Michael and Jaspenelle

A shooting star

The soul has wings that bring it forth into the wonder we know as Life, it comes to us from the Sommerlands, from Heaven, from the Unknown. In this state of Life, it can laugh, cry, awaken, mourn, create, frustrate, hope… love. Maybe sometimes the soul isn’t always ready for these wonders, it can be pretty overwhelming to be born, (or reborn) but when does choose to come forth into our marvelous, tumultuous, inspiring little world it is a truly amazing experience. I know this because I have given birth and I knew the moment I looked into Damian’s eyes that his radiant soul knew it too. Who knew one tiny blue speck in the vastness of the universe could harbor such amazing potential?

Life, as we known it, begins and ends, what comes before or after is a mystery to most. I know the soul exists, the evidence is in my dreams, Damian’s soul came to me on wings. I accept that come people don’t agree, some people see my evidence as simple faith but my faith makes all things possible. I definitely believe in the divine, maybe not a single omnipotent being, but I believe that there are sacred forces out there that are worthy of my respect.

To me Life is most certainly only one side of a coin, the Mystery is the other. Death (and Birth) I suppose is that thin edge connecting the two. It is a turning point, a veil, obscuring the great beyond. Many of us feel apprehension as we look at Death (and as we wait for a Birth too.) Why, do we fear the Mystery? To people of faith, we might feel an understanding of the Mystery, but even we see the transition as daunting and sometimes terrifying, both to watch and experience.

Everything must eventually die. From the body the soul takes flight once more back into the Mystery, into the embracing, welcoming and joyous light of the divine. For some, the ancestors who have not yet returned to Life will be there to greet them under the golden apple trees of the Sommerlands, for others all their loved ones in Heaven as well as God will be there with open arms. I know those I love and who have crossed over look back at us and smile. They send their love and check in from time to time.

Birth is a celebration, the midwifing a beautiful soul into our world. It is a mysterious and wondrous transition. Death is also mysterious but should it be celebrated? Sometimes the dieing are fortunate enough to be comforted, to be midwifed back into the Mystery, surrounded by those who love them. We hold varying degrees of rituals and celebrations for those who pass on. I do think some kind of farewell is necessary, if only to bring comfort to our own souls.

I had a dream last night, and echo of one I had when I was a few months pregnant, when I condor brought me Damian’s soul. I watched the condor as it lead a shinning flying soul into the starlit sky and the light of that soul grew as it rose, a blazing lantern at first, then a radiant sun, then an all colorful shifting blue and gold light, the aura that which faded into a streaking shooting star passing over the horizon of our Wild Old Mama Earth.

I knew I had to share the dream when I woke up, so here we are at the end of my post. I am a bit lacking for some form of eloquent conclusion so I will share I little Eskimo legend I heard once that seems strangely fitting with that dream.

On the darkest nights, near the stairway from Earth to the Sky (the constellation we know as Orion,) the ancestors come out to dance. The stars are the lights around their dance floor and they are the Gulla, the aura. They are letting us know that they are happy.

each separate dying ember…

…wrought its ghost upon the floor

I occasionally make photo manipulations, but I rarely share them, obviously this being an exception. For the most part, all my them are strongly inspired by my dreams, this one is no exception. One chronic problem I have in my dreams is not being able to find my glasses, so because of that I purposely left this thing a little blurry.

Stock from mjranum-stock, InKi-Stock and diamondie-stock.

The bird character I am thinking about designing is going to be similar to this dream being if you are wondering. Only less intimidating more colorful. I am really liking the sun conure for that.

Dream: Little Bird

I have a question for my bird savvy readers.

