Author

Subject: Stumps & Feathers

L.i.m.p.

19:42 27/08/2002 

I am standing just inside the edge of a suburban park. Behind me is a quiet street. To my left is a woman who means a lot to me who I'm in a double bind with - I can't bear to think about her and I can't bear not to think about her. But she's busy talking to someone else, so I do what I find most relaxing of all and that is to go walking. I walk away. I go for a walk in the park.

It's a nice morning, soft diffused light. The park is open and grassy, with some lone-standing native trees around. It is a typical suburban park.

I come across a tree stump. It's fairly large and round. The wood comes up to a little below my eye level. Except the tree is not quite dead, as I look closer and see a small green leafy bit of new growth starting to sprout from this stump.

I walk on and come to a second tree stump, in a sunnier spot than the first, about the same size. On this tree stump, I see what at first I think is a very large brilliant blue Ulysses butterfly. On closer inspection I see that it is instead a dinner-plate sized feather as luxurious as a peacock's, offering maximum contrast to the hard tree stump it rests on. I leave the feather there.

I arrive suddenly at a third tree stump. At this tree stump, standing on my left is the Canadian singer Jane Siberry. She is holding between her outstretched arms many of these feathers the same size and colour saturation as the blue one, but all different colours. I see she has them all spread out on a string, connected.

We don't say anything to each other, she just pauses long enough for me to see this and take all these colours in. Then she silently brings all the feathers down together on the string in one fluent movement so they rest superimposed in my softly cupped hands.

Dream edited for easier reading - JT, 2005

2004

Jane Teresa's View

Jane Teresa Anderson

Overview Interpretation & Dream Alchemy Practice suggestion

OVERVIEW INTERPRETATION

The start of a dream usually states the situation the dream goes on to explore. At the start of your dream you note a double bind situation. Look at the rest of your dream in that context.

Firstly you relax. Relaxation is a good first step to solving a problem. It’s morning so the day is in its infancy. This suggests new possibilities. You notice some lone-standing trees. Trees often represent the dreamer and these lone trees draw attention to your isolation or to a sense of knowing that you alone can address and solve this problem.

Next you come to a tree stump. Dreams often use word play, so this may be a visual cliché reflecting your feelings of being ‘stumped’ in this situation. Stumped for an idea as to how to solve the problem and also feeling cut-off or cut-down.

The tree stump is a little below your eye level. This may be a dream emphasis on “I” (eye). This tree stump is you and looking into it is looking into yourself.

Here you notice that what you first assumed was dead is not so. Some new growth is beginning to sprout. That new growth is the new growth within you. Although you may feel as if you’re in a dead-end situation, there is personal growth and the promise of new life in this for you. Notice that this new growth is from within the tree – within you. It is not about your relationship with the woman, it is about you and what you are learning from this.

As your dream progresses you encounter two more tree stumps. Sometimes a dream introduces repetition to emphasise the symbol, but this feels more like a reminder that you have been in this kind of situation on two other occasions. Would this be correct? If not, it may show a progression, as if your potential growth is shown in two possible future stages.

The second tree stump is sunnier, indicating happier circumstances or a greater consciousness (sense of understanding of the issue). At first you think you see a butterfly. In dreams a butterfly often symbolises transformation because the butterfly is the beautiful transformed caterpillar following hibernation in the chrysalis – what a wonderful symbol of transformation direct from nature. You identified the butterfly as a Ulysses. Are you familiar with Ulysses the novel? What light might this throw on the issue?

But as you look closer the butterfly transforms again into a feather. As light as a feather? Is the ‘hard’ problem of being stumped transforming into something light? You notice the contrast in the dream. Here is the potential for contrast in your future but to find it you need to look within that tree (within yourself). The answer and the transformation lay within.

What does Jane Siberry represent to you? What qualities do you see in her? What you see in Jane reflects something about your own attitudes and beliefs. She offers you a further stage in the transformation process, a full range of feathers that are connected and yet, as she finally illustrates, they all fold down into one superimposed image.

Contemplate those three tree stumps. If you can identify three relationships or times when you have felt stumped in this double-bind way, then ask yourself how these are connected. The main connecting factor is you, but what are the other similarities? Superimpose the three situations just as the differently coloured feathers were superimposed as one in your dream. Now, what can you learn by doing this? What composite picture do you see?

In your dream the final superimposed feathers – many but appearing as one – were placed directly into your hands. The way to lighten this issue is to take it into your own hands – to see that it is of your own making and you have the power to heal it too.

DREAM ALCHEMY PRACTICE

Gut reaction poetry:

The title of your free-form poem is “Birds of a feather”. Keep it going for 5 - 10 minutes. (See how to do this in next section.)

