Dreaming My Way

I dreamt last night.... I was going somewhere lovely and I had a posh new outfit to wear. A lovely bronze dress, all satin and beading. A beautiful pair of green shoes. But I forgot to buy a jacket or shawl or whatever so I was searching in the shop for one and all I could find was a cashmere cream coloured shawl. I wasn't sure the shawl and the shoes both went together, although both were great with the dress..... There was also a beautiful beaded necklace, bronze and cream flowers.

A nice dream.... shoes are all about how you walk through life, shawls are protection and dresses are all feminine, necklaces are about desire it seems, particularly supressed ones. Cream is the colour of purity, innocence and freshness I guess. Green is life and vitality and bronze, apparently it is about health. Nice gifts.

I woke this morning and was on the net thinking about my dream and i had a few minutes to kill. I decided to look and see what I was writing about a year ago. Except I was not blogging last year at this time so I went back two years.... It seems tonight is the two year anniversary of the dream I had about two dogs, my dream dogs. It was a strong dream that stayed with me and sparked much thought etc.... It turned out to be a prophetic dream that I was going to lose one of my beloved dogs.

So why was I drawn to look this up, today? No idea

but it has been a tough day, not for me, but for many people around me. For me the omens were fine. I saw seven magpies on the way in to work. I had nice dreams. I wonder what tonights dreams will bring or if this was a way of telling me that this strong dream about clothing was important somehow.

Good Bye

Sometimes people walk in and walk out of your life before you really had time to notice their presence. Sometimes you think they were going to be there longer. Sometimes they stay longer than you thought.

Sometimes you meet someone for a few moments and they resonant through your life. Sometimes their words and actions sink into your subconscious and they can have a huge effect that you don't recognise till later, if ever.

Cause and effect are hard to untangle. Mostly.

The night I met F, will live on in my memory for ever as well as for the change it caused in my life. The night that I experienced love at first sight.... but then, that's another story.

A few short weeks ago, someone different and interesting walked into my life and now they have walked out again with hardly a good bye. I thought they might cause ripples in my life but instead they appear to have had virtually no effect on my life, except to make me think about generousity.

Who knows what else is going to walk through the door of my life. I know that this virus is lingering.....

As I spend another, floating gracefully and gently, letting my body just be and peacefully fight this virus in it's own way, I know that life is about to speed up again. I feel it quickening in the flurry of ideas for my bedroom as I lie there.

I am thankful, my body has recovered enough from the illness of Autumn 2009 that this virus has not had to lay me entirely low to make it's presence felt. Or maybe it means I am a bit more in tune with my life and needs again, maybe the virus just had to raise it's head to let me know I needed a break. Who knows. But the virus will pass before long and paint and dye and needle are all starting to call to me.

A list of things I can do before I get my long awaited wardrobes. I will find the money for them. A stock take looms which means a lot of work but an influx of cash. I am still being good and my resolution to eat breakfast at home and make sandwiches for work holds, which also saves me money. Maybe if the old wardrobes find their mouldy remains banished, maybe if the clothes piled up, because they don't want to be in the wardrobes, find their way into the spare room, maybe if paint starts to fly, maybe it will help my wardrobes manifest themselves out of the Ikea catalogue and in to my bedroom.

Surely I have it within me to create one beautiful room for myself?

Lush Life

I wanted to talk about my favourite shop, Lush.

I just love their stuff, it smells beautiful. It does the job. The shampoo bars wash my hair, last ages and don't irritate the dermatitus I get round my ears and the shampoo that I can use year after year with doing that, just doesn't exist elsewhere. Their bath products are fun and exciting and turn baths into a luxury treat. Thei shower jelly froths up on my sponge but doesn't leave my skin heavy with that soapy residue.... do I need to go on?

For me, the definition of 100% hand made and 100% natural don't enter in to it. Their products nuture and nourish me in ways the products in the chain stores do not and can not. And it isn't just me. My nephew gets eczema and their bath products do the same for him.....

I trust Lush as a company though, to be as far down the natural and hand made route as any main stream, high street company can be - and to keep pushing that boundary further and further. but they do need to make money! And I am no chemist so i can not comment on the ingredients.

They are a company with morals. They have charity products. They had leaflets about palm oil in their shops and removed it from their products (I think) before it became a hot topic. They recently started promoting the cause of the greyhound to.

Now I know some people walk in and are completely turned off byt the smell in the shop. And I admit I have very little sense of smell... but... the overwhelming smell is linked to another important aspect of their ethos. Waste!

Now this may be a bigger issue in the UK than some other countries where they sell, here we are a tiny island with a high population and all that waste has to go in holes in the ground. They make as many products as they can solid so that they can just go in a thin paper bag, which can be recycled and is made from recycled paper. The majority of the rest of their products go in tough, good quality black pots. These pots can be taken back and five returned pots gets you a free face mask. So this is a company that really, really tries. A company that shows the chain stores that you can reduce waste if you are creative and you care.

The effect of having all those toiletries semi-naked though, is that you can smell them all. There is nothing stopping the smell getting out. Imagine a chain store with all the bottles of perfume open? Now someone with perfume sprayed on too strong will make me sneeze.... Lush never does. You take home one tiny piece of soap and the smell isn't overwhelming.....

So yes, I love Lush. Maybe they do not go far enough in all areas for some fanatics out there. Maybe they do not tick the important boxes for some people, but they tick mine. Having a skin condition like mine where I have deformed sweat glands means that the wrong products block my skin up or coat it and then I get infected pores. Lush helps me and I love it. Do I need to say any more?

Generousity

Any character trait, if taken to extremes, can be negative, even the good ones. Life is all about balance not being perfect.

I currently have some one in my life who is overwhelmingly generous, particularly with food. I have found this a little difficult to take at times, even though I appreciate the underlying thought. This has set me to thinking about generousity.

Excessive generosity from one person within a group does not allow others in a group the space to be generous - oh shall I bring in some treats today - hmm no, such and such will have some and some will be wasted.

It devalues the acts of generousity by those with fewer means within a group. I bring in things every day, why can't you bring in something more than once a month? Because I have no money and bringing in this little is a real sacrifice.

Generosity is in some ways also a way of making others make the same choices as the giver has. I think these clothes look great and now you look exactly like me. I do lots of exercise and deserve a little treat every so often, why don't you have a cream cake, even though you don't want or need it?

In some cases, people are generous out of fear, it is an appeasing gift, saying hey! I want to be one of you! Please, can I? But in other cases it is about control. In still others it is a cultural expectation - but how exactly do the receivers deal with it in those cultures? What rights do the receivers have without being seen rude? Now this I would like to know because then I wouldn't have to worry about giving offence!

I want to be more generous. We have received so very much. The F M-I-L is always trying to send over food parcels (we have packets of cakes stacked up) and if ever she hears we are in need of something then she whirrs her social circle in to action - new sofa - here, new fridge - here for a tenner. This has been great for us at times, the second bit anyway.

But in what way do I want to be generous? and what do I wish to be generous with?

I think my things need exactly the right home - one which I have thought about a little and where they won't be a burden to the new owner - something to keep in a cupboard to get out whenever we visit so as not to give offence. A lot of stuff should be recycled or reused in some way.... The old coat with the stains from the time the food in the back of the car all fell over - who would want that? (and why can't we get rid of it?)

So. generousity, as a giver we have a duty not to be a burden.....

I have that tickling in the throat. That feeling under the ears. Coupled with the fact that there is a sore throat bug going around at work, it doesn't take Einstein to work out that my body is fighting a wee bug. I am not ill, not yet. But I went and bought the Ultimate Vicar of Dibley on DVD on the way home and then a little chinese take away. No gaming tonight, nothing of any activity or stress or thought.... A few chuckles and some internet, well actually quite a lot of chuckles!

I am sure I had a few things I wanted to talk about. I know I did but they have all flown away....

Tonight seemed like the perfect night to catch up and write about, except I just can't remember any of them.

*snuggles back under her duvet, with a sleeping Little Dog nestled on top and carries on giggling at the TV*

A Magpies Collection

I have not left myself much time to write this morning so this is going to take snippet form...

***

Last months dreamboard never got posted. It's images of storms and stars, women as crone carrying sticks, warrior, dancing child.... yes it matched last month. It was a primal month, a month where things moved and shifted, and beyond that who can say? I will be looking back at it all and wondering for months to come....

I did my new dreamboard last night because I wanted to and I will be busy tonight. It features a landscape of mud and mist, empty of all but bear paw prints. Hands holding a bonsai tree, a seedling, a solitary plant in a desert, a plant of words growing from cracked mud, a horse joyfully rolling, a cave painitng of a bull and the milky way with a sign pointing to it....

So my guess would be, a month of slow quiet growth.

***

I learnt quick not to feed the magpies unless they are there. The sharp eyes of gulls spoted my bread and swopped before the magpies had returned and spotted it. So the other day, they were there ad I threw some to them, but my throw was pathetic and it landed to close to my car for their happiness. They waited to long as some crows spotted it. One of the pair, suddenly brave got one piece before it was too late but the rest fell to the crows and I resented this a little, which takes me back....

Shortly before Solstice, there was a dream, a wing of crow, a wing of gull and the something in between, the magpie I think. Black white and mixed up...

