull out the key. [I recall it very clearly.] It is a little like a strongbox key with a round head and simple geometric grooves. It’s made of lighter weight metal than a house key but is around the same size. The key looks old and is spotted w rust (in random circular areas where some kind of coating might have come off), not rusted overall.
Scene 3. I go back upstairs, I think by escalator. The woman is gone. I go down a white corridor maybe 15 ft long. It is a little shabby with closed doors on either side. Then I come to the door of my shop / booth. I put the key in the door and have trouble getting it to open. I’m not positive I get the door open but I remember seeing strong box and that the inside of the room being bare except for the items I came for so I guess I got in.
Possible Interpretations
I wasn’t sure about this dream but it seemed likely to me that the man and child mirrored the 2012 visitation dream. There had been a child with him when he walked me back along the boardwalk and there was a child now. I remembered very little about the child in the visitation dream and even less now. And the man I'd connected to the 2012 dream was vague.
Then, the Dream School I attended offered a special workshop on dream art. As the panelists discussed the value of drawing your dreams I drew the Rusty Key Dream (below).
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As I drew, I found myself drawing the man too dark (as you can see in the head and neck area). He was gray, I realized, not black. Immediately, I thought of a computer and how sometimes certain unavailable options are grayed out. When that happens, you can’t select them, at least not then. I wondered if that was the message. The past could be processed but it could not be chosen.
I also started to think about the strongbox and wonder if it my meant to be my earthly mother’s strongbox or something else. Thinking about the items I was to retrieve—the table, the tablecloth, the locked box—I was reminded of an altar, a Catholic altar, complete with altar cloth. I remembered that the tabernacle is locked and that Mary is often thought of as the tabernacle (that holds the host/Jesus) in Catholic thought.
So there was an altar (which is my personal association with tables) and a locked box but the box didn’t contain the host. It belonged to my mother—but maybe not my earthly mother. Maybe it was another mother, the one I’d been reading about in When God was a Woman.
Maybe I was being called back to the goddess I had left behind. Ishtar, whose many epithets include Goddess of the Storehouse. Or maybe it was some other goddess or maybe I was completely wrong.
I decided to turn the dream over to my small dream group. All the feedback was wonderful and I still have to unpack some of it.
One member suggested that conversation about the key could reflect where I was at in terms of the individuation process in the past and where I'm at now (i.e. unable to unlock things vs. being in possession of a working key). It took a couple days for this to sink in for me but I love the idea of it.
Another member suggested that I count back ten or eleven years and look at what I was doing at the time. So I did. I actually counted back here on the blog. And I found the Goddess Dream.
The Next Synchronicity
So that was all cool and resonant but I was already halfway through the shredding my work process and not ready to stop. I did the podcast below around that time.
But while I was happy with the podcast, I was not happy overall. I wasn't sure what I was doing with the memoir or what I should do with the past.
I knew something was off about all of it. The intuition was strong and felt really dark. I knew I was sabotaging myself but I wasn't sure if I was right or wrong. I thought maybe other women interested in the divine feminine might have a helpful take on some of this.
So I started poking around online and found the following:
I loved how Jungian it was, using the same language used in the Dream School I attend. What if this is true, I thought. What if we aren't really divided against ourselves? What if we're not actually sabotaging? What if we are dealing with outlawed wisdom?
What if, instead shredding, we're supposed to listen?
Where This Leaves Me
I haven't resolved everything but I am paying attention.
I get hung up on language. I think it's probably a pattern-recognition related thing. I'm detail oriented. I put things together in weird ways and can be very critical of the result.
But maybe there's wisdom in that. Maybe I need to look at that critical faculty as a friend instead of an enemy.
I can't say for sure what's happening with the memoir but I think I'm getting some sense of the general direction. How it will turn out exactly is anyone's guess. There is a lot of work left to do, and it isn't all about writing.
__________
Read the dream that kicked this whole dream thing off here: The Spirit Dream
Post photo by Aleksey Nemiro on Pixabay.com
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| Photo by Stephen Wheeler on Unsplash |
The Mystic Review turned 15 years old today August 22nd and received its millionth page view last week. It’s still a milestone I never expected to see. And almost didn't--considering I put the blog on hold from 2017 to 2023 as I pursued various Christian denominations.
Right now I'm working on a dream memoir based on the Spirit Dream and the spiritual journey that followed. I talk about The Mystic Review a lot in the memoir and I don't think I can overstate how important writing here has been for me.