How to do this:

Take a blank piece of paper and a pen. Set a timer for somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes. Do not allow yourself to think! Start by writing the title as your first line and just let it flow. Keep on writing even if your poem seems childish or nonsensical. No rhyming or verses unless it comes out that way! The only definition of ‘poetry’ here is that you’re not writing sentences and you’re not using up all the space on your lines. Let your words find their own shape on the page.

How does this work?

By not thinking, by keeping the words flowing, you are letting your right brain and unconscious mind do most of the work. They created the original dream so they know what these symbols mean for you. They will reveal. You will be surprised.

More details on Gut Reaction Poetry as a Dream Alchemy Practice in: “Dream Alchemy”, by Jane Teresa Anderson, pages 324-7 and 334-5.

Jane Teresa Anderson

You can consult with Jane Teresa or her Dream Team and receive your interpretation by email within five working days.

ORIGINAL THREAD

Below is the original forum discussion on this dream, contributed before Jane Teresa's 2004 interpretation.

Angela

05:07 30/08/2002 

Hi,

This is a beautiful, beautiful dream! It has particularly intrigued me because it has reminded me strongly of a passage from a book by Marion Woodman.

But first, here are some thoughts:

The blue coloured feathers makes me think of 'The Blue Angel' movie with Marlene Dietrich (interesting, as I'd spelled her name Marleena Deitrich before I looked it up). Not only the Lena connection here on this forum, but now, with the last name spelled right, there is the Diet-rich connection that possibly has some bearing for you?

Now, The Blue Angel/Blue movies. Sexuality....

Jane Siberry. Jane (from here?) melding into a memory you might have of a Canadian from some time ago? So, an issue appears to be recurring now and transforming, AND providing you with the means to transform yourself. It ends with such a touching receiving position of the cupped hands. With the energy that has transformed, you've been given the feathers...to make your own wings from them?

So, where does this put you on the 'giving' end of things? Not to the people you can and cannot bear to think about, but on a worldly scale? The receiving must be balanced.

And finally, connected to the Woodman book, about a dream with new green shoots (heart chakra is green too):

"To protect the soul, the Self seems to set up a block, so that the unendurable pain is channeled into the body, where nature deals with it as best it can. Because pain is somatized, its psychological component is not conscioulsy experienced. Often it takes a long time for the soul to trust, to reveal its new green shoots."

Something has gently emerged for you here. Something in you is strong enough to house your most vulnerable and tender heart.

Trust yourself, you cannot be more beautiful than this.

Angela.

L.i.m.p.

22:22 30/08/2002 

Re: 'Blue movies' - Well, Angela, you score a bulls-eye! Unfortunately I feel I have to choose to not disclose publicly exactly how here, but just trust me, you have hit a target. And I may have seen 'The Blue Angel' years ago, but if you're thinking of films, 'Blue Velvet' would be much closer to the dreamworld-underworld combined transformation I saw in this dream [and this Forum thread is enfolded into that 'dreamworld'].

You are also correct about Jane Siberry: yes she is Canadian, yes she is highly associated in my mind to a Canadian woman I once knew briefly but intensely.

I appreciate very much your thought "the receiving must be balanced." Yes, I have been giving, but in some unconventional ways, e.g. giving blue-saturated 'fairy stones' to as many women as possible recently in maximum-contrasting environments. Replying to you is a more conventional gesture I hope. Thank you also for your Woodman quote - I feel my dream may be leading me to the end of the 'long time', giving me a lovely image to guide me on, to "through the years, through the years / carry the pain and loss with my love" (Single Gun Theory, 'Motherland', 1994).

"You cannot be more beautiful than this." - well, I give you a *big hug* for saying that, Angela. But I think of the Surrealist Manifesto quote too - "Beauty will be convulsive or it will not be at all." (Andre Breton sometime in the 1920's). And in my case, it's been very convulsive this week after typing up that dream.

I found my blue butterfly this week anyway on the cover of a book called 'Emotional Alchemy' by Tara Bennett-Goleman (Rider, 2001):

'Emotional alchemy allows for the possibility that our bewilderment and turmoil might blossom into insightful clarity. "In almost every bad situation," says Nyanaponika Thera, a Buddhist monk, "there is the possibility of a transformation by which the undesirable may be changed into the desirable."

