Episode #3: A Suitable Vessel For Magic
Wake Up And Dance
Wake Up And Dance, March 24th, 2020
It’s one thing to mourn you in the winter, but to mourn you in the spring is a new kind of torture. All of the bulbs you planted in the garden last fall have woken up early. Tiny purple flowers, that I should know the name of, sprout along the sides of the gray gravel in the driveway. They cluster on the front and back side of the fence, around the soft dark moss under the spigot, and circle the ground underneath the giant shrub on the lawn , that if I had been paying attention I would know the name of. Of course you also sprinkled them in front of the back cottage so I can see them clearly when I’m in the house. Little lilac stars that startle me. Sometimes I yell at them. What did you imagine when you placed each bulb in the ground, Nick? It feels to me like a very strategic plan to break my heart a little more each day.
Today there’s a full moon, and the clocks have sprung forward making the light strange. It’s all happening too fast and it’s all happening on your birthday . It’s too much for one day. I don’t want the fucking flowers in the yard to come up, or for daylight savings to give me more daylight to grieve in. As I write this now there is an ancient ride-on rocking horse in our house, and sparkling, tulle-skirted ballerina shadowboxes, both from a yard sale haul this afternoon. I put the horsehair-stuffed Palomino in your office, knowing you would love its gnarled leather ears, and repaired paint spots on the canvas body, its nearly eaten hair tail, and its green runners. Then I put the 50s sequined ballerinas in here too, thinking they might disgust you enough to make a visit.
Yesterday was just your third seventh day in the bardo, and I am maddened at the passage of time. It’s years since you left us. Years.
The Pandemic is rising. We have 46,000 US cases on record. I bought Andrew Holocek’s book, Dream Yoga, with lucid dreaming instructions. And Goddamnit if I didn’t dream that I woke up in my dream! I was racing against a dream clock to find dream plane tickets, and then the dream cab driver who brought us to the hotel started behaving strangely. He was piling up neat little, wallet-sized pieces of folded paper, held together with paper clips, like you used to do. I became suspicious that he was using some kind of sleight of hand to distract us. That suspicion was my my cue. It slowly dawned on me that something wasn’t right.
I’ve been following Andrew’s directions to check during the daytime to see if I’m dreaming. I just stop and look at my ring and ask if I’m dreaming. And his instructions at night are exactly the same as Castaneda’s that you used, and that his teacher don Juan Mateus taught him. So before I went to bed I set the intention to see my ring on my hand, and when I saw it to remember to ask myself: “Is this a dream?”
I did it. I saw my ring on my finger and realized: “I’m in a dream.” Boom. That was the miracle that flipped the scene. Nothing was the same. There is nothing else like this kind of agency. It’s a feeling that you never knew existed, and suddenly you can’t live without it. It’s the missing piece that explains it all. It’s so deceptively simple. But it is so slippery that you can’t hold onto it long enough to know how to steer it.
You know how exciting this is, Nick. You were the one to see your hand in your dream first. One night in the year before you died a growling dog menaced you in your dreamscape. But once you saw your hand it shocked you awake. Nothing could hurt you anymore, so you turned and growled back: “Hellooooo Dogggyyyy!!!!!” I loved shouting that call and response to you from room to room in our house.
How long was it that you practiced Castaneda’s dreaming instructions - six months, a year - I mean seriously practiced, with the added incentive of the cancer? How many nights did you climb the dark attic stairs intending to cross over into that new world? I remember the morning I came downstairs from the attic and you were waiting for me at the table downstairs. Lit up. Bursting with your news. You had done it! You had finally seen your hand in a dream, understood that it was your hand, and that you were dreaming.
Did you have the same sensation I had, of a trick being played on you before you woke up? Did you have a slow, dawning suspicion? I started to feel funny, like I was in a game. I felt a buzzing inside, and around the edges of my body. Did you feel this peculiar buzz, like you couldn’t stay in your self?
At some point in my dream I also remembered to check if I could see my shadow. Andrew says that is not supposed to be possible. In fact it’s one of the ways to check if whether you are in a lucid dream, or dead. I ran my hand near a wall where there was a lamp, and I did see my shadow. That shouldn’t have been possible in a lucid dream. That makes me wonder whether I really woke up, or whether I just dreamed that I did.
Reminder:
