2001 was a horrible year. It began with the news that my friend and co-worker, Karen, was in the late stages of cancer and sort of went down hill from there. Early in the year I finally admitted, to myself at least, how very unhappy I was in my marriage. The dotcom bubble was already bursting and I spent the next 15 months presiding over round after round of lay offs. We don't even need to mention the events of September that year.
I sank into a depression that I had never felt the likes of before. In that funk I lost two things, both of which were important to me.
1. I lost my ability to read. Oh, I was still literate, but my concentration was so fractured I could not focus. I could not concentrate and so I couldn't sit and read a book for nearly two years. I'd find myself re-reading the same page over and over again without comprehending the words in front of me. So, I wrote instead.
2. I lost my ability to recall my dreams. I know during that time I did dream but they were locked behind this inaccessible wall of blankness. The Enigma does not recall his dreams, he rarely does. He's been like that all his life. It doesn't bother him. I have always been a very vivid dreamer and I can still recall dreams I had as a small child. The abrupt absence of them nearly drove me mad. My ability to experience dreams again returned only after I met the Enigma in October of 2002. There was something about my experience with him that reopened those flood gates. He won't take credit for that, but he has heard me say time and again, how grateful I am for that.
There were two exceptions to #2. Two very vivid, lucid dreams.
1. July of 2001 I woke, startled by a very vivid dream that bordered on nightmare. Having not had a dream I could recall in over six months I felt this one was important.
I was standing on the very small porch of a house my parents owned in the early 80s. In front of me was the yard and to my right the drive way and my mother's car. The weather was stormy with roiling clouds, wind, rain, hail, and blinding flashes of lightening. It was the lightening that worried me most. I was watching the storm, waiting, watching the flashes and trying to figure out my timing for dashing to the car without getting struck. There was a deafening boom of thunder and the scene shifted with no warning.
I was now my animal self. I am a wolf in those times. I was laying low in a trough, a man made trench in the middle of a dead forest. All around me were blasted, charred trees with twisted, gnarled branches. It smelled of death and decay. I lay low, counting the lightening bolts that blew huge holes in the ground around me. I watched clods of ash and dirt explode with each hit, smelled the heat and the burning of each flash and waited my opportunity to make the dash for the edge of the forest, out of the storm's reach.
I have been in that forest later, as an adult and the recognition of it rocked me. In May of 2002 I was in the Arden forest in Belgium for the first time, only not.
2. In September of 2002 I woke, unaware that I'd been asleep. My alarm had gone off and apparently I'd dosed off again--only really. I don't think I did. Here's why:
I am sitting in a chair. I'm in a small room downstairs in the house I share with 2 roommates. In 'real life' that room is an office; filled to the brim with papers, desks, computers and junk. Now it is just me, in a wooden chair with a rush seat. In front of me is a bed with a body in repose. The body is male and there is a simple sheet which covers the body to just below the shoulders. Across the bed, standing is The Lady. She has a serene face whose features and details constantly elude me. Her hair is a glossy brown, long and flowing down past her waist. Her robes are loose and of rich colored silk. The colors of her robe constantly shift.
She doesn't say a word, but I know I am there to watch and to learn. There is now a large round porcelain bowl that sits upon the chest of the man in the bed. It is filled with a liquid that shimmers like mercury. I watch as one by one the lady picks up an object, holds it in her hands between us, waits while we both take in its details and then slowly lowers the object into the liquid until it disappears beneath the surface. A cup, a small cask with a domed lid, a dagger, a disc. She does not say, but I get the impression that the items are being placed in safety.
Abruptly she vanishes. So does the bowl and the body.
Left behind on the pillow is a small purple envelope. After sitting still a few moments I reach for the envelope. I turn it over and on the back, where the flap comes down in its familiar "V" there is, written across the seal, Who is not important.
And then I'm sitting bolt upright in my bed, my eyes wide open in the sunshine with the very certain sensation that I have not been asleep and I did not now just "awaken."
Both episodes are as vivid in my mind today as they were when they happened. And I'm still processing their meaning.
Both episodes also go a ways to explaining why I am not an atheist. But I leave that topic to another post.
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