dreamgroup?

I still miss my dreamgroup. In Portland we had an excellent circle of people - open, adventurous, empathetic - that met once a week on a livingroom floor for about 9 months straight. Well, in the absence of time and space yet to convene another here, I'm going to call a virtual circle in this space. Anybody reading this want to talk dreams? (Anybody reading this?) Can I share mine, and welcome your feedback? Want to share one of your own? The only "rules" are very simple: egalitarian communication, careful objectivity, respect for the sacredness of the other's experience. We would try to never say "I think your dream is about this", but rather "If this were MY dream, I'd perceive it this way..." We would leave plenty of space for the story's mystery, leave our interpretations and investigations open to further possibility. We tried to make our dreamtimes more awake, and our waking lives more dreamlike. So much magic to tap into there.

So here's a recent one that I want to send out into the world. For wherever it may want to travel. I was cleaning out my house, and found an item that seemed almost worthless: an old, beat-up portable radio. It had a tape player but no CD. I almost threw it out, and then remembered that it might have significance to one certain person, if I could find her. She was a woman I didn't know - had never met - but I had heard of her, and that she sometimes took things in trade. I made the trip to her house, apparently seated right behind her on a bus (or maybe even in her own car), but didn't try to speak to her until we both got out at her door. Then I approached carefully, so as not to startle her with my maybe-unwelcome intrusion. She accepted my sudden appearance, and invited me in. She was blonde, a bit chubby, nice clothes, quite mainstream-like. She carried a baby girl on one arm, that never made a sound and seemed very calm.

Her home was a very typical middle-class subdivision kinda house, brick outside, carpet and heavy wood furniture inside, fireplace in the living room. Like many houses where I deliver pizza. The only unusual thing about the room was that it was full of kittens. There were probably 6 or 7 of them bouncing around, playing with things, and in fact they had made kind of a mess of things across the floor. The woman seemed apologetic about this, and invited me into another room. On the way out, I noticed several other electronic devices scattered around the space - stereos, phones, things I couldn't identify. The radios were all much nicer than mine, and I thought maybe I should take my shabby offering home and bring back a nicer stereo that I could probably just as well do without. Then I might get something better in trade. But for now this was what I had.

We went into a smaller room, and the woman pulled out two items I had never seen before, but that in the dream I recognized as musical instruments. I called them "lutes" in my mind, although they weren't like any lutes I've seen in waking life, or any instruments for that matter. They were curved, bowed wood frames, a little like sled runners, 2-3 feet long. Various wires and pieces of metal were stretched across their middle spaces, some of which looked razor-sharp. (Actually, they looked a bit like Klingon swords, for you fellow geeks out there...) I could tell they were fine workmanship, worth a great deal, and was surprised she was offering them to me for my beat-up old radio. But she was, so I considered carefully. And told her I'd have to give it the thought it deserved, and would return soon.

Maybe this one's more open to interpretation than I thought. More and more the objects in dreams, and the odd props the consciousness uses to interpret ideas, are what interest me...and there's always some aspect comes to light, in a dreamgroup, that I would've never come to on my own...