This is probably just a flash of my imagination adding my favorite color to a bird, but I had a dream last night starring the little guy, so I thought I would share a little. (My dream mind has been active lately! It seems to go in phases.) I’ll try to describe him using my limited knowledge of birds…

I say “he” because I have always been under the impression that male birds where the mostly boldly colors, and he definitely had that going for him. In size and shape, he looked like the typical little chubby pointy beaked bird I would see at my neighbor’s feeder. Small enough to sit in my palm. Beyond that he had the most vivid orange face and throat with some black marks around his face. He had a white tummy and the rest of him was some patterning of black and white. He sounded pretty, so maybe a songbird? Though someone told me recently a crow is a songbird too. I love them but I admit their croaking never struck me as overly melodious. So I am not sure what makes a bird a songbird…

I am thinking maybe I saw him in a book or magazine (or in nature!) at some point, so maybe this is a real bird, or some collage of several. I find all dreams have some grain of truth, so I always like trying to tease that truth out.
At first I thought orioles, the only orange bird I know, but when I looked them up, the patterning looked completely wrong (delightfully orange though) and too big.

It was a happy random dream, maybe just a birthday gift of orange goodness from my subconscious! Speaking of which, thank you all for the birthday wishes so far, I am feeling the fellow blogger love!

EDIT #1: I have been surfing “orange bird” on google images and found this, a little bit creepy but I totally love it.

EDIT #2: We have a winner! It looks exactly like it (my subconscious has a good memory!)

This is a Blackburnian Warbler. He is a yellower here then in my dream but hey, otherwise an exact match! Cute little guy isn’t he?

Dream: Snake Moon

Last night I had a dream that Raveness (I read her blog over on livejournal) was giving me a tattoo in Greg’s (my father-in-law) office, he has a CPA business. For some reason Greg’s landlord had rented out half of the building to a tattoo parlor. There was a glass wall down the middle. Though Raveness was present through most of the dream, I don’t think we talk about anything substantial. We were talking though.

The tattoo was bizarre to say the least. The central design of the tattoo was encircled by one of my sun designs but it seemed to be shifting around, as if the rays were real. Raveness was just finishing the centeral design when I came into the dream. It was a snake in the form of a waxing crescent moon. It’s tail was the top point of the crescent, the body coiled back and forth to make up the main middle section and the head was the bottom point. It was holding a lantern in its mouth. The tattoo was on my back, behind my manipura chakra (solar plexus.) I mention this chakra because I remember thinking specifically about that in the dream. The snake was a part of that chakra, that thought made more sense in the dream.

At one point I got distracted and when I looked back at the mirror the “moon” was full. The snake was coiled in a circle, head in the middle, it’s eyes made of stars. The eyes were more more then eyes though, they seemed to be holes in me and the stars were inside me, shining through. At the same time, the eyes seemed to be looking at me too. Not sure where the lantern was at this point, maybe outside the sun disk…

Though the dream was black and white, the tattoo seemed to shine like tarnished silver, but it hinted at gold tones too, the same hues as Mexican gold. The whole tattoo seemed to have a life of its own, but it was definitely drawn on my skin.

Michael came by to pick me up. We were living with my mother, or she was living with us, I think the latter. I was trying to figure out how to hide it from her because I was concerned the moving tattoo would freak her out. I also didn’t think she would approve and didn’t want to make any waves. Then in the middle of those thoughts, the roof suddenly collapsed, snow came pouring in (we have had over 60 roof collapsed from snow load around Spokane in the past week, so this isn’t as random as it seems, as it has been on my mind recently.) My brother was standing at the edge of the hole in the roof for some reason and saw my tattoo.

We all got outside safely and he came down from the roof and teasing me that he was going to tell mom. At that point I didn’t really care anymore though. Marko (my boyfriend before I was with Michael) was in the crowd outside, which I noticed only fleetingly then, but seems to be hanging on my mind now that I am awake. My thoughts were drifting at this point between being really pleased with my tattoo and being worried about Greg’s work. Everything felt so surreal.

At some point during these thoughts I woke up.

Dream: Aura

I had a dream the other night that Damian (my son) was surrounded by different colored lights. I have had similar dreams in the past but this one was particularly vivid, so I thought I would draw it.

I don’t know much about auras but it kind of reminds me of aura drawings I have seen. I thought I would post it because I like how it looks and thought someone might have some thoughts on interpreting it.

