Dream: A woman comes to the house where I am living and tells me to pack a few things, that I’m going with her. She is sexy and funny and she rides a motorcycle. Ok! I say. But why pack things? She says, trust me. As we leave the house through the basement, we are talking like kids about the things we hate. I see ants on the banister and say, I hate ants. Then I see roaches on the door and say I hate roaches. We are laughing – it’s funny. Outside, we get on her bike and she takes me away from the house.
She takes me, surprisingly, to a classroom. There, a man is teaching about writing and poetry. He gets right in my face and says, I did MY MFA thesis on Sonnets and Soliloquies. I can feel He is asking what I did my thesis on, but I do not say. Surely, I say to myself, this is not what I am supposed to be doing – this can’t be right.
Then the woman takes me to pee and I realize I am small and that I pee in front of everyone, including the man who is big and I don’t care.
***
When He leans into me and tells me what He does, I do not respond. I react instead feeling like surely this is not what this is about. I still have something, some block about my writing, about my own writing. It is attached to being vulnerable in the world, being the girl in the world. When He gets in my face about doing things that are not dear to me, I can often jump right in, but when it is something that is so full of passion for me, I get scared.
I got scared in the dream when I knew He wanted me to say what I do.
What He does is sonnets and soliloquies. Sonnets, of course, are often 14 line poems (though there are poets who are experimenting with the form in exciting ways) that seem to be about one thing, but then have a turn in them, often at the end in the last couplet. They are about this, then they are about the opposite. Soliloquies are monologues where a character speaks about what is really happening – an aside to him/herself. In Shakespeare’s plays (who I associate with both Sonnets and Soliloquies), the soliloquies often show the progression of the character. In Hamlet, if you take out just his monologues and read them, you can see where the arc of the play and his development as a character – the soliloquies are where he speaks the truth about himself, whether it is a pout or passion.
Both are like the dreams. This is what the Animus does – the sonnet with its turns, the soliloquy’s with the person doing the internal talk, the arc of the person – both of these are the dreams.
He’s saying – I do dreams! And they are like poems and plays.
What do I do that I do not admit to in the dream…what did I write my MFA thesis on?
I wrote my thesis on the poetic forms of women mystic poets. Compared them a bit to male poets who wrote about God and spiritual journeys, but focused on how women write about God. When a teacher read my paper, he said that it was not a thesis, it was a book that needed to be written. A book about how women have written about God, how they write about God. I choose mystic poets from Dante’s time, I choose Dickinson to parallel Blake and I choose Jean Valentine, a contemporary poet who writes often from her dreams.
After I graduated, I thought about writing that book. But did not. Surely, this is not what God wants me to do.
This is what He does – sonnets and soliloquies.
This is what I do – I write about God. I write about mystic poets. This is what I do – I am a mystic poet. Shakespeare is mystic poet.
Dream:
I am talking with my Aunt about NOE. About how we all live in the same area – I point out how I live in the Pink House with Bill and Christa and Ben and Amy and how next door, Annie and Robin live, then behind them lives…I go on and on naming the neighborhood, feeling excited about how we all live within a block of each other. She is very sweet and interested, saying that she met a nice young man named Peter Fischer who said he knew me. I said, Yes! Peter is a sweet man and he is part of this, too. I talk to her about our community. Meanwhile, my mother is sitting next to me, so livid with rage that she is paralyzed and rigid. It seems funny to me.
Switch
I’m with others and there is a man standing nearby. He has a vial in his hand with a lid. He pops off the lid and I think, oop, I guess that’s it. I know that there is a virus in the vial and that He has let it out, that there is no turning back, that it’s been done. I think oop, well, there it goes.
***
In this dream, I am not afraid to be vulnerable and in the world with us, with our community, with the sweetness of what we are doing, not even in front of my family. I am unaffected by the demon in the dream who comes at me as my mother.
But the vial has been opened, the virus is out. He has played His hand. When we worked this in session, Marc said – well, there it is. He has done it, the virus is out. The man, who is the Animus, has let something out of that vial and it is spreading.
Pop.
So, what am I going to do? Am I going to waste this? He has started something, let something out. What am I going to do? Waste the moment? Hesitate? He has popped the vial. Oop. How exciting.
So, this is what I do. I write about God.
It is scary, so scary. Not the vial, not the speaking in front of the demon. It is scary to know that what I do is write about God. It is scary to say that I write about God because I am a woman of God. I came into this world as a woman of God. A child of God.
It is not scary to ride out of the house full of shame with the ants, with the roaches, to go with the Anima (for the first time), but it is scary to sit with Him as the vulnerable girl, and say what I do.
I write about God. I am finding my form of writing about God. I am a woman of God.
And He keeps calling me out by my name and I keep dropping past the projection. He says, I do sonnets and soliloquies. He asks, What do you do?
Pop
I am a woman of God. I write about God. I am a woman of God who is in the world as a woman of God. Speaking.