There’s the poop dreams. I remember coming into the room on the ward and he’d smeared the room with his poop. It wasn’ t a one time experience. Others smeared themselves in poop. Trying to hold them down to give them an injection, I’d be trying to avoid the eye gouges. Wondering where to wash the clothes or discard them after. Wearing OR scrubs till I could get a new change.standing in showers clothed washing the poop out of the body curled on the floor in a fetal position. I was thankful for others, the nurses who did it mostly. I came and went. They lived with this day and day, night after night. I wasn’t always there.
Toilets in Africa and India. Shit everywhere. Outhouses in the north with shit everywhere. Their airport toilets where they squatted on the seats and never cleaned up the massive misses. Not a dribble. Shit everywhere.
In my dream I can’t open a door because there’s shit on the door handle. I’m in an institution like a college looking for a place to sit and all the toilet seats are covered in shit. I want to shower but the shower is dirtier than I am.
I suppose a Freudian might suggest homosexual issues but anal sex isn’t same sex alone. There’s nothing sexual about the dreams. Pre sexual. Toilet training days. Maybe shame based. Primordial. Disturbing. Disappointing. Frustrating. I often have the urge to go. That need to pee or poop at night and eventually waking to use the toilet only to return to the poop dream. Searching for somewhere clean. Dirty world dream.
I was in a room, a very nice room but the wall opened. The room was the perfect study call room, bed and desk and books. Only the wall kept being pushed in by a party next door , drunks staggering into my space and I have to show them out and resecure the accordion wall. Time and again. Trying to sleep on call and the noise of nursing stations and inability to find quiet. The party in the next apartment. The guy sticking a butcher knife to my throat when I ask him to turn his stereo down at 4 am. The cranked out psychotic addicts coming to my door and demanding I stop pounding on my ceiling or floor and I’m sleeping, trying to sleep. Years of begging for quiet and sleep. Now I’m back in those nights
My mentor is visitting, someone older and esteemed and they’re at the apartment, clothed in my idealization sand projections, inhuman perfection. butthere’s a cigarette, or dope or a vibrator or a banned book and I find it as they come in. I’m adjusting my fig leaf before God. If there’s a woman she’s always sassy with the Apple or terrified hiding behind me. The days my friends invited professors to stag parties and drunken birthday parties because they were outside the hierarchy and wanted to brush shoulders with the great men and women I knew. When I had compartmentalized worlds. I still have compartmentalized worlds. Facets of the diamond. Trying always to remember which are vegans and wearying of the work of pleasing the potters.
Long ago memories and the dreams that percolate through. I wonder about the nights like that. Old nights with too much to drink or smoke and trying to be ‘normal’ and not being ‘normal’ and wanting to sleep and being at some social event with an ex or someone else and I’m supposed to be paying attention and my eyes are spinning in my head and I can’t stay awake. I’m so tired yet I’m in a dream and I can’t fall asleep. I wake and I can’ t fall asleep.
Somewhere there’s a psychopath passing me. I see him and know. He’s a cannibal or a pedophile or a drug pusher and he’s passing through my room. I’ve not kept the door closed tight enough to keep the devil out and he’s okay with me. I’m immune but he’s using me to get to the innoscent and naive I know. He’s just a step a head of me in the dream and I’m intent on killing him to protect the children but he always has those in government or the police that protect him and I will go to jail if I hurt him and he’s always gloating. Psychopaths looking over their shoulders laughing at me. I’m weak. I can take him but I can’t get at him because of all his protectors in high place. And I’m being held back from killing him or me or them or something I’ve alienated. The face laughing at me on the other side of the glass.
All is God and yet I must choose. I choose the good and it’s me a hit man in my dream and some innoscent looking with dismay at the service I’ve done. I’m covered in blood. I’ve saved a life and they’ve turned away disgusted with soldiers and surgeons. Psychotic women living delusions and lies preferring their gilded cages and masters to freedom, antiseptic lives I’m playing in dirt, walking through the wild. I’m in those places only God knows. There’s no way but through here. The manure is fertilizer for the flowers. I’m delivering babies again. It’s not pretty and yet it is.
I’m walking away across deserts knowing the oasis is just a little further. The demons in the forest are afraid of me. The devil only catches stragglers. The war is won. I’m alone longer than anyone I know. I’ve held on longer. And hold on another day. Then I’m among those again with discipline. Our eyes meet and we know. It’s old souls and baby souls and out past the wire. It’s exclusive and inclusive. We’re waiting for the last one so we can all pass together into heaven. I worry I’m holding everyone up until I know it doesn’t matter. Uncertainty. I’m at the cross. I’m in the glade. I’m beneath the sea. I’m gliding on the wings of a bird. I awake with lingering dreams and every emotion. It takes a moment to realize I’m here again. In this life.
And I wonder what the meaning is. Always the dark side - shame, envy, remorse, resentment, fear. And it’s not important anymore.