(Helaris posted and interesting interpretation of this here, on my deviantart.)

Walmart Dream

I was up late with Damian last night so I napped today. When I did I had this really horrible dream reflecting something that happened when I worked at Walmart (over 4 years ago.) It was the first place I worked after I left home and moved to the USA.

A little bit of history on the source of the dream; when I was going through orientation for Walmart we had to watch a couple videos about the evils of unions and how to deal with someone who approaches you about them. We had to fill out a questionnaire about them too and sign an anti-union pledge as well I believe. I just barely 18-years-old at the time and very naive, I believed everything in the videos. At one point my manager flat out told me that I could lose my greencard if I joined a union (which I believed.)

Some time later one of my coworkers approached me and said he was having a talk at his place after work about starting a union. Being the good little worker bee I was, I went to my manager, like the video taught me, and reported him. He was fired a couple days later. It didn’t occur to me at the time that it was because of the union thing.

So my dream:

The person who was fired from Walmart showed up at my door. They were addicted to methadone or some other drug and very angry at me. He said I had destroyed his life and he couldn’t get a job after Walmart fired him. He told me his wife had left him after being jobless for months and wouldn’t let him see his children. I was afraid he was going to kill me though I woke up before anything like that happened.

Anyhow, the dream unnerved me a little. I haven’t really thought of Walmart since I left it and moved here to Spokane. A lot of crap happened there, stuff that in retrospect, I can’t believe I let happened. I allowed myself to be discriminated against for being a woman, I worked off the clock so I wouldn’t get fired for overtime since I also would have been fired for not finishing my job, I drove machinery I was not certified on because my manager said so. I saw people dispose of dangerous chemicals down the drain so we wouldn’t have to pay for hazardous waste disposable and didn’t stand up for anyone who was demeaned by another. Not exactly moments I am proud of, but ones that shouldn’t be forgotten either.

It amazes me that people can shop there. I think they know exactly what kind of things Walmart does and gets away with but turn a blind eye, all in the name of saving a buck. It is funny because when Michael and I crunched the numbers we save a ton more by not shopping there.

Soapbox aside though, I wish I would have never turned that guy in, he was a nice hard worker, he didn’t deserve to be fired over something like that.

Dream: Alien Invasion

Last night I dreamed:

Aliens were invading the Earth.

One of our friends, who turned out to be a FBI agent, came to our home and told us that they were allergic to urinal tablets and had an aversion to hearing humans read outloud. Several of our friends were over and we all started making wreaths out of urinal tablets, which were then featured on the six-clock news.

The aliens then started going house to house, taking people to a camp. When they came to our townhouse, we all started reading from various books (I actually remember what book I was reading, “The Pagan Book of Living and Dying”.) I had Damian in my lap, hidden under a blanket. The alien left quickly. After he was gone we all went outside and got a car from one of our neighbors. It was more of a cage with wheels actually, he gave it to us.

We drove out to Elk to a friends house with a bomb shelter and hide there for awhile. Eventually the aliens found us and beamed in, taking us to a camp. There we found out that our organic matter was going to be harvested so that the aliens could make new ships. One of the aliens tried to inject one of our friends who turned out to be Cyborg (superhero… ya, no more Smallville for me.) I started reciting from “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot” (a book I actually ordered the other say) since all books were band.

We people in the camp rose up against the aliens and all started reciting passages from books them new from 1984 through the Lord’s Prayer. The aliens started screaming and killing people but we kept speaking.

Then I woke up. Weird dream huh? I woke up thinking there were aliens in the bedroom and about to grab a book and start reading, reality set in pretty fast though and I had to laugh. Urinal tablet allergy?

No more B-movies or politics for me! (Except I am watching a documentary on The Weather Underground at the moment, so that declaration is a little empty.) Alien invasions never go well.

Dream: The Draft

I had a dream last night that a couple military men came to the door wanting Damian to answer his draft notice. I tried to tell them he was too young (he was only three years old in the dream) but they wanted him anyways. They were holding a gun for him. They had a draft notice for Michael too. I was so angry at the government from taking away the people I love.

