lucid dreams – Page 3 – A View from the Wheelhouse

Writer’s cramp is neither a basic muscle problem, nor the high level disorder of the composition process seen in writer’s block, but somewhere in between.

Alice W. Flaherty, The Midnight Disease

1. I’m on my own for a week. Lily has left for Hawaii, leaving me to do something meaningful with my 7 days as a bachelor. Its time to start a post. Have I lost my ability to write since the last? Did I ever have it?

2. I’ve been reading my morning pages from 2010-2011. Those who follow of Julie Cameron’s Artist Way books know what I mean. Basically, you write 3 pages every morning whether you feel like it or not . Though I never progressed beyond this to her subsequent exercises, I’ve been doing them now for some 20 years (can it be true?)

After perusal of the pages and notating with the recommended red and green colored pencils, I see certain themes recur in dreams. Usually, I’m lost in some city looking for food and burdened with too much gear. The blockages I face in writing, art and life seem reflected in these endlessly recurring images of abandonment and loss in crowded cities somewhere to the south.

watercolor 036 — Watercolor by Craig Spencer

3. I listen to Hawaiian, slack key guitar and imagine what Lily is doing. A cascade of clear, lazy notes falls like rain on banana leaves while puffy clouds are blown across a vivid, blue sky with the tradewinds. ~~Festoons of bright jewels play over the dancing palms~~ Jewels of radiant light festoon the swaying palm trees while Lily does the hula.

4. I read more pages from 2010-11. There are exhortations to myself ~~to get~~ ~~moving-to overcome~~ ~~stasis.~~ to get moving. I throw pages out and keep only the dreams. These are the only things of interest-like the one of the earth gyres that inspired this painting. Only later did I realize it was a tribute to my ex-boss and dear friend Doug, who passed away from cancer 40 years after exposure to Agent Orange during the Viet Nam war.

The image of the twin gyres spiraling like whirlpools on the earth somehow seems related to this dilemma of intention versus receptivity. Or maybe Doug is simply telling me to get off my ass and get to work.

5. I told Lily before she left for Hawaii that its best not to stick to a set itinerary. Better to go with the flow, and adjust to circumstances over which you have no control (like volcanoes.) I might well have been speaking to myself as regards writing. After faced with a week of my own dark thoughts, negativity and acedia (sloth), I’ve decided to surrender to he natural ebb and flow of ideas and, like the ancient poets, call upon the muses for their aid in meeting the self-imposed weekly deadline for my blog post.

Port Madison, January '12 015 — Old Hand

6. ~~Today is overcast. The wind blows dark masses of cloud northward past the cell phone tower that looms overhead like an Archon whose only duty is to arrest my flights of prose.~~ Dark clouds fly past the cell tower looming overhead like an Archon whose sole duty is to arrest my flights of prose.

Maybe I’ll go clean the galley on my boat, Old Hand, or lay some dark hue on a fresh canvas and invite the muse into my fortress of solitude on the farm.

7. Why not write something? I resolve to have courage in the face of the blank page. I shall summon fortitude, and let not my hand be stayed by the inarticulate. O Muses, grant me a loftier theme! Inspire my oft-times loopy pen to transcribe thy song. Or at least not let my computer crash.

Here is another go at an old unresolved work. As this blog is about the art process, I include it despite its cloying sappiness. It was inspired by a story from the same manuscript in which Gawain’s story is told. It is called The Pearl. By a stream, the poet falls asleep and dreams of a maid who leads him to wondrous visions of salvation. Nearly 20 years ago I decided to memorize it and can recall some of it still.

From the memory practice unfolded a long period of work with lucid dreams, of bringing conscious intent to bear on the spontaneous flow of dream imagery by doing walking meditation and mantra within the dream itself. The dream mantra invokes the aid of compassionate deities as we wander alone through the hazardous pathways of the dream bardo. According to Tibetan Buddhists, This prepares us for the bardo after death.

opposites 002 — These illustrations are from Carl Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy

In the poet’s dream, the unconscious is pushed into conscious awareness like oceanic tides flooding upriver. This inundation has been long expressed in flood myths. Its flow forms an imaginal landscape and the sudden release of its energy forces a breakthrough of vivid imagery. This can form a tsunami if not channeled through the creative process. It demands integration with our logical mind. It becomes necessary to reconcile the irreconcilable, to balance contrary states into a healthy, creative relationship. This is the artistic process.

stream drawing 002 — This drawing is for a new version.

This harmony is represented in Alchemical imagery as the mystic marriage. Sufi’s have a phrase, ishq’ allah mabudlilah, which means something like: Love, lover and beloved are One. This sacred phrase speaks of how we are continuous with all we behold, and that knowledge of this truth transforms us through knowing it. It is the Gnostic vision. The subject/object dichotomy is illumined by a larger, more inclusive totality that embraces paradox.

The Golden Mean expresses this truth and is the proportion closest to the original unity from which multiplicity arises.