Greenstorm's Journal

Dreamed that a fox and her 22 kits had moved in.

No, thank you.

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.

Dreams of a big iron ship that hid me, invisible, if I stand still within it. Dreams of a small group of people on it and I am a patient man, hiding over days, slowly more in sight as the shop accepts me. Dreams that near arrival I am revealed, and we prepare together for what comes next: down into tunnels underground. I step in second. I wake up. Clanging iron. Stillness and stillness and stillness. A weary adrenal system. Fragments of conversation that slowly reveal their speakers' characters but don't quite reveal why. Watching the longstanding intimacy of a small, tight working group from outside. Inhabiting small spaces, edges. Forcing indifferent acceptance with leverage. Stepping down into the tunnel after the leader, surprising everyone. Going into the soft dark.

Someone new spent all night getting close to me, then betrayed me to someone who killed me and used my body for parts on their project.

Thanks, subconscious.

It's stuck around with me all day, and it was pretty sad this morning, so here's my dream:

I was at some sort of big gathering with all the old Vancouver folks, maybe it was a conference, maybe it was someone's big home. I ended up on a couch next to A, who I used to date, and who I suspect it ended somewhat ghostily on both sides with. Anyhow, someone I still care for a lot but our lives are very separate now and we haven't spoken in a long time.

Chemistry started sparking very quickly and a proposition was made and tacitly accepted. We started to get up and head off together. At that moment a group of people including Tucker came by and I gave Tucker a hug before wandering off with A, but during that hug someone came up and informed everyone that Tucker had been exposed to covid shortly before.

Tucker was going to his room to self-isolate so I turned back to A. A was sad, but because I'd hugged Tucker who had been exposed to covid we were beyond his safety threshold. We stood apart looking sad for a moment, then he melted back into the crowd. I knew I probably wouldn't see him or have another chance to be close for a long time.

Then I woke up.

There's a lot of symbolism there: symbolism about intimacy and isolation, about my cometary return period, about what I give up and for who, and about what prevents be from going after things I want.

I also am prone to visitations in my dreams. I have intimacy dreams like other people have sex dreams; my mind supplies what I need when I'm not getting it. The sadness of a person being gone from my life when I wake up, either because they are gone or because they never existed, is so familiar to me.

Between waking up like that and my stitches hurting and doing weird things and being so tired from basically jungle-gymming for a couple hours yesterday bracketed by a hike today isn't the greatest day. I picked raspberries, got eggs, watered the front porch garden, and made myself honey avocado milk though, so it's not too bad.

Let's see how tomorrow goes.

The night before last I slept very late, I was exhausted, and I had a ton of people come visit me in my dreams. It's far enough along that I don't remember most of who, but definitely G, Kelsey, and Heather from work along with a couple others. In many but not all cases there was a definite "Greenie, we like you but we aren't going to spend much time with you anymore" vibe. Which. These are not folks I spend much time with? But I guess my brain was just wrapping that up.

Then last night, same deal. Tired, hard to wake up, and I had a pretty extended dream about hanging out with Adrian E.

I don't normally remember my dreams. I don't normally have visitations by people who actually exist. Normally I slip into alternate worlds, alternate lifetimes, and live them out until I wake up.

I guess "people" are alternative worlds and lifetimes nowadays. Threshold is the real world, from which I semi-grudgingly leave to go to work briefly.

Staying home so much is clarifying for me that, well, I like being here. Travelling to the coast a couple times a year was a holdover from my move: I felt like I could leave the city and keep those relationships intact. Now I know I'd rather host the folks who are willing and able to come up.

The thing is, because Threshold is such an extension of me, I can't be in any other place as my full self. I'm always leaving a huge chunk of myself elsewhere. Up here, when I see someone, they can see me instead of just a shadow, instead of the portable parts only.

So. Maybe for a lot of people that realization is a bit of a parting.

I woke up at 4am, read a little, then went back to sleep. My 5:30 alarm to get up for yoga interrupted a dream in which I was snuggling with my Thea-pup. That may be the first warm, loving, secure dream I've had ever where, instead of a feeling of loss when I woke up because that person was gone forever, I could just go and snuggle my pup a little more and then come back to her tonight.

What an amazing feeling.