I told the soldiers to wait in the kitchen while I got a couple things for Damian. I told them Michael would be home in a few minutes. I took Damian, went upstairs and I called Michael when I was upstairs and told him what was going on. He said “you know what to do.”

I did. I dug a shotgun out of the closet and went downstairs and shot the military men. I dragged their bodies into the garden and put a tarp over them. I went and got Damian from upstairs and we started packing. Michael got home a few minutes later and we loaded the car and started driving to Canada. All the billboards on the way had patriotic and religious slogans and Palin on them. I was so disgusted.

We picked up Michael’s family, who also had to flee since they were the “wrong” kind of Christian (they are LDS) as well as Michelle, Mikcos and Nathan because Nathan had gotten his notice. I woke up when we were getting on the road again.

Very freaky.

Early Saturday Musings

I usually sleep in on Saturdays, and even more so when we stay up late feeding our Smallville addication. But this morning was different. About 6am, I woke up because the fan was blowing on me, and it had finally cooled down enough that it was uncomfortable. I tried to ignore it, but finally gave in and got out of bed to turn it off. I laid in bed trying to fall back asleep, but instead it seems I’m up for the day — my mind wouldn’t go back to sleep, it has been racing a million miles a second. It seems I am stressed about work, specifically maintaining country of origin labeling (COOL) codes in the computer. And I guess I should be, we have some 7000 item codes that need to be kept up to date. It was originally supposed to be a cooperative effort, the buyers working together with me to keep them maintained. But it seems somewhere they got it into their heads that I would be taking care of everything, updating the COOL codes from the bill of lading paperwork when the item lands. I took this up with my boss Thursday, and she said she would get back to me. I suspect I’m going to be stuck with it.

When I lay in bed awake on mornings like this, I am able to brainstorm and problem solve very efficiently. So now I have a plan to make my life easier when it comes to maintaining COOL codes - I will have to experiment on Monday to make sure it works. I am hoping it will, or I will have to have a part time assistant to get everything done, at least if they don’t want me getting overtime (they already start nagging on me if I even approach 40 hours).

After coming up with my solutions, I rolled over and cuddled with Jaspy, propping myself up and watching Damian sleep. Sleeping children are a beautiful thing. I think he was having a nightmare, though of what I have no idea, he has never had a traumatic experience. I wonder what he dreams of. His eyes are twitching, obviously in REM sleep. He startles a few times, makes sad faces, and makes a few sad sounds. What could make my baby-cakes so sad? It tears my heart out, so I stroke his face and he calms down. He wakes up a few minutes later, and Jaspy takes him potty.

Today, we are going apple picking, what has become a yearly tradition to celebrate the autumn equinox. The equinox is close, just a few short days away. The equinoxes and solstices have always been power days for me, when I reconnect, and re-balance, and re-evaluate my life. I can feel this one coming on, I feel the stress fading away and I an energized. This weekend is going to be good.

Dream: Jesus’ Crucification

One of last night’s dreams:

I was walking over a hill and came upon a medium sized crowd of people. I wandered over to see what was going on and saw a man being crucified, well, kind of. He was tied and nailed to a wooden stake (no crossbeam.) There was the “This is Jesus the King of the Jews” sign over his head in three languages.

I felt horrified watching this happen and felt it was a really cruel practice. I also remember feeling pity for Jesus and the heartless people doing the deed. I saw him as another victim of another church gone wrong.

(At this point I transitioned into a completely seperate dream about sailing and pouring white flowers into the sea, except the sea was a face smiling at me, or something like that.)

I came across a video the other day of modern day people who crucify themselves in the Philippines, so I am thinking that is where this dream’s seed was planted. A wooden stake instead of a cross though? That was a little strange. Jesus meets burning on the stake?

This wouldn’t be my first dream with Jesus but last time he was driving a mustang convertible (my favorite car) with three wingless angels, and that was a few years ago. So, slightly different from this one…