There is no doubt in my mind that dreams and spiritual experience changed my life but whenever I hit a wall it was the blog that helped me find my way through. And that happened repeatedly over the last decade and a half.
Learning is its own reward, but not always and knowing that people were interested in my posts meant more than I can say. So I want to thank everyone who has followed and supported me through all the ups and downs.
And I want to wish a happy birthday to my old friend, The Mystic Review!
_________
You can read the intro to the memoir here: The Story of a Dream
A new tarot layout
I find tarot helpful in gaining insight on creative projects. Recently, I discovered a new tarot layout in a book called Tarot and Psychology by Arthur Rosengarten PhD that is especially good for this purpose.
This post is about that layout and how I applied it. It also includes some basic tarot pointers.
Here is Dr. Rosengarten’s Layout:
- What is for us?
- What is what is against us?
- What is known?
- What is unknown?
- What do we need to know?
How I read
The images on the cards are similar to images in dreams and the same rules of interpretation apply. A working knowledge of symbolism and mythology is helpful. Knowing the cards is helpful too but, as with dreams, personal associations matter.
When I read, I try to take it seriously. I dialogue with the cards and allow plenty of time to journal and reflect. I usually lay the cards out on my library table. Having a dedicated space is nice because you can leave the cards out as long as you like, but it’s definitely not required.
The ask
If you read tarot, you have probably heard all of this before but I think it bears repeating.
- The first step in any reading is to formulate a question. The question should be open-ended and leave room for reflection.
- Asking for insight and understanding is good. Asking the cards to directly tell you what to do is not.
- Asking about the future or a specific outcome (fortune-telling) is the lowest and most disempowering use of tarot.
NOTE: Not everyone agrees with this list.
My question for this reading was, “What do I need to know about my new writing project?”
As I shuffle I consider the situation, looking at it from different angles, then try to enter into an open or detached state toward the end.
The reading
These are the first five cards I drew according to Dr. Rosengarten’s layout + two extra cards I’ll explain as we go.
- What is for? The Fool (0)
- What is against? 6 of Pentacles (6)
- What is known? The Star (17)
- What is unknown? 7 Cups (7)
- What do I need to know? The Empress (0+6+17+7+=30=3)*
Looking at the first 5 cards
I journaled six and half pages on this reading so I’m just going include a few highlights. As you’ll see in the next photo, I have a second notebook I use to write down actionable ideas I come up with as I journal.
I try to look at each card like I’ve never seen it before. While I know all the standard “meanings,” I like to think about what I see in the card in the here and now.
When I journal on the cards, I end each entry on each card with a question for further reflection.
Here is a condensed example of what I wrote in my journal on this reading:
The Fool (for) Idealism. Seeker. The journey. Beginnings. The Fool as I see him this morning isn’t only beginning a new journey filled with naivete and optimism—he’s embracing it. His arms are wide open, like he is open. The future is uncertain, the chasm yawns, but he is wholly in the moment. I see a visionary with his eyes fixed on the vision. I sense the energy of new beginning. How can I ride this wave?
The 6 of Pentacles (against) Earth. Generosity. Wealth. Over-spending. Need. I used to always read pentacles as money and I still look at that first. This is a card of flow. It can be seen as generosity, depletion or need. I’m not overspending on my writing business but what about my energy? Pentacles are earth so this might be about energy lost through projects. I’m not doing too much (for me) but there are several steps left in getting my last completed project published. How does that affect this project? Are there issues about distribution I need to consider?
The Star (known) Hope. Balance. Destiny. The unconscious. Like many major arcana cards there is a LOT that can be said about the Star. Today, the eight pointed star reminds me of Inanna and her descent and the pool is the deep well of the unconscious. I am reminded of archetypal energies pouring out the water of inspiration into both the deep well and the thirsty ground. These are familiar (known) motifs and associations but how might they apply to the story I’m writing?
The 7 of Cups (unknown) Emotion. Water. Fantasy. Confusion. Discernment. The same card in the same position it was in last week. That reading was about fiction writing in general but its reappearance (like a reoccurring dream) makes me think I haven’t really understood the message. In some ways it mirrors the 6 of Pentacles (both show division). Cups are water and water is emotion and therefore related to inner states. How I am divided or conflicted and how might this be showing up in or around the story? What have I missed? How am I scattered or indecisive?
