Room full of people

I had a dream last night, which is rare for me.

There were two groups of roommates who were talking about combining their living situation, and I was considering joining and was also involved in the talks. On group was some ex-Mongolian-throat singer guys who lived in a big old brick house with lots of corridors and narrow courtyard gardens outside; the house was lit with winter light, a little grungy with an orange cast to it. The other group was a couple of their girlfriends and associated people. I'd knoen them both vaguely for over a year, since back when they did more active throat singing -- was that more than a year? Pre-pandemic?

One person was moving out, which spurred the whole conversation, and everyone came into the livingroom and open-plan kitchen with pass-through and gathered to discuss the idea. I remember saying, "if we're going to do this we should talk about who we each are and what we expect or need out of it" and some of them agreed and started and then the one Mongolian guy kept it flowing smoothly, prompting a little.

The most noteworthy part of the dream was how, once I initiated discussion, the Mongolian guy/maybe head roommate? and his one friend took it and ran with it, making sure everyone spoke, assessing potential conflicts and speaking to them diplomatically and thoughtfully. By the end of the dream (I woke up before the end of the meeting) I felt so confident in that one guy, and so ...held?... to know that if I joined that group I wouldn't be the only one driving the interpersonal fabric creation and repair.

I mean, I was hardly me in it, there was not a lot of garden and I didn't mind, but it was such a nice feeling. I think it gives me a sense of the baseline I'd like in that sort of situation.

Also something about fermented milk, which I don't quite remember.

Kaleidoscope: dream work

That dream has opened up so many drifting pieces of sense and memory in my mind.

Fall came literally overnight, blown in on the wind, and fall feels like nostalgia to me. It feels like moving, like change, like huddling into spaces with people. Like roommates too, I guess, which one might expect to be a fall thing but isn't for me, maybe it's the moving that's associated.

Watching a woman with ADHD talk about her experience yesterday, she said: "we're not the flowers, we're the bees, moving from group to group to cross-pollinate". That doesn't sound exactly right, but I know I'm not a flower. Maybe I'm the soil.

Speaking up in the dream the other night as that random person visiting the house; no one else really knew me, the other groups knew each other well, I speak up with some relevant knowledge and end up getting pulled into the situation to help. That feeling is so familiar. It's a sense of everyone else being on rails, following their patterns, being in their known relationships and their unquestioned assumptions of knowledge and me as a free agent in the midst of it with no rails, no known relationships, and no ability to safely assume. I come with knowledge outside their daily round, though.

One of the secrets to meaning in life is, if you persist in looking for meaning you will find it. Another secret is, life is better with some kind of meaning. The third secret: humans are superb meaning-making machines. I can say that this dream feels like it comes with meaning for me, and if I can find meaning I'll have been right.

I don't and can't run on the rails everyone else uses. I don't mind; rails don't suit me. But I can enjoy standing among them and watching their complexity, I can appreciate that a world without rails is chaos and collisions. I'll do better if I stay out of the way of people's rails; I like being hit as little as they like being derailed. But still there are times when I can step in and enjoy the complexity of group dynamics around me, established groups and all. There are times when I can connect.

And to escape that metaphor, there will be people who can organize and troubleshoot and see into the future and still cause things to happen. I can seek out those people, I suppose? I don't gravitate towards people who make decisions for me or who create a ton of structure, my PDA will often bounce off them, but sometimes --

I'm having such a strong sense memory of the moment the anaesthetic went into my hand, back in the hospital. My veins hurt, it burned like cold fire, and there was nothing I could do about that and also nothing I had to do about it. That sense of pain and safety combined, my arm hurting but still a group of people there around me, caring about me, taking care of me in ways I could not take care of myself and being friendly towards me. The deliberate surrender, for some moments, of autonomy. My dream felt like that a little bit, no pain, but someone taking care of things competently, in a way that did not require me to do anything, and the things I needed were part of the things being taken care of.

I know it's important to be part of a group caring together to build something. Otherwise we're isolated atomized, we forget that so many people are able and willing to do good work, to build strongly and to dismantle with care and gentleness.

I'm right where I was a couple years ago; I need community and community can come in many forms.

Monday night I went to dinner with my coworker; his wife is a teacher but also runs a local-- domestic violence shelter, but I think there's more involved than that, it does a bunch of community building for women and has a certified kitchen etc. Hm. We didn't talk about it at the time. I'm nervous about anything that centers women, but that might be my entry point? Maybe I'm reminded of this because I had the same sort of cared-for feeling at the transition house as a kid, when we left dad and stayed there a month. New clothes! Smelling-nice soap! A warm building! (The clothes had been seized at the border as brand knockoffs and I guess donated). Helping provide that to others would feel like it had meaning, and it's already being organized by someone competent so then I could feel cared-for in that way.

I guess I'm feeling very uncared-for at work, no one really cares what I do or how well I do it and only the one coworker is doing anything remotely similar. The lead for the program does it off the side of his desk, so I'm not part of an inspired team. So I'm looking to volunteering or maybe a (co-housing situation?) to find that sort of shared purpose.

I should remember that locking myself into something that might feel suffocating if the rest of my life picks up is maybe a bad idea.

But volunteering might be good.

Also my friend has moved to the city a couple hours away for school now, she's very very competent in working with people and systems. Even just spending time talking with her would be lovely. I believe I'll do that, in fact. Hearing her insights into the school experience will, if nothing else, let me feel like someone else isn't on the rails either.

Ugh

My tolerance for unkindness has been exceeded today. At work the crowd from the other office swept in, and someone else was back from another work assignment, and my office is all cubicles. There was one conversation where someone was extending the benefit of the doubt to a third party not involved in the discussion, and three conversations full of spite and malice and dissection of flaws and wishing people ill. Then the Queen died, and my facebook feed lit up with spite about that "good riddance" and "thank goodness" and "don't tone police". About someone's death.

I can't deal with this. I guessI couldn't deal with it last time someone died and everyone celebrated either, but it feels extra bad right now.

Devotions

When pain stops.

Friends.

Duck fat.

Facebook's 30 day mute ability.

Canning, as a pleasurable experience.

The outside big light that helps out the dogs when they are worried about bears.

Replacement parts for the lost piece of mt floor washer being cheap.

The ability to go to bed early on a bad day.

Cute baby animals.