Vitauts Jaunarājs
Betwixt & Between has been the most common space I’ve occupied in my life. Neither here nor there. Neither this nor that. Here are some verbal snapshots, some video clips in words showing some of the spaces in which I’ve been lost and where I've found myself.
Betwixt & Between, this culture and that. I am the first child of a Latvian immigrant family to have been born in the United States. I grew up in Colorado Springs in a household that was defended as an island of pure Latvianism constantly under assault by a churning ocean of American culture. Much to the consternation of my grade school teachers, I arrived at kindergarten speaking, reading and writing fluent Latvian. Bi-lingualism was perceived as a deficit in the xenophobic, less-than-liberal Colorado Springs of my childhood. All experiences connected to the family (church, weekend school, social events, piano lessons, socializing) occurred within the tiny Latvian community. The highly conservative immigrant Latvian community played an enormous role in my growing up, juxtaposed against a completely separate (and, ironically, also conservative) American, English-speaking life. Latvia the country, swallowed up into the Soviet Union, could not even be visited until I was in my twenties. These were two worlds, one built and rebuilt of fading memories, the other all too rapaciously tangible, that rarely intersected. I grew up bilingually and bi-culturally, neither a “real” American, nor a “real” Latvian. As an adult, when travel to Latvia was possible, I experienced that what I had thought was my Homeland, was in reality no such place. In Latvia, too, I was seen as an outsider, “not one of us,” just as much as in the U.S.
Betwixt & Between, this hand and the other. With a natural proclivity to left-handedness, I arrived in a family where the physical left was understood to be Sinister and Evil. (Not to mention the political left!) Physical and emotional heavy-handedness was employed to enforce the use of my right hand to write. In other activities that fell outside the ken of family interest, such as sports, I was able to use my left hand. Between these two worlds of handedness I developed a sort of ambidextrousness, along with a disturbing sense of never being sure in a given situation which was the "correct" hand to use. Neither hand felt "natural."
Betwixt & Between, this career and that. My father had been a judge in Latvia. My mother had gained a law degree there. And my ten-years-older brother became a practicing attorney in Colorado. Although I had a great passion for the piano, writing and such, pressures to follow in the family’s legal footsteps were great, and I entered the legal world, not as an attorney, but working for numerous years managing data, records and information systems at a very large law firm. Realizing the potentially soul-killing, mind-killing, and body-killing ramifications of continuing to stay in the legal / business world, I left and obtained a master’s degree in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology at the Buddhist-inspired Naropa Institute (now, Naropa University) in Boulder. I have been working as a Licensed Professional Counselor / psychotherapist and Certified Addictions Counselor (Level III) for the past decade and a half.
Betwixt & Between, this belief and that. From day one, I was shunted and straight-jacketed into the suffocating fold of a highly conservative Latvian Evangelical Lutheran church. This was always a very poor fit for my curiosity-filled mind and soul, that were attracted to esoteric and mystical paths, particularly Eastern and Native traditions, including the Latvian pagan worldview. Troublingly, each of these paths has felt indifferent to, if not intolerant of, each other, as well as of other aspects of my life.
Betwixt & Between, this sexual role and that. The family expectation was that I would marry a nice Latvian girl. The emphasis was on “Latvian,” but it turned out that for me, the “girl” part was equally problematic. I found myself attracted to males while in the midst of very intolerant hetero worlds. Yet, beyond an emotional and physical attraction to males, I’ve often found that many other aspects of ‘the gay community” do not match who I am or the life I wish to construct.
A life of Betwixt & Between, as it turned out, allowed me to become particularly aware of the various levels of dreaming. I learned about the phenomenal power, positive and negative, generated by unswerving and unyielding Dreams of Ideals, Dreams as Visions, and Dreams as Goals & Aspirations. I witnessed and experienced how destructive such dreams can become if not tested against the waking reality they were generating. The collective nightmares of Hitler and Nazism, as well as Stalin and Communism never ceased casting their poisonous shadows over my parents’ lives. My parents dream of “Hold onto Latvia at Any & All Costs” cast a nightmarish shadow over my childhood, my first youth and beyond. The shadow of the American Dream as played out in a military town darkened other aspects of my life. Reactionary and conservative, nostalgic and yearning, other people's dreams shut much light and air out of my life.
Working to create coherence among and within all my spaces of Betwixt & Between, Dreamfulness (the cultivation of a mindful, heartful, soulful, bodyful & careful relationship with the Ways of Dreaming and with the world) took on a dominant role in my life. The healing messages of sleep dreams have ongoingly offered me support and coherence in a world of isolation. Daydreams have kept me in touch with what I really feel and want in the face of outside (and also inside) oppression, repression and suppression. Visions, particularly of a spiritual/soulful ilk, have provided boundary-transgressing portals into safety and sanity for me. Dreams as Goals and Aspirations have allowed me to interface with various degrees of success with the various worlds in which I have found myself. The realm of Ideals, the knowledge that my world and the World can and should be different, better, has been like the air without which I could not live. The Realm of Art has provided me with allies and support in negotiating the challenges, if not nightmares, that have faced me in my life.
Betwixt & Between, while making for much discomfort in the living of my life, turns out to describe the World of Dreams. The ways (both landscapes and methods) I've traveled in the Land of Betwixt & Between are very similar to the Ways of the World of Dreams. The Dreamful Way is the How and the Where of coherence, encompassing all of life, its seemingly unbearable terror, it's ineffable beauty, and everything else it presents to us. I hope that what we share in Dreamways will help open the doors to Dreamfulness for dreamers who visit this website.