Solstice morning drivng to Big Hill... Three birds flew ahead, their flight paths making a perfect triangle. Something shouted in me at this picture of crow, gull and magpie, screamed more likely. A dream resonance. A meaning....

So I am trying to like the gulls and crows to but my heart lies mostly with the 'pies. Although Ihave to be careful feeding them....

Yesterday I sat in my car and realised I was being watched from a few feet away, to the left a large gull and to the right, the crow, with his two pals nearby. Oh but birds learn quick! I would make no friends at work gathering birds to me like this I feel....

***

I have been feeling ungenerous. We talk of ebay. We talk of car boot sales. We talk of books going on amazon. But it never happens. We sit in a house full of stuff we don't want or need. Charity is the way forward...... Let others use it and so what if i get nothing for it? In reality I have all I need already.....

Mirror, Mirror....

Life changes.

Sometimes the next step on the path, things don't seem all that different.

Sometimes the next step on the path, one tiny thing changes, then everything is different.....

A new person has walked in to my life at work. A little different they are, from the norm. A different life, another pocketed sub-culture of the world. A step away from me and my life. But yet, there is something in common in us both in our spirit.

And already my neat, orderly, slightly lazy life is being shaken up and disturbed.

This goes beyond the innocent questions that cause me great difficulty. What happened to the LP? How on earth am i supposed to answer THAT? (and without getting myself into a world of trouble with the BOSS) I can't tell them what Boss is really like. I can't point out and explain the strange undercurrents, the odd rules (that appear to come from me, but come from some past Boss ruling). Oh yes, sometimes those questions, innocent and well meaning as they are, are very direct and difficult for me.

I do not want more trouble..... I have had more than enough of that!

It goes beyond that though. Questions are being asked of me. Blunt and direct, almost to the point of rudeness, she has already identified a past me, kept discreetly tucked away these days. Living as you believe. A challenge they fly through and one, perhaps, I handle differently.

Fun, challenging, but maybe I liked my cozy corner. Do I really want change? Do I really want to remember what I could have been, should have been? What I am?

Every Rose has it's Thorn

I had this week off.

And I really mean that. I had it off everything. F and I hid away together and did very little.

We needed some hibernating time together though. Last year was full on. Going away to see my family swallowed most of our leave. What little I had left over was swallowed in the odd sick day cunningly disguised as holiday and the occasional day for appointments. TIme for us to languish together was woefully lacking last year.

Last year was a tough year, it feels like a foot note in my life - a year away from my path, where I took a little side route off to go do some stuff I didn't much enjoy but had to get through. This year, it starts again. But gently. I have in the past gone full pelt with the blogging and changing my life and it gets too much as well.... I want balance, mostly.

This week has been a nothing week, some would call it a waste. But it has been joyful and my batteries feel more healthy now than they did.

And that is it really, except for a dream I wish to share.

I am out walking Little Dog when we get stopped by four policemen who pile out of their car. Little Dog is doing her doings and they are runny and they try to tell me something is wrong and I am like nooo, she just gets a bit like that when she gets over-excited. (excuse the overshare)

There is a field. There is a TV programme talking about seeds being carried by the wind in huge amounts from other countries, like a plague. Apparently we had just received a plague from the Netherlands. I remember seeing maybe purple flowers in the piture.

There is a field. Carefully planted rows of flowers, tulips, daffodils, bright colours. Swamped by spiky thorny foliage of fast growing weed seeds. I remember thinking the farmer would have fun removing all of them.

We return home. A man grabs me. Little Dog is powerless, it seems poisoned, not over-excited. He has me confused with someone else, a prostitute who usually charges £20 it seems. I know where this goes. The police are around, do they come in time? I wake.

I try and tread gently with dreams like this. They plink my nerves. As an ex-victim, I can't help but feel sensitive after them but I don't think this more recent rash of dreams with violent happenings is so very much about the violent happenings..... I think, our personal symbology is formed from what we experience and unfortunately that includes the good and the bad.

Is this a dream of the past, the now or a warning of the future? I don't think it is the future, it feels too much like this last year.... But what I want to know is this.... What about those seeds, sent by the wind? Are they a blessing? Or are they just weeds, to be removed? Neat rows of daffodils and tulips is not me, beautiful yes, but not me. But is a field full of prickly foliage that may just flower in my favourite colour. But those beautiful bulbs still flower as the seeds grow, each has their own time of year.

Is this a dream about feeling weak and powerless and beseiged. That I am still growing myself and that the difficulties are a gift from spirit which will flower in unexpected, but beautiful ways, if I let it grow? My most favourite flower after all has thorns.....

And now I am drained