Where I Go To Dream

Were I an Orinthologist I might be able to describe them more acurately, perhaps even to name their calls. But for now, the bird sounds, carried in with the hush-hush-mmmm, hush-hush-mmmm of the norte (that menacing Solola wind) splatter my days with thier unusual harmonies:

One chuckles "hahahahaha" like an old man choking on a bone while he recalls a filthy thought; another whistles like a train, but with an upward inflection, like saying, "really?"; and of course the meow, the call I mistakenly took for a kitten the first time it sounded..."Meowmeow" says this bird, and pauses, waiting for a response. And again, "Meowmeow".

During the early morning hours I'm dreaming up a storm, and in these dreams, which are accompanied by the bird calls, I've effortlessly climbed massive limestone waterfalls, gone driving through diesel-stench New Mexican (Guatemalan?) towns, and torn apart a leg of chicken with my teeth, in such disgust that I woke myself...

All are hymns inspired by stories collected during waking hours, sung in the bright, effervescent language of my hollow dreaming-place.

I've spent weeks trying to unravel the most memorable of these night songs. It began with something I notice every day living on the lake: I dreamed gasoline, the smell of boat fuel, a ribbon of black lapping at the shore like poison dripping from young lips. And then I was perched high up in a eucalyptys tree, hiding among the branches and conversing with two precious little Meowmeow birds, in Meowmeow, of course. I remember the bird's belly, dark velvet brown on my cheek and firm and warm and beating like a little feathered heart or like a heaping handful of silken anise seed. I remember nothing of the conversation, and the moment I woke I was back to being an English-speaker, none of my meowmeow remained.

I've shared my dreams with three people who have emerged as important in my Santa Cruz days thus far, all of whom have listened to me during this time when my sleeping life is more real than my waking, when i am pushing forward into the previously dim-lit hollows of my mind, regularly experiencing an intense scooping-out sensation, like extracting fibrous debris to reveal a radiant inner surface...like preparing a squash for stuffing. For their wisdom and care and for opening all kinds of doors, I remain indebted to Lily, Krishna, Robert.

As for my conversation-with-the-birds dream, Lily asked me what they had said, and when I just couldn't come up with it, she asked how they had made me feel, up there in their tree. At home, I said, They made me feel welcomed and at home. And with this admission I peeked into the kitchen where Lily and I were sitting and observed the scene from outside: there we were, having tea and playing cards and planning for the summer, when I would move into Lily's casita for an opportunity to write and relish in my (nearly unhealthy, now) love of solitude. Since this time i've moved my belongings into the casita, perched high up twelve stairs and banana-thatched, ripe for nesting. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, yo soy mis pasos. And here, glued belly-down on the bed with all the windows flung open and the Jasmine and Sage and Russian Chamomile and lake-smells hovering on the Norte, and with nothing and everything on my mind at once, I felt more here, more in Western Guatemala alongside this mysterious volcanic crater, more amongst a people who have so much to teach the rest of the world, more connected to the physical body that has carried me here, than ever before.

Krishna roused me from sleep in my top bunk and lifted me out of bed. He carried me down the darkened path at La Iguana Perdida and to the lake's edge, which was more like a Carribbean beach, as the water sparkled clear and turquoise beneath a full moon and star-crowded sky. The bar was packed with laughing patrons and Krishna sat me down on his lap on a barstool and told me that he had woken me just so that I could help him with this tedious game of scrabble he had going with the bartender. In front of us on the bar was a Scrabble board and Krishna's tiles, where he'd formed a word, though he needed me to tell him if indeed it was a real word...

I woke from this dream without having been able to offer any help in the Scrabble game. I can't remember what the word was, but in waking it remains as unimportant as the rest of the unspoken words between us, as vague as my memories of the weekends that passed between then and now, when Krishna would arrive at the lake on Saturday afternoons and be gone by Sunday sundown, the disputed word perhaps symbolic of a series of subtle miscommunications during our brief and tender encounter. And little things, like scattered tiles, lay between us as souvenirs: my broken sunglasses wrapped up in a silk scarf, the elusive soccerball, tee shirts and towels and bottles of shampoo, two books hidden scavenger-hunt style behind a posterboard, and one perfect, bear-like puppy named Shiva.

It was when Krishna came to play fútbol with the village boys, who met on the central patio at the Iguana, that I met Robert and his dog, Rubberhead ("Rubbah", in Robert's solid New York accent). Rubber and Robert are both gentle and pensive, eccentric but subtle in their approach, and both blessed with incredible patience. The very first thing that stood out in my conversations with Robert on the patio was his descriptions of his daily walking meditations, a time when he moves his feet as slowly as his breath, minding the earth in front of him and being only there, where the sole of his foot rests. He spoke to me about this meditation as a metaphor for all that he believes in surrounding the art of mindfulness, be here now, the release of the ego, and nourishing the creative spirit. Robert is a writer, and spends his days filling notebook after notebook with story ideas and images, and like me enjoys conversation based on storytelling and spirituality and serendipity and synchronicity and books and of course, dreams. He helped me to hash out the series of outrageous images that visited me in a dream I had while napping on my twenty-sixth birthday: I lived in a spacious mansion on Lily's property and was giving a tour to my mom, who was nine months pregnant (a surreal, Dali-esque, giant egg of a belly) with twin girls, whose little faces were pressed against the belly's inner wall to reveal tiny profiles just like mine. The dream also included a bedroom undulating with violet and green light where I "went to dream", and an oversized blow-up toy with the heads and legs, dressed in the style of giddy WWII servicewomen, poking out everywhere. With Rubberhead's thin leather leash wrapped around his delicate hand, Robert chuckled, tossed back his grey ponytail and said, "What a birthday dream!".

And so, with both new friendships and precious solitude at my side, I have changed: I speak and hear myself differently, I am seeking a new and better language to describe my thoughts and dreams. It will be a language of ordinary words and of my own making, composed of a series of pulses and night-sounds, of colored light and lapping lake, of bird calls and deep, throaty breaths heard between my own two ears. Though I haven't taught myself this language yet, I have located its presence, and someday maybe it will help me to describe the sensation of touching my own infant face through a layer of flesh; perhaps it will help me to write a script of the conversation I had with the meowing birds; it might allow me to pray more intensely to the God of small things, or to entice a lover to do exactly as I please...

...and i'll have honey-slow, sunday afternoon conversations with both her (the old me) and her (who will she be?) until the lake changes color as darkness approaches and it´s time to sleep again.