Metamorphosis (John Dotson’s dream of February 16, 2018)
I’ve experienced a certain malaise over several days. It has not been diagnosed, and is not major. Muscle discomfort, sensitivities throughout my body. Disorienting. Not a good sleep the night before last. Unable to find a neutral, pain-free position. However I move, there seem to be edges of pain and irritation. Indeed the quest of being in bed is to find any configuration that will allow sleep, extended sleep. With my head against the pillow, I hear my heartbeat roaring in my ears. This requires additional efforts at adjusting. The whole surface of my body is palpably containing the interior of my body, its convolutions and living physiology. There are boundaries in every aspect, though these boundaries are ambiguous—no clear delineations, even though I search for the interior geometry and body-surface configurations that will bring about some harmony, some relief. But this does not happen easily or often. The illness is strange, not debilitating but interfering. In the dreaming I am aware of working with my sculpture. There are multiple overlaying/superimposed geometrical forms—many, many triangular shapes of multiple sizes and depths. Somehow in the dreaming I am working with and through these configurations in free observation and imagination. My efforts to find some balance with the edges of my body—arms, legs, head, and all my innards—is entangled with this geometric quest and its sculptural exercises. All these phenomena are vastly inter-related as whole systems. And I am having difficulty reckoning a central shape. For some reason, in and out of dreaming, my total situation has something to do with discovering the fulcrum, the complex of edges that will bring all the edges forth in a new manifestation. Flashing before my eyes are varieties of triadic shapes. And suddenly I become aware that this one carries the great signal. Very powerful it is in my vision. But then very quickly another shape appears. It seems less powerful—yet I wonder deeply if this one is in fact the greater carrier of the proprioceptive meaning that I am looking for. And then another appears—it must be this one. Or, now back to the original intuition, and around and around it goes. And it occurs to me that either of any two triangles in an instant could be the guiding one. The power could be shifting among them. Or at an instant, it could be none of them. There could be complex resonances here that I cannot track or discern. This weirdness completely entwines the weirdness of my symptoms. Whatever is happening to me, there is something to learn, and more sculpting to be done.