Meanwhile, the session gathers—a creative-process experience—and I am shocked by a very large turnout. I was expected six to eight persons, and about sixty show up, with more arriving, including some friends who I did not expect. This is all fine with me, of course, and I proceed, altering my approaches somewhat to account for the size of the group. At one point, I am drawn to show the bone again, to see if anyone has anything to say about it, and I discover that it has turned into a fleshy object of the same mass and density. This fleshy object has been preserved very thoroughly, but it has not been in formaldehyde. I am even more hopeful that someone present, including a couple of friends who are doctors, will be able to identify the specimen. I call out to one of them, “Hey, how up are you on your anatomy these days?” and then call out the same to the other. But I don’t quite get their attention from ongoing conversations. I look at the specimen again, and it becomes very clear to me that it is a human heart. I am stunned. It is apparently ancient, yet It is completely intact. In fact, it also appears red and full as if not long removed from its source. I am amazed and in thrall. Since I can somehow get no one to attend with me, I proceed with efforts to convene the group and get underway. But there is some distracting element that disrupts the setting and dissipates the energy and the group begins to disperse. I walk along and converse with some of the participants who linger.

I’m pulling off some gathering; complex meetings, directions, angles, dimensions–and in the end I’m aware that all this has taken place and is concluding in my basement in Tennessee, my play area and space of infinitely malleable imagination.

All has been moved out after the conference and only the cleanup remains. And only my daughter lingers to assist me.

Things are shaping up and I am feeling a completeness and thoroughness and satisfaction. The final step somehow seems to be sweeping off the whole floor with burgundy wine (as a child I used to do it with water). My daughter assists as I pour this wine across the floor and use the broom to spread it evenly.

In one area, where the floor appears deeply black (black as the blackest earth, but this is cement), the deep red wine on black creates a mirror surface that is wondrously and magically powerful. And through the basement windows the full light of day, from up there, from beyond that mundane level, is streaming in, as we quietly go about this task.

Another reason I appreciate Collete’s post is that it injected some life into this long neglected web page. It’s hard to believe that so much time has passed since the previous post. Then again, maybe it’s not so surprising, given the ambivalence I expressed in that post about moderating the page. Stating my own misgivings as I did certainly could not have sparked much excitement about the process I was inviting people to take part in. It’s true though that I also expressed a strong commitment to the process, and I still feel that commitment despite the absence of activity in this venue. We’ll see what happens going forward…

I read that you requested we read the Bohm article before beginning to participate in PD, but I must grant myself permission to respond to something  you wrote in your invitation:

“I’ve presently reached a point of disenchantment with conventional books distributed in the conventional way. However revolutionary a work like this may be in terms of its content and style of presentation, it remains a marketed commodity owned by the author and publisher and distributed in a linear fashion to an anonymous audience. Not only is such communication commodified, unidirectional, and indirect, but its channels are limited by the constraints of the print media: squiggles of ink arrayed in lines of text and two-dimensional charts, diagrams, and illustrations.”

I realize that by responding now you may feel that I have not honored the space you are designing for your project; that I am allowing “[M]y initial reactions [to be] colored by the expectations, wishes, and desires that rush out of me to meet you” instead of “pull[ing] them back and [so] invite you in.”

And maybe I am doing that.  Please forgive me.  But I have to return to other obligations and I did not want to leave the page without sharing with you this thought: Although I buy books, they are not commodities as you describe.  Once I have interacted with them, they are changed.  They emanate the resonances of the exchange that occurred within their pages.  These emanations slip about in my home and settle in the interactions occurring within other books, and even influence me as I write to you now.  I know you know this.  But I felt the need to reiterate the wonderful way in which books become alive in these lifeworlds we never could navigate alone. In fact, I am surprised that you did not know that your books have been changing since you sent them out into the wide world where readers have done lord knows what with them! Certainly it was one of your books that told me to google search your name. I am glad of that. And glad of your work.

I thought to engage my ‘hungry ghost’ when I left the project I am working on to visit your website. And guess what? I am working on the problem of dualism….

I will return when Bohm calls to me.

Happy trails till then,

Colette

This appearing image was of a skull etched deeply and adeptly, with elaborately interwoven geometries, part no doubt of an extended, skeletonized body. But the apparition was all skull.

Visible from the top down: two extremely deep eye sockets with other eyes lightly etched in cascades from the forehead above to the cheekbones below. The left eye socket holds a small, most intricately carved, crouching figure fitting precisely by design in its small cave and covered with a hinged hatch of an eyelid, also embellished.

I am aware that I have been summoned to this whole scene to behold this crouching figure that echoes the skull’s angle of repose. I am aware of numberless beings who inhabit the skeletonized body, and with this disclosure, this imperative: I have not summoned these beings to awareness but rather, they have summoned me.

I’m in conversation with anonymous others—faculty, students, friends—as in my teaching era. Speaking to one creative writing student, I say that “I can’t believe last year is over already, much less this year too.”

I am aware that in my stack of personal drawings is an unusual one. I can recall drawing one in particular, perhaps in an earlier phase of the dream. I drew the picture from the top of the head down, as a miraculously, magically, formed profile emerged. Very realistic, this face, full of emotion and sensitivity. And, as I drew it and examined it, I was surprised to see that it is the face of a youth. He’s about ten years old. This is not the image I set out to draw, but a face that presented itself to me all in burnt sienna.* And I am strangely aware that the face is my own, not as perceived but as most profoundly proprioceived, in this moment, in the moment of drawing, even more accurately than when I was ten years old.