God loves me. I love God. I used to spend days and nights on my knees or sitting cross legged years of prayer and meditation. I learned to slow my heart so it was as if I was dead, breathing so long and shallow that I was near to dead. My mind lit up and the presence of God and heaven palpable. I’ve talked with Jesus. Sat with saints. Been present in the most austere moments. And loved. Angels naked in my bed, the brilliance in flesh and light. The explosions of intimacy. I’ve known bliss in his world and out of this world. Now I’m just here. Mostly raising a puppy. Cleaning up his poop and pee and realizing that critics don’t know blood. They’ve lived pristine lives in little square and cubicles and are afraid. Who am I to judge. Live and let live. It’s okay to be afraid. Existential angst. But Jesus did say , do not be afraid. There’s a main stream. I’m an outlier. I’m a guide or scout on the edge, riding point. The natives are mostly friendly.
There’s a place in my dreams where there a boat and a great sprawling luxury apartment complex. There’s a place where mothers sit at tables and drink tea and I’m a little boy crawling at their feat. There are white water rapids which I’m body surfing. There are intimate conversations with classical guitars and violins. I’m with friends and we’re drinking coffee. The aromas of incense are in the air. A cello and a saxophone are being played. Ballet is danced. I’m in the embrace of the most beautiful and she is smiling and we Viennese waltz in clouds. The sun is rising with pink colours over a delicious rocky coast.
I’m lost in some dreams, trying to find the way out of maizes encountering others desperate while I’m just plodding along, no longer afraid, just tired. The journey seems forever then I remember to look at the details and it’s no longer about the arrival but about the journey.
Sometimes my insides are not in my body but leaking out of me and I’m trying to put them back knowing it’s futile and letting myself slip into the horror passing through to another room. Lucid dreaming, catching the fear, riding it like a wave. Adjusting the sails, praying for fair winds and following seas. The lesson only seems to be .’this too will pass’. Walking in the fragrance of roses and gardens that go on for ever. The Holy Spirit and a princess. I’m naming things. Laughter in the sunlight.
Then I’m in poo and piss and blood and I can’t hold onto the tissue that keeps slipping from my fingers and there’s an artery spraying blood on my glasses blinding my eyes. The nurse is helping in one dream and in another she’s screaming like the Scream in horror and I’m alone without another pair of hands and the patient is awake and dying. I’m unable to save every life and they come and go. I’m facing failures rarely but they’re all I think about. The successes are so easily forgotten. The comedy routine where they all don’t laugh. I m back on stage forgetting my lines. Then I’m in the embrace of a goddess whose name I’ve forgotten but I’m on that peninsula, my little bit of heaven where it’s safe and there are great white table meals, like a five star hotel, and it’s clean.
I like that it’s clean. I like fresh clothes. I’m in a rocket ship going from galaxy to galaxy and I love the view and I love the clean clothes but the air isn’t as fresh as the air by the mountain streams. I’m climbing in the woods. Dogs are with me. Sometimes a cat. Mostly there are the occasional strangers. I’m mostly alone and they’re passing happier somehow and I’m an outsider.
It’s after a major catastrophe and there are huge snakes underground and the avalanche has happened. Tectonic shifts of plates and whole cities have disappeared. I’m back watching the volcanic lava burning away everything in its path. I see the two drunken doctors ride by in their side car motorcycle. I’m admiring their insanity and joie to vie. I’m thinking and observing too much, trying to carefully get out of the mud, away from the crocodiles, snakes and predators, escaping to where I don’t know. I’m going one dream at a time.
Waking sometimes. Curious. Wondering what the hell was that about. It’s a long time now since the nightmares. She says I don’t scream in my sleep any more. The feel of dead bodies doesn’t alarm me anymore. I’m okay with that. I’m no longer grilled in the court house by the stupid shrill little girl with her memory books and pretty notes asking me detail of a far too different past. I’ve been there and I’m always reporting back to these people who fear reality and use me as a buffer but abuse me to cover their fear and stupidity. Hothouse plant girls and boys. Monday morning quarterbacks.
I’m no longer fighting gangs of men in 10s and 20’s doing the bully pile on and feeling good about themselves. I’m not playing golf with the guy who pulls out a gun and shoots me because he doesn’t like my perfect shot. I don’t have these betrayals or stupid authorities or spiders . I’m shooting monsters with ray guns and hand guns. I’m piloting rocket ships. I have my own flitter and amphibious hovercraft. . I’m swimming under water with gils.
It’s safer today. The sad dreams are like an old wound healed but with the poop and pustulence still oozing occasionally. I carry on. This too will pass. I know not to cling to the good. I look past the bad. I sail from place to place. I’m unhappy with the poop, and piss and puss, but it’s okay. The blue skies, sunshine and starlets, puppies and kittens all reappear and I’m walking through green fields with a stave and good shoes. This too will pass. I’m learning. If only I can remember its an adventure. So much is perception. Practicing the presence.
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