The Empress (what I need to know) Fertility. Creativity. Venus. Queen of Heaven. Selected from the numerical total of the other cards (30 = 3 + 0 = 3), the Empress circles back a familiar goddess archetype. Romance books explore the feminine (note the symbol on the rock). Many of my stories have themes of trauma and healing, including the vampire story I just finished and the romance I’m writing now. The Empress, seems to be addressing some reservations I have about my FMC. But is this accurate?
Looking at Cards 6-8
Cards 6-8 are extra cards not in Dr. Rosengarten’s spread. They are the two aces in the photos plus Strength.
Possible progression (6 & 7) I like to pull two more cards to join with the “what is known” card in the top of the spread. This is a little predictive on the surface but I think of it as where things are > where they may be headed.
The Ace of Swords (air, beginning, spirit, inspiration) > Ace of Pentacles (earth, beginning, material, building). To me, this shows a good progression, from conception to implementation. This is the energy of beginnings (which connects to The Fool), however, not of completion. Aces are especially meaningful to me, so much so that I once wrote a poem on the topic. It was about starting over. I'm starting over with a new story. What are my next steps?
An 8th card for clarification I wasn’t sure if my insights on the Empress were on target or not. Given the symbolism in this reading, I liked the idea of an eighth card so I shuffled and drew one. That card was Strength which is card 8 in the major arcana. It is also the featured card on my tarot calendar for August. The number and symbolism seemed synchronistic so I read what was written on the calendar.
I liked what the calendar said about strength from within vs. strength over others and the reminder that the original name of the Strength card was Fortitude—which is one of the four cardinal virtues as represented in the major arcana. Fortitude is strength that does not break. The woman taming the lion in the Strength card (3rd from the left below) reminds me of Ishtar with her lions. The Star and the Empress suggest other related goddess archetypes (Inanna and Isis). To me, the mythology is relevant. But how might I apply it?
My takeaway
I think the questions posed by the 6 of Pentacles and the 7 of Cups call for further thought. I liked the idea of fortitude as it might apply to bother me FMC and myself. The aces call for a shift—from envisioning to building but it is all very preliminary.
I found the goddess imagery in this reading interesting. Associated attributes like creativity, intuition and independence are qualities I want to further develop in my FMC and in myself.
As I journaled on this reading, I got some specific ideas about characterization and backstory—as well as some general insights about the plot.
The cards will stay out on the library table until I feel that I’ve gotten all I can from it—but I already feel that I’ve made progress.
___________
🩸 You can check out the first chapter of my vampire story (which I’m serializing to Substack) here. Check it out if you're curious about how I write romance: https://barbaragraver.substack.com/p/trancing-miranda-vampire-story-ch-1
Luna wondering when tarot time ends and walk time starts:
I've gone back and forth on the topic of writing my memoir a lot. On one hand, it seems completely ridiculous for an ordinary person who has not achieved anything unusual in life to write a memoir.
On the other hand, I lost hope and a dream saved me, and I feel called to tell that story.
UDATE 1/9/2026: Please note that this is my original intro. Writing the memoir has been a process and I've gained clarity on the project as I worked on it. It isn't a strictly a spiritual memoir anymore, though there is still a lot of spiritual content.
Here is the new blurb:
📖 Blurb | I was always different. Sensitive. Passionate. Clueless. People didn’t understand me, and I didn't understand myself. I made mistake after mistake. I turned myself inside out trying to live a life that didn’t suit me. When that life imploded, an unusual dream set me on a spiritual path. But the spiritual systems and traditions that worked for others never worked for me. Finally, I found out why. The Spirit Dream is the story of my journey to a late-diagnosis of autism and ADHD, and the dreams, synchronicities, and creative processes that guided me.The Spirit Dream Excerpt
In 2008, at the lowest point in my life, I had a dream I couldn’t explain.
Unlike the murky, sepia colored dreams I was used to, this dream was sharp and bright and saturated with color. A spectrum of blue, unlike anything I’d ever seen. Vivid reds. Shining white light. A beautiful woman with deep-water blue eyes, radiating love.
Filled with sparkling gemstones and mysterious beings, the dream told the story of a journey to and from an amazing location, and it told that story coherently.
As the woman in blue guided me from one dream experience to another, separate themes played out, like story-lines in a movie. When the dream finally ended, each loose end came together in a memorable and emotional conclusion.
I woke up convinced that my mysterious dream guide was someone special. I knew that the things that she showed me meant something. And even though I had no idea who she was or what she was trying to tell me, I was determined to find out.