I am aware that something strange has happened and is happening with this image. In the dream I am eager to leaf through the stack of work to show this piece in particular to a colleague at year’s end.

________

*Burnt sienna is a warm reddish-brown pigment derived from heating clay….Among the chief geological properties of the Southern Appalachians where I was born is the “red clay.” My playmates and I universally experienced heavy clumps of “red clay” stuck on our shoes.

Uncle Clyde—who died decades ago—was entertaining me—a man who never in his life entertained, who would not have understood that verb.

I am also on something of a tour, traveling in a small company of artist friends. I want to be sure to get the group down the alley for a quick glance at my sculptures, which remain in a shed in the backyard on Sullivan Street—a shed generally in the area where my beloved childhood sandbox was located.

Then, back down in the country, the room that was Grampaw’s bedroom has been stripped completely bare down to the wallpaper—yellow floral, and Uncle Clyde has served me a pitcher of whiskey… It’s good as I sip it, but he has gone on down to a lower room, previously unknown to me. I am summoned to join him but don’t quite know how to navigate the pitcher full of whiskey… I can’t possibly have finished it off, more than a quart…don’t want to spill it… even have mixed feelings about how it has come to be served to me at all.

It feels risky, clandestine… and still, it is out in the open, in the bare, well-lit floral room…Somehow I feel I must juggle the pitcher carefully downstairs into the refrigerator.

My film-maker friend Peter has suggested that we change our Air France reservations to stay another day and night. More adventure and exploration. I’m not sure that I want to, or if this is feasible. Will the airlines allow it? So I am found in the midst of an unformed choice.

I’m on the street, navigating among crowds.

I’m making my way out amongst the sidewalk and street traffic.

I make it to more than one appointment.

After one lunch, I’m making my way to the next locale when I realize I walked away from the restaurant and left my backpack. I turn to make my way back to retrieve it.

There are some very narrow passages with extremely narrow steps clogged with people. I am no longer sure how to get where the restaurant was. The restaurant was IKE’S. I am aware that I am in New Orleans. I turn to the very friendly people and say, “I’ve never been to New Orleans before.” They are very warm and embracing. “I’ve always wanted to get to New Orleans,” I say. They are happy to hear it.

I pass various unique and intriguing intersections, various architectures.
I have some awareness of the hurricane devastation, but it’s not too pronounced where I am walking.

I think about giving up the search for my backpack, but do not. I look to the broad, blue Gulf sky, scattered clouds.

I find myself roomed with a very young woman. I try to keep my things separate, but with limited success, as she occupies the space considerably. We are not attending the same events at this convocation, not working together, and we have never crossed paths.

I am very involved with proceedings in multiple dimensions, very busy, not much spare time. After one event that has been staged, I pitch in to help clean up—knowing the producer. I am sweeping the floor, trying to contain the debris that is highly charged with static electricity, and is thus not very sweepable.

The producer comes in and we chat. He has produced many events with which I have been associated in my lifetime. We are friendly. He sympathizes with my efforts. Again I return to my room and find that I am now rooming with a different very young woman, but I never see her either. She is more extravagantly occupying the space than the previous young woman. Her stuff is all over the place.

Suddenly I am aware that I must get to Charles DeGaulle airport for my flight back to the USA. I begin a process of calculating—with fuzzy results—when my flight is, how to manage the Paris subway system, namely, how to reverse my route from the airport to return to the airport, and thus how much time I need to allow to get to the airport, when to pack, shower, dress, etc.

I head to a shower down a corridor but cannot determine which one is a men’s shower. Finally, I choose one that looks probable, and go in. And there is another very young woman, a girl, naked from the waist up. She turns to face me. Demurely, and without words, she gently communicates that I am indeed not in the shower room I was looking for, and I leave. I’ve pretty much decided to skip the shower and just wash at the sink back in the room.

I am again into the entanglements of all the stuff. I abandon concerns that I can actually gather my things—it doesn’t really matter anyway. So I just grab what I can and fill my suitcase with books, tools, etc. As my mind continues unsuccessfully to calculate the timing, I come up clearly with one conclusion: I am very likely to be too late to catch my flight. This is on my mind as I head out and engage the subway and ground transportation system link to link, and navigate my way to the airport.

At last I get there. There is something of a carnival atmosphere. A grand amusement park. I recognize some others who I know, though we are not traveling together. They walk along with me as I muse about my predicament, the complexity of events, logistics, my timing. We have a common feeling for the paradoxes and intensities of things as we make our way through corridors, travel escalators, are channeled by the interior geometry. Finally, we reach the ticket agent, and I am resigned to accept my fate. I am at piece [peace?] with somehow figuring out my situation and what to do next. I am not terrified or even all that concerned. C’est la vie.

The agent—a uniformed, very cogently capable, poised European woman—informs me that my flight has been delayed by three hours or so, perhaps more. All is well, she smiles, returning my ticket, encouraging me just to relax and enjoy myself. I accept this, and I turn and part ways with those who have made their way to the gate with me.