Two nights ago I dreamt that I was getting married. I am standing before a mirror in full wedding dress regalia. The veil, the intricate and lovely lace bodice. The fitted waist, the long, white, flowing gown. I have never been this woman, never had this dress. Never had this church wedding, nor a marriage preempted by such finery. Second sequence: I am in a small room off the chapel. I want to take a look at the guests assembled in the pews before the ceremony. Fast forward: I open the door to peek out and then realize that I am standing in my wedding undergarments, again all white, no dress. A dream where I was the bride to be, but I saw no guests and knew nothing of the groom. I felt no abandonment, nervousness or surprise. But the underwear part woke me with a headache and, I had to laugh, cold feet.
It is early morning and I’ve left my bed to write this down. That dreams come from the sub-conscious to entertain me, enthrall and amuse, is one of the mysterious things I am grateful for. My friend Terry was in this dream and in answer to some question of mine she took me outside to the backyard where I had once lived in the Shed. It was nighttime and very dark, no streetlights reached that far behind the house. She aimed her flashflight onto the circle of bare dirt on the yard floor where dozens of little orange kittens blinked in the sudden beam of light. They were scattered about, crouched in a sleeping pose and I could hear them purring in the night. I asked why they slept like this, it was so unusual, and why they stayed put. Terry lifted one kitten to show me the small fish that it was laying on. But it was not the body of a fish that had sleek scales and wiggled through the water. Its body was see through, skeletal, a few inches long, and the eyes were alert and alive. They were catfish. One cat, one fish. One fish, one cat. Terry showed me the tiny little feet which enabled the catfish to walk into the yard. The kittens would come out and position themselves to sleep, one on each fish.
And what is the third dream? The third dream is my life itself. Tomorrow I will have another surgery to keep me safe. After the first one three years ago I awoke delighted. Relieved to be alive and rising into consciousness from a morphine induced sleep, struggling to be coherent and describe the amazing room I’d just been in. It was full of cats! Cats of all sizes and colours. None of them running around, everyone calm and still. They surrounded me. I knew they were there to comfort me. Their purring filled me with a sense of safety. I pushed the button again for morphine. I remember drifting away, saying that I wanted to go back to that room, submerge myself once more (now that I knew I was alive), back to those cats who had accompanied me while I journeyed from some nether world. This morning’s dream of kittens brought me full circle in remembrance. Here I am in the same circumstance. I marvel at what significance it is that cats appear again. I do not have a pet, I do not have a groom. I feel no absence from this in my waking hours. The dreams themselves are so rich with belonging; the feeling of warmth astounds me. My invisible love, my sentry, is by my side. Animal spirits surround me.
I’ve entered this dream, where I live now, through a portal. Despite having a life threatening illness I am well. Because I face a life threatening illness I have reached this state I’m in. Which is? That I love my spirit, my body, my one room life. It could be described from the outside in terms of lack – no groom, no pet, no money to speak of, no prospects, no guarantees. No, no, no. But it is really know. What I know now is everything. Who I am now, what it’s like now, I will never perceive as lacking. I overflow this room. Whole other worlds come to me in my sleep, in my dreaming. And in my awake state I have travelled through an invisible portal to another state of mind which serves my spirit well. I would say that this grace, my body, and the physical room I inhabit, are one.
I am overflowing with enough.
In Afrikaans there is a greeting said in goodbyes. I get it, and embrace it, and I’m saying it to you. Ek wens jou genoeg… I wish you enough.
Good Life
diane
