Found Dreams & Mugwort

The kids are trying to remember the lyrics to Hamilton, with no help from the internet as there was a thunderstorm a few hours ago and the electricity went out.  Fireflies outside, candles inside.  The dog noisily eating kibble after a good round of barking at the chicks, who scattered about, relatively unmolested, protected by good wire fencing. 

Earlier today, back in the time when we had electricity, I was clearing my computer desktop so as to have some space to work on a new website.  Medical records and such were easy to assign to their appropriate folders.  Not so much a document entitled “Dream April 2016.”  

I had a dream the other night, involving cutting cardboard into the shape of a midriff, the curve of a woman’s breast and arm in repose, accompanied by a phrase invoking the miraculousness of life.  A cliche, but with an urgency to it.  The feeling was that we all, with our snotty noses and frustrations, were miracles.  Even the current candidate for president.  He may be a miracle of ickiness, but he is a miracle nonetheless. Those concerned with the changing or maintaining of systems sometimes get annoyed by this sort of thing—who cares that we’re miraculous beings hurtling through space on a gem of a planet in a universe somewhat scrutable by numerical formulas? Four million refugees need to be fed and we can’t elect a Nazi. Well, yes.  And yet, that inkling of holiness, utterly outside of human will, is grounding. Whether you like it or not, whether you sense it or not, it is a balm, a perspective that lessens some of the pain and fury of the here and now. 

I don’t remember dreaming this.  And yet those words bring back the astonishment that I felt then, that I feel all over again.   It is a treasure, writing down dreams and refinding them.

I am particularly pleased to find this at this moment, as I’ve assigned the Lonely Worm Farm’s first interns their first and only homework: sleep with some mugwort under your pillow.  See what happens to your dreams.  I was thinking of calling this place Mugwort Farm as it grows in great bushy clumps practically everywhere except the boggy part of the field and the shade of the woods.  It is considered an invasive weed these days, but it was the first of the Saxon’s nine holy herbs and is said to induce vivid dreaming, along with other intriguing properties.  I am thinking of selling mugwort dream pillows to help fund this sprawling operation, but don’t want to engage in false advertising, hence the homework.  Will it be effective?  Stay tuned… 

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