This was the beginning of a spiritual journey that carried me through the New Age, in and out of Spiritualism and Wicca, halfway across the world, on pilgrimage to Israel, back to Christianity, through parapsychology, and onto the doorstep of Carl Gustav Jung.
__________________
You can read the Spirit Dream here: The Spirit Dream
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| Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash |
The Project
I like online media because my neurodivergent brain can handle short articles and even shorter podcasts without a problem. Long-form writing is a challenge, but I was able to finish a short vampire novel this year, anyway, and have a sequel in the works.
I feel good about those projects and there is no shortage of ideas for other books.
The book idea I want to talk about in this post is a memoir about the dream I call the Spirit Dream and how it affected me. I don't really like the idea of writing a memoir, but I feel called to tell the story of the dream because of the difference it made in my life.
The Affect the Dream Had
I spent the entire decade before the Spirit Dream suffering one loss after another. The vision of a perfect family. My lovely home. The profession I had trained for. My extended family. My entire inheritance. My ability to write.
I wasn't diagnosed with autism then and didn't know that I was in deep autistic burnout, but I knew I'd given up. And then the dream came and changed it all. Not all at once, of course, but gradually.
My family regrouped. Finances improved. We moved into a new house that is much better than the in-between one. Those things probably would have happened, anyway. What wouldn't have happened was the life I now lead.
The Spirit Dream kicked off the spiritual journey that became the Mystic Review. It taught me things that mattered. It brought me back full-circle to the place I needed to be. Not the picture-perfect life I projected. My real life. The one that I was meant for.
It took over fifteen years to make that circuit and during that time, a lot of things happened. I went on some amazing spiritual adventures. I made and lost friends. I had other dreams that helped correct my course. I learned important things. I rediscovered my creative spark. And in the end, just this year, an unexpected synchronicity put it all into perspective.
There are still more questions. Just like there will always be more to learn. But I'm ready to share what I have so far.
Not my wisdom. Dream wisdom.
But that doesn't make the writing any easier.
How I Struggle with Writing
I have poor executive functioning and a lot of self doubt and when I hit the 10,000 word mark on any project, I start ripping thins apart.
Which is part of the reason I started and restarted the Spirit Dream story at least five different times. Each version had a slightly different focus. One version was about faith, another was about autism, others were about me. And not a single one of those versions worked.
The issues were thematic AND structural, as my writing issues always are.
And then I started working with my dreams again and waking up in the middle of the night with words running through my head. The words came in phrases and paragraphs and pages—and one of the phrases was, "structure the book on the dream."
So I went back to the Spirit Dream and saw that I had divided it into five parts. This was something I'd done a long time ago to make it readable. Now it occurred to me that five parts might be a thing. And it was.
Sister Regina Kelly is probably shaking her head in heaven right now, but somehow I had forgotten Shakespeare and the five act structure.
The Spirit Dream, as I wrote it down that morning in 2008, had that structure. Baked in.
So what does all this mean?
The difference between a symbol and a sign according to the Jungians is that a sign communicates a single thing, while a symbol has many different meanings. Dreams are full of symbols. So it makes sense that I would get multiple insights from this most recent encounter with the Spirit Dream.
One insight has to do with theme and another has to do with structure. But the most important insight in my opinion is that is this is something I need to do.
As always, I will keep you posted <3
And this is what I like about goals. We can say we are going in a specific direction (our goal) and then set meaningful check points between here and there. If we don't get to the goal but manage to arrive at those intermediate points, we know we're on our way to something better.
Last week I participated in a guided meditation in a course that I am taking. And I wanted to write about that experience even though it does not fit in here in the way I'd like.
The course is given by author of Writing Down Your Soul, Janet Connor. It is call Plug in for Writer's and I recommend it highly. During this, our third class, Janet lead us through a meditation aimed at removing blockages impeding our creative flow. We were to imagine each blockage as a rock. As Janet guided as gently through the meditation, I found a rock at each and every chakra. My rocks were made of different material. Each was a different shape, size and color.
At my first chakra, I found hematite. At my second an elongated piece of slate. At my third and fourth a sort of chalk. At my fifth a black rock, very like the deep dark and always slightly iridescent anthracite coal which is everywhere here in Northeast PA. At my sixth chakra small rusty shards. At my seventh a small gray stone of no particular type.
