Dreaming about the Water of Life

I had a dream last night about searching for the water of life

Water of Life
CC Jean Stimmell

In my dream, I am living in a large rambling house of many stories but have no water. For a long time, I have been digging a well deeper and deeper under the foundation through rock and clay; finally I reach soft sand and, then soon thereafter, water begins to bubble up, pure and sparkling, gushing from the golden earth.

An old mechanical pump is lying nearby to pump the water up to the house but I am aware that it is broken and needs to be repaired. I have to act quickly before the soft sand collapses, filling in all my hard work.

As I climb back up into my house, my plumber happens by and I ask him for help. He is amazed at how deep the pump is in the ground. (From the top, looking down into the pit I dug is like looking down an elevator shaft of a skyscraper.)

My plumber says he will try to fix the pump but doesn’t know how to haul it up to the surface. I tell him I have a long coil of strong, old-fashioned manila rope and will gladly haul it up for him.

However, I can’t find the rope!

 I do a frantic search through the many rooms and layers of my house. I encounter other craftspeople working in the house but they are dismissive of me, suggesting without saying it: “What is wrong with you, any idiot could find that rope.”

At last, after I have searched my whole house, the workmen take an interest and help me search the garage which is cavernous and cluttered. Still, no rope is to be found, Finally, in desperation, I search a special room on the main floor adjacent to the pump shaft.

A female poet lives there who we try hard not to disturb. Her room is decorated beautifully in soothing shades of blue. As I feverishly pass through her room looking for the rope, I leave behind messy trail of muddy footprints.

As I leave the poet’s room, I run into a male patient from long ago who had suffered terrible trauma but had been able to turn his life around while in treatment with me. He is all dressed up, successful, self-actualized and overjoyed to see me again.

At that moment, I realize there is no rope to be found. Some one took it to go rock climbing and forgot to bring it back. 

That’s the end of the dream.

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Unmanipulated photo of  river current in the Merrimack 6/30/14

CC Jean Stimmell

In terms of Jungian dream work, my house is a symbol of my entire psyche, the space I occupy, while, in the words of Brian Collinson, a Jungian Analyst, “The water of life for which we yearn relates directly to the waters of the unconscious.  Often, only by coming to terms with the meaning of dreams embodied in the unconscious can we find the vitality for which we yearn.*

Thinking back to my dream, I see it was a wild goose chase.

Both my feminine poet and trauma survivor found peace and vitality through direct access to the water of life by coming to terms, emotionally and spiritually, with the meaning of their dreams embodied in the unconscious while I still sweat and strain too much, attempting to haul up the water of life from the depths mechanically through sheer will, books, and my intellect.

XXX

* http://www.briancollinson.ca/index.php/2012/11/jungian-therapy-the-meaning-of-dreams-5-water.html

I blog like Leonard Cohen writes songs

Along the edge of the Contoocook River 7/14/14
CC Jean Stimmell

While not pretending to make any comparison between the content and creativity of Leonard Cohen’s songs and my blogs, I found out today that his writing process is similar to mine.

In an interview with Paul Zollo* in 1992, Cohen said: To find a song that I can sing, to engage my interest, to penetrate my boredom with myself and my disinterest in my own opinions, to penetrate those barriers, the song has to speak to me with a certain urgency… 

That’s exactly the impetus to my own writing: an image, idea, feeling or dream that speaks to me in a voice I can’t ignore; or, stated in the words of Martin Luther King, the fierce urgency of now.

Leonard Cohen: My immediate realm of thought is bureaucratic and like a traffic jam. My ordinary state of mind is very much like the waiting room at the DMV... So to penetrate this chattering and this meaningless debate that is occupying most of my attention, I have to come up with something that really speaks to my deepest interests. Otherwise I nod off in one way or another.

So it is exactly with me: something out-of-the-ordinary must strike a swift blow to my head to silence the raucous troupe of chattering monkeys who spend most of my waking hours swinging wildly and uncontrollably around the neuron dendrite trees in my brain. 

What a neuron dendrite tree looks like,
 one of the vast forest of them living in my brain
http://worldsoflearning.blogspot.com/p/how-we-learn.html

Furthermore, my best blogs, unlike my monkey’s, don’t swing easily to me on the wings of inspiration, ready made and gift wrapped; instead, they arrive unformed and evolve with difficulty, accompanied by the angst, uncertainty, and throbbing pressure of giving birth. It’s only afterwards that I see what I got: a lively newborn or an inert stillborn. Either way, it is hard work.  It’s certainly true of my babies that lived, including many of my most popular blogs (which you find listed in the right hand column of this blog.) 

Leonard Cohen: So to find that song, that urgent song, takes a lot of versions and a lot of work and a lot of sweat.
But why shouldn't my work be hard? Almost everybody's work is hard. One is distracted by this notion that there is such a thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I'm not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff, to come up with my payload. 

While it is undoubtedly true that the process takes a toll on many writers: "a lot of work and a lot of sweat" to write. But few could have it tougher than Gustave Flaubert:

"Sometimes I don't uderstand why my arms don't drop from my body with fatigue, why my brain doesn't melt away. I am leading an austere life, stripped of all external pleasure, and am sustained only by a kind of permanent frenzy, which sometimes makes me weep tears of impotence but never abates. I love my work with a love that is frantic and perverted, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt that scratches his belly. Sometimes, when I am empty, when words don't come, when I find I haven't written a single sentence after scribbling whole pages, I collapse on my couch and lie there dazed, bogged own in a swamp of despair, hating myself and blaming myself for this demented pride that makes me pant after a chimera. A quarter of an hour later, everthing has changed; my heart is pouding with joy. "**

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An aside about my photography and its relationship to my writing: On occasion, the image that I photograph provides the fierce urgency for my writing. Sometimes the photograph comes to me easily, ready made, a free gift. Sometimes I have to work long and hard in Photoshop to bring out the essence of what I felt when I snapped the shutter, especially when I am creating an image that only exists in my mind’s eye like my manipulations and collages.

The photograph at the top of this piece I took July 14th while walking along the shore of the Contoocook River immersed in sea of purple pickerelweed.

 I took a lot of photos but none hit home until, out the infinitude, a certain dynamo of color and composition hit my eye; instantly I knew I had found a winner even before snapping the shutter. (See photograph at top of the page)

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* The above quotes by Leonard Cohen from his interview with Paul Zollo came from Brain Pickings Weekly, an amazing compendium of intellect and wisdom collected by Maria Popova:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/07/15/leonard-cohen-paul-zollo-creativity/

** this Faubert quote comes from pages 31-32 of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey: Alred Knopf, New York, 2013

Even rocks are animate

Fetching young dinosaur in the woods behind my house
CC Jean Stimmell: 7/6/14

Thich Nhat Hanh says, "When I touch a rock, I never touch it as inanimate. The tree is spirit, mind; the rock is spirit, mind; the air, the stars, the moon, everything is consciousness." *

Quote from Going Home by Thich Nhat Hanh