I'm continuing to play my winter game of opening old dream journals at random and re-viewing what jumps out (see "Journal Times", December 28, 2009). Today I grabbed a binder with my journals from the first half of 1997, and found myself looking at a short dream report in a hand other than my own, accompanied by a vivid drawing in markers.
The handwriting was that of my youngest daughter, Sophie, who was then aged seven. I had encouraged her to write and draw her dream stories from a very early age, and from time to time she would present me with one of these, which I always regarded as the highest honor. I have Sophie's permission to post her dream story from March 29, 1997 here. This is an exact transcription of a text that includes only a couple of spelling mistakes (see if you spot them}:
THE TRICKSTER MARBLE
Once apon a time I was at a fair. I met a trickster marble named Buddy.
A few days later we got into a fight.
He went bowling and erend lots of money. He started to forget about me.
I met him at the game and made up and just to prove it he tricked the policeman and got me some flowers.
The End
Something to dream apon.
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Speaking of which, leafing forward through my 1997 journal for a few weeks, I found what looks a lot like a kind of family sequel, or at least one of those life rhymes. I dreamed I was playing a board game with my father, in which he fires one of the pieces like a marble. Here's the report:
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April 2, 1997
BOARD GAME WITH MY FATHER
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I am playing a board game with my father. The board is arranged as a hollow square. It's quite large, and is composed of marble tiles set within a wooden frame. The pieces are stones of varying sizes, mostly ovoid and white or near-white.
----My father shoots one of the pieces like a marble.
----My pieces are moving along inside tracks, close to the inner edge of the playing surface. My father is moving his pieces around the outer edge. When I decide to stop the game, some of his pieces are in the corner nearest my place at the table.
---The board we've been playing on is very unsusual. The space at the center is a large-as-life forest, though this violates the laws of 3D reality.
----My father shoots one of the pieces like a marble.
----My pieces are moving along inside tracks, close to the inner edge of the playing surface. My father is moving his pieces around the outer edge. When I decide to stop the game, some of his pieces are in the corner nearest my place at the table.
---The board we've been playing on is very unsusual. The space at the center is a large-as-life forest, though this violates the laws of 3D reality.
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My father had died nearly ten years before this dream, two years before Sophie was born. I wasn't confused, in the dream, about his status. I understood, in my dream self, that Dad was both dead and alive - ex-physical, but very active in another order of reality. This was one of many dream encounters with my father that followed his death, and confirmed my sense that our games of life are part of a deeper game.
----I've always been intrigued by board games that mirror and (in dreams and myth) may influence events on a larger scale. The space at the center of the board on which my father and I are playing reminds me of the portal in the game board in the film Jumanji that lets a whole jungle, with all its beasts, into an ordinary neighborhood - and can suck you into a different reality.
----I had not made a connection between the board game with my father and Sophie's dream of the Trickster Marble until today's re-view of that "old" journal, but I'm tickled by the rhyme, and I think my Dad is too.
----I've always been intrigued by board games that mirror and (in dreams and myth) may influence events on a larger scale. The space at the center of the board on which my father and I are playing reminds me of the portal in the game board in the film Jumanji that lets a whole jungle, with all its beasts, into an ordinary neighborhood - and can suck you into a different reality.
----I had not made a connection between the board game with my father and Sophie's dream of the Trickster Marble until today's re-view of that "old" journal, but I'm tickled by the rhyme, and I think my Dad is too.
4 comments:
What a treasure Robert. I love that my sons and father got to know each other. My dad and youngest were great buddies. Sounds like your daughter may have had that opportunity also. The trickster marble picture makes me giggle and the seems sweetly organized for a seven year.
I read the previous post also and am very interested in the bear connection with Greece and constellations. Hmm, where will that curiosity take me?
Patty
Speaking of board games that may influence another order of reality here is one from my journal of June 4th 2009.
The Word Game
Some middle aged slightly bohemian people are playing a game. Craig asks me if I would like to play. I do. It is a word game. I am handed a list of foreign words and word-parts. I am supposed to match these up with English equivalents. On the floor is huge sheet of paper showing the relationships between various words via lines and interconnections. Then I am looking at a picture frame with an old photograph. It shows the group of bohemians when they were young adults.
I just remembered this dream when you wrote about games influencing "reality" and dug it out to review. It is interesting how the theme of it rhymes with your recent posts here.
Speaking of reality influencing board games have you ever investigated Enochian chess?
Patty, all journals become treasure boxes, as I think you've discovered. And the sweetiest treasure chest are those that kids assemble when we encourage them to journal their dreams snd stories, as I am constantly reminding everyone I meet who has the privilege of raising, educating, or supporting children. On of my favorite dream characters is a magic little boy, somewhere betwen 2 and 3 years old, who goes everywhere with a magic boz full of dreams, that he sends to people when they need one.
Justin, I'm quite intrigued by your dream of the polylingual super-size Scrabble, with its lines into lives and times. It reminds me a little of the Funny Dream Words game we are playing over at my forum, on which I'll no doubt write further reports. Also of some enhanced Scrabble games some of us play with the literal set, bending the rules so we can import foreign terms, god-names etc.
I've read descriptions of Enochian chess, and also Israel Regardie's note (at the end of his set of the Golden Dawn papers) that he never came across anyone who understood this game or was able to make it work on practical levels. Yeats probably tried his hand at it, but the chess-like game that intrigued him (and me) more was the Celtic gwydybwyll (an unappetising word in the Mabinogi Welsh). A lovely poem by John Masefield (published in "Memories of W.B. Yeats' in 1940) likens Yeats himself to an ancient Irish king seeking to animate human-sized chessmen on a playing surface big enough for a battle through "high excitement". This is more directly akin to a long series of my own dreams o0f games in which miniature figures - usually resembling the toy soldiers my father gave me, in elaborate dioramas, rather than chessmen on a board - come alive and the diorama becomes a living landscape, a country, or a world.
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