At felt a wonderful sense of release during the meditation but I also felt that there was more work to be done. That night I had two interesting experiences during sleep. In the first, I woke up to a voice speaking quietly but very clearly inside my head (as often happens to me at night). It said, "We couldn't remove all. Some are gone. And some are changed." I wrote down the message and went back to sleep and began to dream.
In the dream, I was thrilled to have been given a box that held a litter of new born wolf pups. Or so I thought. When I got home however I discovered that the box did not hold the actual puppies but a collection of soon to be hatched wolf eggs instead. Each egg had a different shape and size and, as I remember, there were five of them. Several of the eggs were round and rock-like - but I was quite sure that they were eggs nonetheless.
I was worried sick that the eggs might not hatch but in the end they did. Three of the egg-rocks yielded ducklings. One broke and I didn't see anything inside. I was happy to have ducks but still disappointed that there were no wolves. And then the last egg opened. Inside was a tiny perfect coal black wolf and I loved that wolf immediately.
I carried the tiny wolf everywhere with me in the dream and as I did it grew into a beautiful and affectionate animal with a variegated coat of brown and tan.
There's more to the dream than that but I wanted to comment here on the message which I am quite sure concerned the meditation I'd participated in earlier that day - and the symbolism of the dream. The rock-eggs were like the rocks I encountered in Janet's meditation. The coal black wolf paralleled my third chakra rock. Black rock. Black wolf. And now a third black to complete the circuit.
When I was nineteen, I left home for fifth or sixth or seventh time. My family had long since given up on stopping me, if they had ever really tried at all. I was living on my own for some time at that point but I liked to keep my parents updated. In the name of doing that, I met mother one rainy afternoon in a coffee shop on the main street of a town which I have, in an unexpected way, come back to. I told her I was leaving and I tried to tell her why.
The reasons, then and now, were murky. I was passionate about poetry in those days and I wanted to garner the experiences of a great writer. My mother didn't understand that, or perhaps she did, but I felt more misunderstood after that meeting than I had before. I sat in the old-fashioned vinyl and Formica booth long after she had left, writing poetry on a series of paper napkins. Pieced together they became this poem.
Pittston, On Leaving (1979)
There's nothing for me here. Only rain
and streets of wet magnesium.
These hundred panes are filled with a watery yellow light
but the corners of the shop are webbed with shadow.
There should be carriages and gas-lights here
but there is only a maroon and gold awning
out there across the street.
The tiny window panes run with rain, blur the words,
whatever words
glisten up above that awning.
Plate glass windows and clothes behind:
Kresge's yellow-purple cotton housecoats,
old display cases, nineteen-forties styles,
and everything looks so old.
My face, these shops, slip along grey-hound windows
lost their hold
and vanish.
Plans forgotten before the coffee's cold.
Promises I cannot forget.
And you within your distance.
Tomorrow is waiting in a shipping crate,
one more highway, one more home.
I can't stop now.
So this time it's Miami, because there's no place left
I haven't been
I take what was me in two-fisted filthy chunks
and wrench it out.
I am quite sure that those chunks, however awkward poetically, were black. Black as Northeast PA coal and blocked fifth chakra centers and the dark-bright promise of a newborn wolf. And I am equally sure that removing them was not as simple as I imagined. There is, I suspect, a message in all of that.
One last thing. Several years ago I had an odd and somewhat disturbing reading at a psychic fair. I was beaten down by life a bit that day, that year, that decade. And the reader I paid to hear that I was a phoenix or a swan told me I was a wolf instead. My immediate reaction was that I did not want to be a wolf at all. That I wanted to be something beautiful and transformational and winged. The reader saw that I wasn't pleased but he stuck to his assessment. "Some people are birds and some are sheep," he said firmly. "But you're a wolf, my dear. Whether you want to be or not."
Wolves are brave animals, both alone and in a pack, and I suspect that that was part of it. I didn't want to be brave then - or even really now. But the truth was that I was already brave whether I wanted to admit to it or not. I was brave at 15 or 17 or 19 - packing up my little VW bug to head out for parts unknown. I was braver still in the years that followed as I battled bad luck, tragedy and loss.
But there is a kind of bravery I still don't want - an owning of things which I would like to finish and be done with - even and especially because it seems I never will be. I want to write about the light and yet, despite my best efforts, I find myself pulled back to the dark stories and changing metaphors of fiction. Some things cannot be taken out, I am reminded. But I've yet to discover how they will be transformed.
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