I'm feeling calmer today. I want to try to hold onto that. We've decided on the place we want; we put down the deposit tonight, then I can stop worrying. It's basically right behind/beside VCC, at St Catherine's X 6th. We decided against the little house because although it's AWESOME (well, old, not polished, but super cute and a stand-alone house with a yard) it would be absolutely stretching our budget and, well, I'm tryin' ta go to school here.

I had the most interesting and engaging dream last night. I was taking a philosophy class, and I walked in a little late-- it was the second session. I was handed a test, two pages, double-sided, multiple choice. And the test didn't make any sense. The questions went sort of like this:

1) How many kittens are in a basketful?
a) (picture of a circle with pink dots) b) (picture of an orange bar) c) picture of a pink circle with orange dots d) (a picture of a white-and-green circle)

So they didn't make any sense. The answers were mostly little abstract icons, when they had words they were nonsense. Neither I nor any of the rest of the class was worried, though. It felt like there was a point or a lesson to doing this, and when we were done the teacher would take them, look at them all, and show us whatever it was. I woke up before that point though. It was pretty pleasant trying to choose a 'best answer' and sort of puzzling over it all.

Well, here we are: another day. Today I need to pick up my last paycheque, talk to my old boss about my t4, get rat food & litter, lunch with Mom, and drop off the damage deposit/first month's rent. Then a nice dinner with Michael and I get to go to sleep again. These are all things to look forward to!

Look how social food is for me. I'm looking forward to living not-far from Tillie and CrazyChris, who do similar foodsy stuff. Nothin' like making a bunch of food and sharing it.

The dream ends thusly: things are finished, and it's time to move on. vIt's time to go somewhere that looks like a home and settle down, and we cannot do tha where we are. We get into a little box, an elevator. My love, myself, and the third person who dfacilitates this sort of thing are all there. Standing in the box, my love and I watch each other. The elevator doesn't seem to move, but somehow we are moving, and changing. I am getting older; he is getting older. Hair greys, skin roughens, we sit there and watch each other get older until I can't stand it and I bury myself in his arms. The primary emotion is a poignant sort of joy. We are going where we want to go, but we're missing out on the lives that we are each living, elsewhere. I can see stories slipping past his eyes, until at last we are where we want to be, a corridor in some distant planet.

We step out of the little box, much of our lives now behind us, but free to live the rest of them together. I see my brother then. He too has travelled this way, and he's older by far. There is a wrench of pain as I realise I've missed out on so much of his life too, and then we step into each other's arms.

That's how the dream ended. There was more, other things that led to this, a sequence in a swimming pool and all the story-things that dreams usually have, but it's the end that hit me. When I was young (oh, Kynnin) I had wanted someone to go through all my intense life experiences with so that we'd know each other, we'd see each other change, we'd always be there with each other. That passed away reasonably recently, the desire for that folding under the reality that it cannot happen. It's too late, much of my life is behind me; and besides, that sort of leaning is different than the deliberate, continued association of two people who do what they can for each other and who stand on their own feet. My family took that place for awhile, people who had been there since the beginning and who knew most things, but the closeness isn't always there; I don't lay my troubles on them, and they try not to on me. Now I am a person singular in the universe, associated with others by very strong webs indeed but alone in my own skin. I go out into the world with others sometimes, but it is side-by-side and not inside a unit with them. I go out by myself as well, and I bring back my growth and my stories to try to make sense of with those close to me.

And right now, of course, yes, Graham's grandmother has died and he's helping to plan the funeral; Juggler is working on a divorce; mom is getting buried in lawyers by my step-father. There are changes afoot locked away inside people, where I can't see them even if I stand there and look, even if I can see them getting older before my eyes I can't see the journey of their lives. I can only see that, indeed, they're different. I can only see that they come back to me with stories, and these stories perhaps mean something to them.

I know that I've changed, in that my own rock at the centre of the universe grows ever heavier, I grow ever stabler, I square my shoulders more and more when I walk out alone. It's a measure of that change that I don't feel, anymore, as if my life is passing at any speed at all. I've arrived somewhere, and now it's the scenery that changes around me.

Tht's all beside the point, though. If I could be there, in where it makes a difference, I would be. Where I can't, I will simply be here when you get back.