This Christmas season has been an odd one for me. Full of surprises, laughter and the most fascinating dreams. I am eight months pregnant, and daily Yoga practice, which I have relied on for fifteen years now to keep me in shape and emotionally balanced, has become more challenging to figure out how to do. During the holidays I have also allowed myself to be a bogi (one who indulges in sense pleasures, too much red wine being my favorite bogi choice), and this year I can't do that either. Also my family is dispersed during a time when I am feeling a fortified instinct to have a strong clan around me. Christmas Day was still a lot of fun. We gathered a Cioppino Christmas Clan: my cousin Sophie and her new boyfriend Ray who gifted us hand-crochet hats, and my brother-in-law Joseph, and his girlfriend Julie, who gave us the cutest baby onesies and Belgian Chocolate. Having finished our co-op shopping at 1:00 on Christmas Day (thank God for communists) we made Southwest Cioppino (modified from a Fisherman's stew recipe from Food and Wine magazine), fried calamari, and chocolate fondue. We ate and drank and laughed and it felt warm and light and I went to bed happy. Since waking up today, after a night of weird disjointed dreams, I just have wanted to cry.
So everyone tells you about the hormonal changes, emotional swings, and food cravings one goes through during pregnancy:
"you'll be laughing one moment, crying another, eating chocolate-covered cheese, then throwing up," people say.
Yeah, all that's true (have yet to take a trip to Vosges to get the chocolate-covered cheese but plans with Cousin Sophie are in the works), but more remarkably, and not often talked about, are the vivid dreams that inhabit the mind-scape when you're being bombarded with meteorites of hormones and pulling spirit-beings from outer space down into your flesh. From the moment I became pregnant, I have been overcome by the technicolor scenes from my REM sleep (?who the heck told me as a child that people dream in black and white?). Like a filmstrip, the dreams and images keep coming and coming. Sometimes the scenes are full of people and vignettes from my past. Schoolmates, college dormitory hallways, riding in buses or planes with friends. In one particular incredible dream that I will elaborate on, my mother-in-law and I were in a car, she driving, me in the passenger seat:
We were driving in a snowy wintery landscape, somewhere outside of the city. The car broke down. My mother-in-law told me to go take shelter in a nearby lodge that was just up the road while she found a mechanic and figured out the car problem. I went to the lodge. There was an empty dining room, and a meagerly populated bar with drop ceilings, and a male bartender trying to stay on top of an unruly drunk male customer. Not feeling the vibe of the scene too much, I decided to wander back outside. At that point it was dusk, and there was a road, which I decided to follow. I came to a divide in the road, and a big tree was on my right side. I heard some rustling, and had that moment of wondering if I should be scared, but instead, curiosity won out . . . some more rustling, and all of a sudden a pair of eyes peering out from the tree at me. It was a bird-like creature. I remembered back to summer camp, when the nature counselor, Bruce, had rescued a baby hawk, which was named Wus, and campers were allowed to put on a thick canvas glove and extend a stick-straight arm out so that Wus could fly from a far-off tree branch to land right on your arm. I extended my dream-arm in such a manner, and without hesitation, this huge bird animal, 1 part owl, 1 part pterodactyl, 1 part Disney-toucan, swooped from the tree branch on to my stick-straight arm. It brings its eyes very close to mine, and turns its head in funny bird-like motions, looking at me very intently, with curiosity, friendliness and a little goofiness. It was wonderful. Upon waking, I felt somehow that this was the spirit of my son, introducing himself and looking at who in the world he got for a mama.
Months later, I received another vision of a bird-like creature in a dream. In this second bird-dream, the creature did not land on my arm, or anywhere near me. I observed him far-off in the sky. I had found myself in India somewhere by a majestic body of water. The sand was a mineral brown color and many people were around, not Indian, but not white, like travelers who have decided to prolong going home, and develop a chameleon's ability to blend, or not be noticed at all. I broke from this group of people and found myself walking away from the sparkling shore waters up a path towards some mountains. I had a walking companion, but am not sure who they were. I looked up in the sky to behold the top of a tree beginning to change shape and dislodge itself from the lower branches and trunk. It began to change color, like a kaleidoscope, all different hues and prisms of its natural earth colors. It appeared to be flying up and forward, but like an optical illusion, moving backward. I took in an audible breath, the sight was so beautiful. I wanted my walking companion to see the sight:
"Look!" I said, "Look up! It's a peacock in the sky!"
It was huge, and those rainbow colors were developing as the tree-bird-sky creature took to flight. My walking companion noticed just as the creature was re-settling to affix itself to the top of another tree, and re-camouflaged itself. I was so happy that I had a witness to this marvel. I knew that what I had seen was real, and rare, and I knew, like those of us who have had the honor and privilege to travel to India, that this would only be happening there.
What is the significance? I don't know. These are my visions, and pieces of my subconscious. Perhaps it's also the process of my past and individuality, meeting with my future. Yoga, which I have studied and practiced for a decade and a half, indicates for its students to see the uniformity existence, to avoid suppressing authentic colors and emotions, while at the same time, not to over-analyze or identify with these hues, which are passing modifications, like filters briefly covering over the great mother-board of light.
So as the new year comes forward, I see my challenge being to bring these fantastic kaleidoscopic pictures, and all the visions of my dreams, to meet with the day-to-day reality of quotidian life. The colors of dreams stay with us if we allow, and this bird that has flown into me, and is soon coming out (God Willing), gives me all the hope that life is indeed rainbow-colored, full of mystery, flight, miracles, and that infinity is not a concept or mathematical equation. It's enough to make me cry again and eat some Belgian Chocolate.
