Landscapes and movements as symbols
Last night around 1AM, I woke up from a dream about Oakland. The cities and towns you live in have energies and histories and destinies, just like we do. I found myself there when I was at the lowest point in my consciousness. Oakland cradled me when no one else cared.
My apartments were shit holes. I was chased, cussed at or threatened everyday. I listened to a man get stabbed and bleed out right underneath my window. I heard my neighbor — a young mother and sex worker — get bargained down to a ten dollar blow job. My best friend’s car riddled with gun shots. My building raided by the FBI. West Oakland was a ring of Dante’s Inferno, but it was my lovely hell.
The ley lines of cities map your heart. I was poor. I was broken. I was depressed. There were no pretenses. I was sad and so was everyone else around me, and I found solace in that.
In last night’s dream, I parked my car at the top of the highest hill in Oakland, got out and set off on foot to search for my love. The town became the edge of a cliff. There was no railing, just a single-track trail. I almost slipped twice, and I was scared, but I kept going. Eventually, I hit a chain-link fence and remembered how I tore my wrist open climbing one just like it when I was 8, so I chickened-out and turn back toward my car. At that moment, I woke up.
A love note I wrote in 2010, while living in Oakland.
Some dream symbolism is so blatantly obvious it slaps you in the face. I still have chain-link fences posted up in my heart. It keeps me from loving the way I want to love. I need to tear those fuckers down.
Our personal journeys to evolve/ascend/bloom-then-wither-gracefully unfold like archetypes and legends and myths. The key to discovering what story you might be living, and obstacles you are to overcome, is to learn your symbols and patterns and rhythms. There has been movement since the beginning.