The trans-Siberian dream train and the boy thief

On the trans-Siberian dream train

I am traveling again, across the immensity of Russia, from the border of Mongolia via Lake Baikal to Moscow.

There is a feral boy on the train, maybe twelve years old. His hair is a clump of wet hay. I am pretty sure he is a thief, but his antics are entertaining and he proves to be a useful ally. When we are all getting hungry, and there are no supplies, he produces a hunk of cheese and gives me the first piece. The raw-milk cheese is grubby and rubbery, but sharp, and I am grateful for it. Someone remarks that the boy is of the type "who will start out by robbing you if they can, but will love you to death if you make any sign of affection."

We cross a wildly beautiful area of remote lakes. I would love to go swimming, but even in this season the water is bitterly cold.

At last we reach Moscow. There are no problems at security, though I notice that a rattle I acquired in Estonia is no longer in the pocket of my trenchcoat; I wonder whether the boy who supplied the (no doubt pilfered) cheese made off with this in exchange.

Through security, I stop at a news stand to buy English-language papers. "Zdravstvuite," I greet him. He waits patiently while I sort through a stack of small bills to find the right money. I choose two banknotes that seem to be for units of 600 each.

I now proceed to the smart offices of a company on a high floor of a building. The secretary/receptionist is a cool, elegant blonde with coiffed hair I have met before. I wait in the reception area while she chats with a security man. There is an amazing animal in an easy chair with a coat draped over one arm. I think at first that it is a bear cub, but decide it is a puppy of a breed I can't name. Its fur is oatmeal-colored, with blue patches. I pet the "dog" and it is friendly though sleepy.

I take the chance to review, in my mind, the knowledge I have gathered on this trip. It is relevant to a new theory I am developing on the origin and nature of shamanism. I have made two discoveries I consider breakthroughs, based on what I have learned in Siberia and the North. My tag for one of these discoveries is the word Sajø. The last vowel is a "slashed O" of the kind you see in Norwegian and Danish, although in my mind I set the slash at the other diagonal, starting from the upper left of the O and running to the right. This word relates to shamanism in the far North. The second discovery involves Siberia and perhaps Mongolia.

I wake excited, pleased to be on a new adventure on such an interesting "line."

I often dream of traveling in Russia, but still have no ordinary-reality plans to do this. I was recently in countries that were part of the Soviet Union until 1991 (Estonia and Lativia). I do have an Estonian rattle - beautifully woven from rushes - that I acquired in my last trip.

I don't know the word "Sajø" - with the slash ø - but will continue to track it. I would love to know more about my dream self's two "breakthrough discoveries", and about the amazing dog-bear in the office (and why I am there). I will revisit some of the cross-cultural material on shamanism, especially in the areas and traditions I am studying in my dream.

I am most intrigued by the boy thief on the train. I can think of many ways in which a 12-year-old trickster and improviser within myself could be very helpful in my new creative journeys.

I usually enjoy my dream train rides. This one has given me plenty of research and action assignments!

The Secret History of My Russians

I find myself quite frequently traveling and teaching in Russia in my dreams. I have yet to teach Active Dreaming in Russia, but perhaps the day is coming nearer, since I am teaching nearby, in the Baltic Republics, and three of my books on dreaming have now been published in the Russian language.

Then there is the latest riff of dream and synchronicity, playing out this week. Here's a summary of events so far:

1

The night before last (Jan 18-19) I dreamed that a charming and elegant Russian man invited me to give a very important lecture in Russia. His initials - or those of the sponsor organization - were "DEH".

2

Yesterday I chatted about this with a Russian friend in New York City. I remarked to her that with all my Russian dreams perhaps I should study Russian. She sent me some website links and I spent half an hour last night trying to master the Cyrillic alphabet.

3.

Also last night, I continued my depth research into Tolkien's dream life and his conviction that dreaming is the key to time travel (he was correct). I had occasion to reflect that, first and last, Tolkien was a philologist with an astounding command of ancient languages and those of his own invention. I noted that at one point he added Russian to his languages.

4

Just now I received a long and charming email letter from a professor of philology in Moscow. He has written three books in Russian on dreams in Russian literature and folklore. He wrote to me because he has just finished reading the Russian edition of The Secret History of Dreaming, of which he spoke with high appreciation. His email address is in Cyrillic. The first three letters are

Д.Не

or "DHE". Compare with "DEH" in my dream. Of course, I know now that the Cyrillic H translates as the letter N in English. But pretty darn close...

Jan 21 Postscript: Baltic dreaming

At my Dream Gates blog, I just posted an account of my experience of leading Active Dreaming workshops in Lithuania, and the deep cultural soul recovery that became available to us in these groups. You can read that article here and if you are not familiar with my Dream Gates blog, you may want to add it to your RSS feed.

The book jacket is from the Russian edition of The Secret History of Dreaming, published by Ves.

The revolt of the imagination under the Soviets

“The world smelled of heated copper and wilted carnations.”

The Line (Putnam: A Marian Wood Book) a new novel by Russian-American writer Olga Grushin, is full of such marvelous word pictures, that excite the inner senses. Under the dead weight of Soviet bureaucracy, time congeals “like a vat of frozen concrete.”

The tuba-player who aches for release from this sterile environment dreams of a street that resembles one he knows, but opens into magic, where an old man looks at him with mirror eyes and “satin women play cheerful little songs on ripened grapes.”

I am awed by Olga Grushin’s ability to write so well in a second language. Like Joseph Conrad, while she uses her adopted language better than most native speakers, she gives a little spin to the words that makes them fresh.

I loved her previous novel, The Dream Life of Sukhanov. Also set in the Soviet era, it brilliantly depicts the revolt of the imagination against the totalitarian project of total control over a subject population. The protagonist here is a promising Surrealist painter who betrays his ,use in order to get a fat paycheck and a big apartment and a chauffeured car while working as an art bureaucrat. His suppressed imagination comes after him, spawning dreamlike anomalies in his everyday world, until that world — and the false values it instilled in him — falls apart.