It's OK

I suppose it was 1972 or so. I was reading, required by my tribe, everything that Carlos Casteneda had written up to that time. There was another incidental connection between author and reader as Mr. Casteneda was teaching anthropology at UCLA at the time, where my Mom toiled from 9-5 as the textbook coordinator. She shared many of the eccentric stories that flowed from his classes like smoke from a desert campfire. To say that he was legendary would undermine the impact of both his students and that of an entire generation. An entire generation looking for answers. 

Perhaps the takeaway from his work that impacted me most, and there were many, was his central character, Don Juan Mateus’ teacher/student relationship with the young seeker Carlitos. I remember thinking how I would love to have someone in my life of whom I could ask the important questions, the BIG questions. Specifically, I tried to put several of the ‘tests and practices’ advised by Don Juan into play. Everything changed as a result. I began to see things differently, think of alternate possibilities rather than the obvious and mundane, and consider the power, magic and art inherent in every living thing. Interestingly his teachings were not solely conducted in the light of day but often at night, sometimes all night and occasionally well into the realm of the dreamscape. 

And that is where I witnessed first-hand some of the real magic that the Yaqui way of knowledge offered. Dreams. 

Taking the assignment to heart in order to test for myself as an experiment of one, I began to log my dreams fist thing upon waking every morning. I kept a log at bedside to capture, to the best of my recollections, my dreams. For the sake of honesty, I was twenty-one at the time so many of the dreams were of the erotic variety, some of which I am sure would make Freud blush. I wish that journal had withstood the passage of time, but somewhere along this long and strange trip it was lost, stolen or incinerated. Maybe it was used to start a life-saving fire on a frozen mountaintop. 

The dreams have been returning. I seem to be in a vivid, colorful and interesting cycle of deep REMs. Last night was another that I will share with you. 

I am sitting with a small group of artisans. We are watching what appears to be an impromptu, improvisational stage play. It is interactive and I feel somewhat intimidated and unprepared. At one point the main actor, a young man with gold hair and an angelic face, looks directly at me for a response. But I don’t know what is appropriate. The dialogue is so scattered and happenstance that I have lost the thread, theme and flow. People are now looking at me waiting for my line, or response. I have nothing verbally to offer so I stand and resume my painting on a huge canvass spread in front of me. It is a series of horizontal lines, a hippie flag suggesting peace, love and happiness. I am adding an outline in saffron and silver. I then remember that it should be multi-media so I take a small manila envelope from my vest pocket and randomly place the round puka-shell like chips on top of the drying pigment. Everyone is watching as I try to add some body language to the mime. The reaction is non-plussed and I get up to walk away. I am thinking that I somehow failed. I feel sorrowful and small. I wonder what the message was supposed to be and what I was supposed to do, other than my meager attempt at artistic improv. I am walking away on a dusty road with tepees scattered on either side. There are people walking dressed in animal skins adorned with jewels, feathers and stones. They all seem happy and enjoying the moment. They acknowledge my presence and I nod and bow in return. It’s OK I think, it’s OK.

Perhaps I will renew my dream journal, maybe even call it something like Dreams Plus 46. Surely all the events, conversations, locations, sounds, insights, fears, victories, songs, books, movies, rides, loves, efforts, failures and fantasies that have all washed under the bridge of my tenure will have a profound effect on my dreams. They have to. 

Might even re-read, fiction or not. 

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same. CC.