Obtuse Messages, by Jennifer
Several of us slept in the same space, a slumber party, sort of Oneironauticum, but also not. Several Buddhist monks were there, scattered in beds and wandering about. A couple of them kept turning on the television, though our hostess specifically said she didn’t want it on. I kept telling them to turn it off again. The Zen Buddhist master who founded one of the main lineages in the states and with whom I had the honor to study, Hakuin Taizan Maezumi Roshi, kept trying to talk me out of my last three dollars. I finally gave it to him. The monks kept repeating a word or phrase, using it in different ways and contexts. I knew the phrase was really important, but I didn’t understand it, couldn’t quite make it out.
In a later dream, I walked through a wintry street lined with big snow banks, piles of ice and snow everywhere. I was loaded down with luggage, a rolly bag pulled behind me and several purses and duffel bags slung over my shoulders. Everything was awkward, bags slipping off and falling as I stumbled in the snow. Then the rolly bag got stuck on something I couldn’t see and I yanked it hard. It feel over in the snow and all my other bags tumbled to the ground as well. A homeless man approached me and told me that clearly the salt rock he’d placed there had caught my bag. Then he wandered off snickering.
If the silene capensis was supposed to provide messages from one’s ancestors, I’m really not sure what mine wanted to say. A few of the oneironauts suggested that the latter dream might involve my ancestors urging me to lose my baggage.