9.17.2007

to get inside, to get to me

i had a dream a few nights ago that has stuck with me for a couple days, so i'm wagering that writing about it will help me figure out what it meant.

this was one of those dreams you have where you're watching yourself sleep, and in your dream you wake up, but in real life you're still sleeping. in the dream, i am sleeping on the dining room table, which in our house is right in front of a huge sliding glass door that opens up to our deck. there i am, cuddled up fetal style on the dining room table when suddenly, i am startled wide awake by the presence of something coming up the stairs to our deck. the figure looks like a woman, but she doesn't seem entirely recognizable as a human being. she has long red curly hair, so frizzy and ratted that it almost looks like dreadlocks. she's wearing a dress which looks like it may have been loosely related to the color white at some point in time, and it is very distressed (you know, "distressed", the style you pay an extra $100 to have someone else do to your designer jeans). she has two wings that look like they're made out of some sort of stiff gauze. one of her wings looks slightly bent out of shape, maybe even broken, and both are ripped in various places with translucent strips of gauze dangling from the edges. she is also wearing big black boots... not the sexy kind that you wear to your 9-5, but the kind that you wear when you're good and ready to kick some ass.

and it is windy. very windy. and eerily quiet. the only sound is the wind. all of her traipsing about on our rickety deck, her hair and her dress blowing in every crazy direction imanginable, and the only sound is the wind.

so this figure, this woman, walks to the glass door. i am still lying in the fetal position on the table, pretending to be asleep as if i can fool her into thinking i am. but i am not seeing her with my earthly eyes, as she is not seeing me with hers, and so my pretending gets me nothing except a false sense of anonymity. i lie there, frozen still, but am very awake watching her. she puts her hand to the door and pulls on the handle to open it and come inside. but the door is locked.

she cups her hands around her eyes, straining to see inside. she tries the door just one more time. and then, without any more effort, without knocking or trying to come in the house through some other means, she turns around, goes down the stairs and walks away from the house.

and the wind stops.



if you believe in guardian angels, or some sort of guardian "other" that watches over you, perhaps that's what she was. god speaks to people in their dreams all the time, or at least he used to when we used to listen to him. and maybe this dream was his way of introducing me to my guardian angel. if so, i think she's pretty incredible. she's exactly what i would want in a guardian angel, a ragtag tom-boy ready to fight, yet still holding on that air of earthen beauty and effortless grace.

but she was trying to get in, to get inside... to get to me and rescue me from something. and whatever it is that i need rescue from is so impenetrable that even she can't get at it to fight it off right now. she needs me to do something, to take part in my own rescuing... to let her in.

or maybe she just loves a good fight (hence the boots), and she's looking to get in and roundhouse-kick-to-the-face anything that is trying to break me. but for whatever reason, she can't right now. and so maybe this is her time to rest... because she didn't try to climb in through a window, or force her way in through another door. she simply walked away, as if she knew that i'd be alright for a little while. and if she really is my guardian "other", she knows i'm bound to wind up in something pretty deep that will require fighting and rescuing. you can't fight when you're broken and tired. she's going to need her rest.

or maybe she walked away because she's finally given up on trying to rescue me when i do nothing to rescue myself.

or maybe it's nothing more than the chicken noodle soup i ate at 11pm.

whatever it may be, all i know right now is that there is a wind outside and i can feel it through the window as i sit here and write this. and i can sense the presence of something alongside of and within me, as sure as i can feel the breeze on the back of my neck. perhaps it's protection. or maybe just a reminder. whatever it is, i hope that it stays.