Wednesday, August 03, 2022

Ace of Lighters

We join the dream in progress...

(Sexy bits with naked men redacted.)

I was with a group of (presumably) gay men staying at a lodge in the forest and who were going to go into town for breakfast.  The meal was supposed to be excellent in a rustic setting—gourmet, but not pretentious; fulfilling, but not greasy or heavy; simple, but not unrefined.  I think we bussed (or rode a van) to a town that was on a large rocky outcropping (the entire town was built on one gigantic rock).

At the town, we entered a large, bright room where a circle of older women sat.  They were our breakfast hosts, and we thanked them for having us and they had a grandmotherly "aren't these fine young men" moment.  

We filed up some stairs carved into the rock.  The stairway was darker and labyrinthine; at times we were in rocky tunnels.  I found myself in a procession of people, mostly men, walking up through twisting stairways.  The way doubled back on itself, and I briefly glimpsed M.H. in his old red and black cloak as we passed by each other (this was apparently his cameo as he hadn't been in the dream until this point and didn't reappear later).

There's a break in the narrative.  I was either at the edge of a very large pool of water or floating in it.  There might have been stars in the deep twilight sky, but I couldn't tell you if it was dusk or dawn.  A pale hand—I couldn't say if it was mine or someone else's—held a lit lighter about an arm's length in front of my face.  At times the lighter's flame reflected above the surface of the pool, at other times the lighter's flame shone from under the water.  There was a circle of mostly youngish women around the pool's edge.

A chorus of women's voices began to sing (in waking life, they sounded like Bananarama singing a cover of "Spooky"; in 2/2 time):

They / say the moon / in the sky / is a lake / that would rather be a river //
They / say the moon / in the sky / is alive / so love her like a lover.  

A woman (at the water's edge?) began to speak, but at that point the house cuckoo clock in the kitchen began to count 6 AM.  I tried to stay in the dream and remember what she said, but the second cuckoo brought me into the waking world.




When I was relating the dream to Mark, he said the lighter sounded like a tarot card; I agreed, and added something about the Lady of the Lake.  Fire and water together primarily makes me think of the King of Cups tarot card, or secondarily the Queen of Wands.  I suppose it could be the Ace of Flames, or Lighters, but I'd have to meditate more on what it might mean beyond just being a cool image.

Thinking about the previous evening, before going to bed I'd been snacking in my Writer's Grotto, with a solar powered lamp underneath a circular glass deck table (one of four bought to be outdoor ritual tables), so that might have powered all of the circular imagry, as well as suggesting the Ace of Lighters Unquenched by Water.

The labyrinthine caves is a reoccurring dream motif, and I haven't figured out the precise meaning.  In this dream they were a transforming boundary separating the bright circle of elder women from the dark circle of younger women.  I used to have dreams where I would cross a boundary of water and into a magical zone, and lately twisty tunnels have taken on that role.  Sometimes caves turn into Caves of Wonder showing tableaus; maybe M.H. showing up was an attempt in this direction.   Sometimes tunnel labyrinths feel constricting, but this one wasn't. 

I don't know where the song came from.  This was the most lyrics I've dreamed since the 1950's-esque "In Corvallis" dream with the floor-show song, or the French burlesque song and routine "Va-vooom!"  both from decades ago.  Maybe I've been listening to "Agatha All Along" too much (having recently discovered it), but the song sounds more like "Spooky" -- the word play is fun.

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