On Saturday, October 28, 2006 I awakened to write:
All I can remember is a melding with the wildness of "Elle, A Novel" in the frontier of Canada, the New World. It is a protracted, vivid, bone-wrenching encounter with the Other in the once liminal, now vivid, place of imagination. It is the place of the shaman, the wizard, the sorcerer and savage as told by a once pretty, frivolous French Royal of the mid-sixteenth century who has been skinned, flayed and dismembered bone by bone and now boiled in the fetid, feverish water of her own soul - an alchemical opus tended by an ancient she-bear who dies and gives her soul to Elle. Who is who? Which is the Other? Whose eyes are we being seen by?
The author of the book I was reading is Douglas Glover. In both "Elle" and a previous novel entitled, "The Life and Times of Captain N.," Glover has, like Mircea Eliades' shaman, brought back the story that so few in our culture dare to remember much less live. The encounter with the Other, the dismemberment of all structures - the flaying of skin from bone, belief from knowing, bone from bone - only to be thrown into the cauldron, cooked and then strewn upon the forest floor to perhaps be re-formed into something entirely its own with a wit born of having slogged through the mud and shit without being swallowed whole.
On Sunday, November 12 I dreamt that I was walking on the banks of a wide river, scavanging through a pile of discarded turtle shells; the remnants of the Indian rattle maker. I looked up to find a tall, dark haired, dark eyed man who stood before me with the whole shell of a tortoise to which was still attached the head and neck of the turtle. The man turned it upside down and, while holding it in his left hand, gently moved the head with his right thumb. At the moment of movement, a blue/white spark flew from the neck and I knew it was alive. As I looked the man in his eyes he handed me the turtle shell to heal and carry with me.
When I awakened I was still holding the shell to my chest, feeling the turtle as its body and limbs re-grew.
The turtle is the memory of the beginning of time, when the planet was formed and the water was made separate from the earth. The turtle is the foundation of the continent that has been decimated by the conquering culture. It is the motherless child who makes her way from egg to sea and thus becomes the guardian of young children. It is the oracle that bridges now with what is to be.
This dream relates to Doug Glover's book, "The Life and Times of Captain N.," and specifically the ceremonial rattle maker, Tom Wopat. I don't believe that I harmed the turtle in my search. I did overlook a viable creature though. Gratefully my oversight is being corrected. This is in much the same way that Eliza restored what I had believed dead in last month's dream of the bushel baskets. The turtle is being given to me to nurse back to wholeness. The spark that flew from the turtle's neck felt divine. I felt remorse, forgiveness and humility all at once.
I am reminded too of a dream of ten years ago in which I was walking through the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. There I discovered a sea turtle pinned, belly to the glass, against an Aztec statue. I called to my friends to return and save the turtle.
What does it mean to save the turtle who is the ground of our world - so related to the elephant in her patience and memory? It is the continuity of our worlds that is carried by these patient, slow creatures. It is a mystery for which I fumble to find the answer, when in fact I need to remember that there are no easy answers - just like the mystery of relationship with humans in the waking world. The key for me is the remembering of love, not the forgetting of love. It is too the permission to get it so wrong that I am forced to stop my attempt to get anything right at all.
Or as Oskar, the narrator of "Captain N." says:
"I have understood nothing. I don't even want to understand anything now. I want to stick to the truth. I decided long ago not to understand. If I try to understand anything, I shall mistake the truth."
And to conclude this cycle of dreams …
On November 18 I was given a list of ancient names to remember. I counted them on my fingers as I said them out loud, over and over again. When I awakened I could only remember "Ezekiel."
In researching the name I found that Ezekiel was a prophet in the sixth century bce. The name means "the strength of God." And in "The World's Great Religions" I found an excerpt from Ezekiel 37 entitled, "The Dry Bones" which applies to the theme of the shamanic initiation, Glover's story of Elle, as well as the re-membering of the turtle.
The dry bones
The hand of the Lord was upon me, and the Lord carried me out in a spirit, and set me down in the midst of the valley, and it was full of bones; and He caused me to pass by them round about, and, behold, there were very many … and … they were very dry. And he said unto me: "Son of man, can these bones live?" And I answered: "O Lord God, thou knowest." Then He said unto me: "… Say unto them: 'O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord: Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you … and cover you with skin, and … ye shall know that I am the Lord.' "
So I prophesied as I was commanded; and … there was a noise, and behold a commotion, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I beheld, and lo, there were sinews upon them, and flesh came up, and skin covered them above; but there was no breath in them. Then He said unto me: "Prophesy unto the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath: 'Thus saith the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.' " … And the breath came into them, and they lived…
Ezekiel 37