Sunday, April 18, 2010

The Antennae Behind The Orb; White Wolf and Coyote

This morning I had a dream about my being Indian. I’m outside a building, a combination school and dormitory-apartment, which is by a river with reeds growing on the banks. Up ahead of me a few yards away, across from the river, is a storage shed, door open.

I’m signing, very well, very loud, very powerfully. (in reality, I can’t sing worth a damn, people literally laugh at me when I try.) I’m singing about being Indian, and my grandfather’s story: Cherokee and Lenape. I sing that “even though everyone says they’re part Cherokee, he really was” (true) and that he, his mother, was also Lenape (true.) I sing about going back to Kansas to be with family. (never been to Kansas, don't know anyone in family who's from Kansas.)  I sing about how we’re from the Wolf Clan (not true, though Wolf Clan is a Lenape clan, and I was informally given that designation by a Native person.)  I sing about how people in the family said it was just a rumor, he wasn’t really Indian, how my mother said it was true, how I remember my grandfather telling me it was true, how some talked about drunken Indians in the family,  and how while I’m basically white girl, my bother’s cheekbones are high and if you look at him, no doubt. (all true.) I sing about how my grandfather once showed me a beautiful soft white leather dress, his mother’s regalia, decorated with intricate embroidered and beaded flowers, and flowing with fringe, and how it was to be a secret between us. (not true.)

I am singing loud, clear, beautifully, powerfully. All the while I’m watching coyotes and wolves watching me, through the reeds, from the interior of the storage shed. They’re all around. Coyote is no mere inferior cousin of Wolf, he’s as powerful  and individual as Wolf, just different. Make no mistake in underestimating Coyote. Or, of course, Wolf. One wolf is pure white. They’re my watchers and guardians, but a distance must also be maintained. They’re not playthings. They will bite me if I treat them disrespectfully.

And while Im signing, there is a crystal ball sitting on the ground near me. It’s mine. But it isn’t a crystal ball; not for the purpose of “fortune telling,” it has another purpose. It’s in dormant mode now.  It’s “off.” I’m not sure what it’s for, just that it’s part of what I’m doing here. The glass of the orb is dull in this mode, it’s like a light bulb that isn’t turned on; opaque.

As I’m signing this song, people I know who are Native walk up the path alongside the river, towards me, they're on their way to the building behind me.  They work and live here, with me, in this place.  They like what I’m singing and encourage me to visit the reservation and share. (these are people I really do know in “real” life.) I tell them no, I don’t want to appropriate, or to disrespect, or “play Indian.” They assure me it won’t be like that.

I wake up, holding onto the dream. Once again I have had a dream about wolves, and White Wolf in particular. Jim and I are awake, just talking about our plans for the day, my eyes are closed, and one of the slide - show mind postcards shoots into my mind’s eye. I see a brilliant, glowing from within orb, white. Someone, something, is holding the orb up in front of its face, and behind the orb, are two long antennae. The creature holding the orb is some kind of sentient insectoid being. I can’t see its face, the orb is covering it. This being seems familar but I don't know from where, or anything more. . .

The intensity of the “vision” startled me, though it didn’t scare me. It wasn’t until later this morning I made the connection between the dormant orb in my dream and the orb held up by the faceless insect.

Related posts:
Grasshopper Canyon
The Watercolor Alien Ant
Shared Experiences: Rh Negative
Mothman, Puppet Wolves and the Nunahee

3 comments:

Erik said...

What a wonderful dream! You are very creative. Such a beautiful mind full of colors, textures and sound.

It's fun isn't it? BEing...

Kartott said...

Fantastic dream - thanks for sharing. Really stirring.

Andrew D. Gable said...

A few things come to mind here - mostly in connection with the Lenape. Since Pennsylvania here was at one time the Lenape homeland, I'm pretty interested in their lore.

1) The areas I know of that the Wolf Clan lived in (in NW Pennsylvania, mostly) even now have some sightings of ghostly wolves. I had been thinking before that it was a pretty big coincidence. There was a white wolf, oddly given your dream, which was of some sort of odd quasi-real quasi-supernatural nature in some of the lore up near the NY border. Technically, the tribe there would have been Senecas but I believe there was a good bit of contact between them and the Lenape. I also seem to recall reading somewhere that a white wolf, in northern Pennsylvania, was supposed to be some sort of death omen thingy - actually, not as much death as some concept like fate or something. Destiny, inevitability. Sorta the same lines as the white stag in Arthurian myths.

2) I was actually just browsing through a book on Lenape mythology and they had a good number of myths about how dogs (and maybe wolves and coyotes and things by extension, I dunno) were to be respected. That was summoned up by your mentions of how you felt that the coyote and wolf needed to be respected and honored. In Lenape lore, this was because dogs were supposed to guard the entryways to the Underworld. Sorta the "overmyth" of dogs assoc. with the dead, Cerberus, Garm, Xolotl, Yama's two hounds, etc. Interestingly, a little cemetery not far from my house is said to be guarded by a ghostly white dog. Perhaps this is a similar reason to why H.P. Lovecraft chose to name a poem that was a typical werewolf story "Psychopompos".