'There is a simple but ingenious judo in this emotional alchemy: to embrace all experiences as part of a transformative path by making them the focus of mindfulness. Instead of seeing disturbance and turmoil as a distraction realize that they too can become the target of a keen attention. "In that way," Nyanaponika notes, "enemies are turned into friends, because all these disturbances and antagonistic forces have become our teachers."' (p.7)

________________

For the woman one day older than me who played The Cruel Sea:

i wish you find

your north coast serenity

Angela

06:19 01/09/2002 

Hi,

I'm really happy to hear there were some connections here for you. And, yes, 'Blue Velvet' too.

So Jane Siberry and Blue Velvet. These are 80s connections. Is there some part of you that has been 'stumped' in the 80s?

'Beauty will be convulsive', I agree. And that is the beauty of it, don't you think? How else could we really feel it and appreciate it if we had it thrumming at us all the time? Maybe beauty is really the point where it reverberates between the convulsions?

I love the quote you shared on emotional alchemy and I particularly found it fascinating that it was compared to ingenius judo. Judo conjures up instant images of fighting for me, yet I know that it is really taking the attack of an opponent and using its own force to turn the energy around. Judo transforms bad energy into strength.

May your green shoots continue to grow and strengthen.

Angela.

L.i.m.p.

20:45 01/09/2002 

Hi Angela

"...'stumped' in the 80s?" No & yes.

No - the stump with the green shoot symbolizes mainly [my inner state arising from] a relationship which ended 2 months ago. And for me Jane Siberry is a strong association from 1993 when I first listened to her album 'When I Was A Boy' from that year and saw her live in February 1994. After my dream on Monday, I bought her 2002-release 2CD collection called 'Love Is Everything' (which I'd seen advertised but which I hadn't seen before in the shops) - synchronistically for me, the first (really lovely) song (of many beautiful tracks) is 'In The Blue Light'.

Yes - I've been thinking about 1983 a lot recently too when I had a very different sort of sudden relationship ending, the grief of which wasn't really worked through then (echoes of New Order's 'Blue Monday' from that year too). So being abandoned and going through the unfinished turbulence of the grieving process is the big issue that rejoins 1983 with what's happened in 2002 for me.

With regard to beauty, I think 'fractal' might be a better word than 'convulsive', as chaos theory lends some credibility to the surrealist idea these days... well, maybe, I hesitate to intellectually generalize when personally I haven't yet worked out what to do next with what's been placed in my hands except to let them rest and contemplate the superimposed beauty, and not rush off into impetuous action. I need to FEEL the feathers in my hands first, all the colours of the loss and desire and rage and insight differentiated and rolled into you at the same time and the love lies in being able to hold all that together, rest in my hands.

Thanks once again for your kind reverberations, Angela, I really appreciate the part you've played in my life, and I can't say anything more than that, except to repeat what was written on my broken leg in 1992 - 'maple leaf forever'.

[As I type here in my local cyber 'cafe', one of 6 all-male Counter-strikers playing in the same room running in their virtual space with their automatic rifles etc., has been yelling out loud across the room to the other players "Just kill Geoffrey!", then "Geoffrey's dead, f*** him, f*** him, f*** him"...]

Angela

07:21 03/09/2002 

Hi again,

Sorry, didn't realize Jane Siberry had gone well into the 90s and now. Must be me who's stuck in the 80s! : )

I am awed by the lovely synchronisitc symbols that followed your dream -- the blue butterfly on the emotional alchemy book, 'In the Blue Light', all the following blue references. For me, such natural synchronicities give me gentle affirmation that I'm on the right path.

I think you are so right to just feel those feathers in your hands first. There are so many colours, all with attachments (string?), that will require your full attention, before it is time to put them to use, as you say. Maybe what is to come will be manifested through your hands? Will you write a book? Symbolized by the feather quill!

Walking, not rushing. How hard this is! But, you are right, it's the only way to truly see and know the path we're on -- to know if we will walk back this route, or chose a different one next time. Part of you, that has always gone walking, has known this all along.

Angela.

Geoffo (letting label go...)

14:11 03/09/2002 

Re: "Will you write a book?" right now, I doubt it, Dear Angela, (but you're not the only one who has suggested that to me lately), I can't see beyond my grieving process just now. However I was re-reading my Winter 2002 diaries on the weekend and I was reflecting on how important diary writing is in order to see all the different colours at different phases of one's life, otherwise the colours can be very very easily forgotten. That includes dream diaries of course, but I mean diary writing in general in multiple modes, an idea I picked up from an excellent book called 'The New Diary' by Tristine Rainer (I think, it's buried in my garage somewhere still after recent moves), that suggested writing diaries in parallel, in different 'colours' if you like, and then the process of re-reading them is the process of bringing all the 'colours' together. That's a possible secondary alternate meaning of the 'other Jane' for me anyway at the moment. The emotional symbolism of the dream remains the primary one.

