Dreamways

In keeping with our Dreamways theme of finding our own voice and dreaming our own dream, I wish to share this poem by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks & John Moynes.

The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong. (2002. New York: Alfred A. Knopf). The author writes about members of a radical Islamic student organization in Egypt: "Students in the science, engineering and mathematics faculties are still drawn to the more extreme groups. They find that a stringent Muslim lifestyle gives them a viable alternative to the secularist option, helps them to make the difficult transition from a rural to a modern urban culture, and gives them a sense of authenticity and belonging.  read more »

Poet Mark Doty writes about buckets of sunflowers seen in a New York street stand:

...
But these foot soldiers of summer - flown
from a Mexican field, boxed north
from Alabama? - neck to neck in an impossible crowd,
they're our double

and mirror: a hundred fierce dawns
up to their hard green waists
in cool water, shocking
in their sameness

and startling again in the shag
variations of their faces dreaming ...
nothing language knows. Though they
are dreaming,

Poet Stanley Kunitz write about: "The Sea That Has No Ending"
Who are we? Why are we here,
huddled on this desolate shore,
so curiously chopped and joined? -
broken totems, a scruffy tribe!
How many years have passed
since we owned keys to a door,
had friends, walked down familiar streets
and answered to a name? We try
not to remember the places
where we left pieces of ourselves
along the way, whether in ditches
at the side of foreign roads  read more »

A waking dream in poetic form by Stanley Kunitz: The Testing Tree

In the recurring dream
my mother stands
in her bridal gown

under the burning lilac,
with Bernard Shaw and Bertie
Russell kissing her hands;

the house behind her is in ruins;
she is wearing an owl's face
and makes barking noises.

Her minatory finger points.
I pass through the cardboard doorway
askew in the field

and peer down a well
where an albino walrus huffs.
He has the gentlest eyes.

Piano Pieces by Russell Sherman. "Music, most immune from the sophistry of matter, must yet defend its license to be. To be nothing but a tissue of dreams, epiphanies, and ideals. Yet without the hearth of a reasonable and soaring language, music becomes but a code for the initiated and a commodity for the many. For the young practiioner it becomes a ladder to respectability, a career option, an exercise in pleasing the warlords and gourmands of the profession.  read more »

This is a gay,  gothic, TV potboiler. A fellow in the 1800's is engaged to be married to, it turns out, a vampire-ette. When just before the wedding she catches him in the act of being fucked by the valet, she is consumed by jealousy and condemns him to eternal dungeondom. The only thing that will liberate him is the kiss of a beautiful young man. Fast forward to now, with the house of the basement an inn owned and run by gays. Of course, a young blond beauty boy finds chained vampire and kisses him. Waves of revenge then course throughout all the characters' lives.

It is utterly amazing that this movie, starring Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton, appeared 25 years ago. A quarter century! Oi!

I was curious to see what I would think of it. I vividly remember going to see it in 1981 at the University Hills theaters. I went with Z and his sister who was in town visiting. It was snowy. This I clearly recollect, but I had almost no memories of the movie itself.

or five days after my birthday (2005), I dreamt that I was in a slightly different world, a parallel reality where everyone was engaged in spiritual pursuits and had humor and compassion for one another. We also had the most fantastic personal vehicles that converted from street scooters to wagons when we were inside. There was such a warm feeling everywhere I went. The children were curious, playful and wild. I received a caller i.d.  read more »

Here the re-building continues in the domain of the feminine "self."

February 12, 2005
I dreamt that Anita was shepherding a number of young girls in her store. She was teaching them lessons in mysticism. Beads, candles, incense and exotic fabrics filled the room. Then someone found out it was my birthday and they guided me into a smaller room. There I was informed that I was going to be given my "other half" - the part of me that had been missing for all of these years.  read more »