Ides of Winter

Happy Ides of Winter.

This is the time of year when Mark insists that the angels that have lived on the mantle since the Winter Solstice must go.  As a way to sweeten the deal, he suggested that we replace them with Lava Lamps. 

I thought that only one of the lamps worked, and that a trip to the hardware store to get a special bulb might be in order.  But when I checked, both lamps worked. 

"It's a Groundhog Day Miracle!" Mark said. 

We've had the angels for at least fifteen years.  Mark and I were at a big box store and I saw these and gasped, because they are so horribly over the top.  And I have an affinity for sculptures of angels playing horns, or singing, or holding lamps or lecterns.   Okay, and I would love a house filled with angels (and gargoyles) holding lights everywhere.   (Also, can you imagine a row of these holding up a coffee table?)

Actually, a house of Lava Lamps would be cool, too (especially in Winter). 

Mark made us wait until the day after Christmas, and the big box store had a Holiday Reduction Sale -- which meant we could get two for the price of one!  (I would have gotten four, but....)

Prophetic Angel-Serpent Dream

I've been hitting the gym less, and my shoulder feels better.  I should go running on the eliptical soon.

I dreamed I was in a high school or college play.  It was a mash-up of Jesus Christ, Superstar" and "Godspell," I think.  I was playing a prophet, and typically, It was opening night and I was having difficulty recalling my lines.  (That I'm a prophet who's forgotten his lines strikes me as signifiant and funny in waking life.)  

I was wandering around back stage, which seemed to be a bunch of tunnels made out of parachutes. When I asked a woman if I could take a look at her script.  At this point I realized that my part had been cut, and that someone else had been given my part's song-and-dance number.  

There's a bit of break and the next thing I remember, I was on the stage.  This was a giant, twisty thing of concrete; in waking life I'm reminded of the "dinosaur bones" in Avery Park in Corvallis, only these were three stories high, and more like columns of frozen water.   They had been made by Winged Serpents -- which may have been fallen angels at one point -- and the Serpents had twisted around and around the concrete columns so that their scales were embossed in the sides of ridges that were wide enough for two or so people to be able to spiral up to the column's top.

I was in some sort of New Testiment Temptation of Christ... only I think the Archangle Micheal was speaking to me (or Christ...) and saying how the trails of his brothers (the Serpent-cast trail) were there.  The Serpents had turned to Angels in mid-squeeze, and when their Serpent bodies had fallen away, only the scaely impressions and their smaller Angel bodies were left behind.

Various cast members were using chalk to color in some of the scales into mosiacs, and chalking in things like nativity scenes along the inside of the trail.  

In waking life, I'm reminded of various dreams I had a few years ago which are part of a dream-knot, but in this dream no deities were hot, shirtless studs and there was no kissing.

MET Angel Panels

Somewhere in the MET, between the hall of Medieval European art and the Hall of Arms and Armor, there's a chapel that is decorated with wood paneling.  The panels look like they have Freemason symbols on them or something.  Mark pointed out that a few of them had an alter with a burning fatted calf on them.

I like the top photo because of the way cherub wings make a half vesica pisces and the cherub faces fill a kind of half circle.  

I like the second one because of the overlapping ribbons around the seraphim (at least I think it's a seraphim, even if it has only four wings instead of six) make an interesting knot pattern.

The only problem with both photos is that they're more orange-yellow than the actual panels, which were more of a reddish, umber or brick color.

Angel Cloak Dream

I dreamed ...

Over all of the dream was the sense that I was going to be late for high school, and that 8 AM was looming.

I decided to run away to a small wooden cabin in the woods.  In the dream the cabin was somewhere in the woods on the hill where my folks live.  An angel had lived in the cabin, but he had left many years ago.  He had been a seven foot tall dark man -- I'm not sure if he was African or not, because he spoke with an Irish accent.  All he left behind was his large dark cloak.  It was of some thin black material, and it was more like a duster or a cassock with a hood.

I got into his cabin.  At one point Mark might have been there with me, but I"m not sure.  The cabin was cold.  I had brought some supplies, but I was still kind of cold, so I wrapped myself up in the angel's large dark cloak.  My dream point of view shifted and I watched myself from above looking down at myself, my white hands drawing the dark material around myself like a pea pod.

I dreamed in the angel's cloak, and I was reliving his life.  I was eating a soup or thin stew.  All I saw was a white porcelain bowl, a large spoon, and the broth.  I was in the point of view of an angry, slightly drunk father; I saw the meal through his eyes and heard the conversation through his ears.  I was eating with my sons, thirteen and fifteen.

We had a dysfunctional conversation, (in an Irish or Scottish accent) which involved the father (me) warning the sons about slutty girls, the older son weaselly not-accusing the younger son of hanging out with one, and the younger son (who would become the angel) whining that his friend wasn't like that at all.   The father (me) was getting angrier and angrier, and the part of me having the dream in the angel's cloak saw that the older son was baiting the younger son into a beating from their father.  During all of this, I was eating the broth and hearing the conversation like a radio play.

I think I woke up in the angel's cabin and the dream went on to other things...

Silent Fright

My sister hates this angel.  I'm not sure why.  I think it frightens her.

I, of course, always loved this particular angel, and for decades made sure that she was always ensconced at the very top of the tree.  I liked her because she was angel that wasn't too cute, or saccharine, or blonde-and-blue-eyed.  I liked her because she seemed like she was beautiful without being pretty.  I liked her because of the small silver star on her brow, which made her a kind of Tolkien character.

We still have this angel, and she still is near the top of the tree, but she's been supplanted by a big star bought on sale at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Angels and Macro Lenses

The other day was sunny, so I went on a photo safari. I relearned that my camera takes much better macro-lens photographs than anything else. This is the best shot, I think, of a angel embossed on a tin sheet.

I also re-learned that I need to make a little chart of the relationships between F-stops, focal length, and shutter speeds....