Seven Moon Dreams
Indian Baptiste saying,
We painted our dreams.
We painted our dreams on our faces and bodies.
We took them into us by painting them on ourselves.
(1)
Between inspiration and exhalation, in the moment of pause, where no words can be found, is where a dream may be birthed.
Some dreams are less abstract and quickly begin to take form.
It helps to write it down.
How frustrating when it slips before it's made its way to tongue.
Before it's made its way to this world.
Some dreams reshape into a question, like: how can an embodied, mindful practice bring us through the portal of birth?
Or into whatever is birthed?
And what tools, if any, would be needed to support this process?
It's an art, sitting with dreams.
It's become an art to appreciate the gifts of not knowing, expanded into question, into curiosity,
into pondering,
into searching,
into dreaming.
(2)
There is surrender in allowing the mind to wander. At times it puts me to sleep and I wake from distant travel where loved ones have been kissed and brought home.
(They are nestled in between that place of wake and sleep, a place where they are seen with forgiving eyes, a place for simultaneous love and letting go.)
Today my nap dream asked:
how would you be if all you had to do is show up?
If there was nothing to change, nothing to fix, and very little, if much of anything, to do?
What would being look like in such a space?
How would you define yourself and others in such a state?
Would it matter if they didn't understand?
(3)
I told myself I can no longer bring books home though I keep bringing books home and there's a shop nearby that sells enchanting, discounted books.
Falling asleep with books doesn't mean every word is read, but it's likely they're absorbed in some other unbeknownst, magical way.
(4)
An evening rest led to a dream of my son napping in the gray chair across from me. A closer look at his face and it was longer, his skin that was clear an hour ago now had bumps and hair, and I breathed into him, "where did the time go?"
A dream of deep pink and black waistbeads, but woke realizing they are real, freshly tied on this afternoon.
The beads feel new and foreign,
dangling across my belly.
Fog in eyes, my wakeful arms hug my tired, adorned body,
and I remember.
(5)
Does a commitment to rest create palpable dreams?
Does sleep beget sleep, or does too much create overfatigue?
These are the questions after a midday nap stretched longer than expected.
My skin is sheathed with exhaustion and daylight dreams.
It smells of noon rain and droplets shed to a needed cry:
A cry void of thought.
A cry of gratitude.
A cry traced with curiosity and sorrow.
A freedom cry.
(6)
Rebirth.
You never know what will happen in the place of in-between,
you do not know what you’ll wake to.
Today I wake to cramps and a heating pad that has gone cold.
I wake to my daughter in my bed
and to what I thought was the sound of laughter, but she clarified that she was crying. Summer school was ending, and she already missed the teacher who was kind to her.
So we make the teacher a card
as I breathe through the aches of cramps, as I smile at the light of my fourth grade teacher
whose absence I still remember.
(7)
Dreams, tears, breath.
Tell me, body, how can I support you?
Wiggle toes and fingers.
Belly breathe.
You know you are here to be.
And you are not alone, body,
through uncomfortability,
through what cannot be changed, and
through what was never truly broken.
You are witnessed and held.
You are wrapped in arms,
dear body, dear flesh, grief, blood.
You have permission to bleed through dreams.
(0)
August.
The month that apparently ends too soon.
Like the outings with my children:
scooter and bike rides, walks, trips to stores, restaurants, the library, the pool, the lake…
They ask, "what's next?"
"Be here." I remind them.
"Be here." I remind myself.
