"Field of Bones"

For my on-line Dream Journal

Recap of the Day: Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Iftar holiday. I went out and took a long walk on Aurora Boulevard, searching for an old friend's hardware store. A few years ago they were compelled to move their store from Farmers Market to the boulevard. I never saw my friend again after that, and we have ceased sending each other Christmas gifts. I did not find the store. I surmised that it finally shut down and opened in another location. I was too tired to walk back home and I took a taxi.

Aubrey had two birthday celebrations today: one with the family and another with her friends, who gave her a surprise visit with food and gifts.

In the afternoon I posted 2011 Spirit Quest photos on my Google+ profile page and indicated that that was the last Spirit Quest I conducted as a group and that I decided it is better to go on such activities alone rather than in groups.

Before sleeping I started re-reading Ben Okri's In Arcadia. Its characters are hardly attractive and I am still deciding whether to include it in our fifth library flush-out or not.


The Dream:

Title: "Field of Bones"

I am surprised to recall this dream, albeit only fragments of it and not its entirety, considering that I woke up by alarm and prepared to go to work immediately upon rising.

In this dream I am once again with my frequent dream company--a group of young men and women who are my students and whom I give lessons to in their and my dreaming state. We are on the huge balcony of an office building that looks out, across the street, on the compound of erstwhile Maryknoll College, now Miriam College.

My students are eager to assist me in a task that I am about to undertake. Unbeknownst to them we are supposed to segregate bones in a cemetery. I make a list and divide my students into subgroups. I secretly hope that they will not be terrified of what I will assign them to do.

Prior to giving my students instructions I go to the men's room and decide to shave off my hair and my moustache. For some reason I neglect to shave off the left side of my moustache and my beard, which is black and coily like the beard tentacles of Davey Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean.

I look out onto the compound across the street. It is now a vast cemetery. Millions of skeletons and bones are on the grass, lying side by side. We have a formidable task ahead of us.


My Interpretation:

I recalled the major part of this dream because my psyche wants me to acknowledge and take appropriate action on its message.

This dream is about endings and beginnings. In the daytime I gave up on finding an old friend and resuming our friendship; Aubrey ended her 14th year and entered her 15th and is truly a young lady now despite the fact that I still call her, as I still call Angelique, my baby; I posted old Spirit Quest photos and was reminded that I ended group Spirit Quests in 2011 and conducted such activities alone afterward; I picked up an old book, one that hinges on the mystic phrase "ET IN ARCADIA EGO" ("Once Upon A Time I Also Was In Paradise") to re-read and decide its fate, whether to keep it on or off my bookshelves. These are the threads that connect the warp (my conscious side) to the woof (my unconscious side) in the tapestry of my daily life.

In the dream, a college campus (the venue of learning) has become a cemetery (the end of learning in a single lifetime). Even as I was dreaming I thought that this was the realm of the goddess of cemeteries, from whom I have been discovering the unimaginable. The skeletons and bones in this dream, however, are not dead people but events, experiences, relationships, and projects in my past, perhaps including previous lifetimes.

I am being called on to undergo a major change in my life, and so it is possible that this dream also has reference to my retirement. I shave off my hair and half my moustache, but neglect to shave off my beard because I am reluctant to let go of my old, "pirate" look--even if I know that this "death" is impending, and that I must take on a different "look" yet once again.

I must assort all of the "bones" of this and my previous lifetimes in order to be able to choose the new directions I should move into.