"Walking, not rushing." Yes I agree it is hard, and I've done too much of that addictive kind of rushing lately, the compression of a non-chemical ecstasy is still an incredible 'rush'. And while I'm finding I'm having to haphazardly push myself through its withdrawal symptoms, I very much appreciate I've been given the gift of this image to go on working with for a start...

Geoffo

Angela

13:22 04/09/2002 

By Geoffo, or any other name, colour or number... the fragments always seem to find their way back together through the vast unconscious sea.

And, I would agree, this dream is truly a gift.

Angela.

Geoffo

20:37 04/09/2002 

Well, Angela, I was sitting alone last night down the harbour end outside the Sydney Opera House, which ironically is fairly deserted down on the pedestrian perimeter by about 9pm, thinking of my Canuck acquaintance as I watched the seagulls clustering floating on the floodlight above the concrete shells, going through another cathartic wave on the tempered edge between the solid huge 'caves' behind me and the seemingly bottomless black of the harbour in front. So if you visit Sydney, Angela, it would be nice if you could see this too and stroll a few laps of my favourite building with me - the solid fractal beauty of these white sphere-fragments perched above dark expansive water...

________________

For the record, Tristine Rainer's book 'The New Diary' (1979) is currently available on Amazon, as is her more recent book 'Your Life As Story: Discovering the 'new autobiography' and writing memoir as literature' (1998), which I haven't read, but I recommend 'The New Diary' very highly. (More info on her website www.storyhelp.com, which has a nice quote "We transform our past as a gesture of faith in the future.")

And another 'another Jane' I have found in the last week has been a book by Susan Anderson, 'The Journey from Abandonment to Healing' (HarperCollins, 2000), which contains some really good visualisation and dialogue exercises (although I can't help half-laugh about that kind of self-help book title, but it has been very helpful in showing me how my current grief has been reopening the unfinished business from past losses.)

Geoffo

20:33 06/09/2002 

Although this is a meaning not strictly supported by the dream... another thing I hyperassociate the Siberry feathers with is the 216 trigeminal neuralgia anagrams [see current parallel page, Synchronicity Forum] with their extremely 'colourful' verbal range (and it's worth noting here that 'ultramarine' was my favourite word I found in doing it), I want to 'fold them in' now so both they and I can move on...

Angela

06:15 07/09/2002 

Hi Geoffo,

I just posted yesterday on the Members' Forum that I have to pull away from here for a couple months in order to put my full thinking and writing attention elsewhere. Sadly, this applies here too. So, I shall make this my last thinking post for the time being. Though I will continue to read.

Firstly, please consider posting in the Members' Forum again for a couple reasons:

1) The staring at your own posting problem doesn't last nearly as long. Mostly because there are many others there who are also right now in the midst of grieving processes of your very kind, as well as other equally challenging and rewarding processes. Everyone is posting continually, keeping that forum refreshed and alive.

2) Two other members had dreams and synchronicities with blue feathers in the last couple days!! I thought of you immediately.

Secondly, can't you move on before you fold in every corner?

Your green shoots are emerging from old growth, Geoffo. You cannot replant a treeshoot. It requires the old growth to be the grounding and roots for the new growth. It looks ugly and out of proportion right now, but in time, if you give energy to the new growth and you allow outside energies access to it, it will grow stronger in conjunction with what the old decaying growth has offered it.

And it's also a good analogy of the need to attach to different identities too. How can Geoffo actually be the old stump AND the green shoot (not to mention the feathers...)? But you are. You are both right now and you may need to continue with a little re-naming until your trunk grows used to its new use.

Thirdly, to sum up, what I'm thinking is that while all this very detailed documentation would make a great book, it will not make a great life.

But if you are compelled to do it anyway, what would happen if you started at day number one of your new growth all over again? No more 12345th day for another 30 some years. I wonder what life comparisons you'd have between the first 30 and the second? And I wonder what would happen between now and then if you waited until then to analyse it?

Geoffo, L.i.m.p., catch-hanger, geotangent, Geoffrey... I wish you much warmth and kindness. I wish you peace. And I wish you many more dreams such as this.

Until I can return again...

Angela.

Geoffo

19:03 07/09/2002 

I wish you a fruitful sojourn, Angela, and big thanks again.

(And clearing issues...Re: rejoining the Members' stand: it's unlikely, there's just more that's happened recently than I can tell you. Restarting at day one again: it's a nice idea, but Lena and I already set a date for that in July and it didn't work because more stuff happened, so I'm sticking with 1 to infinity. And I'm trying to balance the 'very detailed documentation' with the 'very detailed living', point taken...)

[Thanks too to the sys.admin of this internet room who has been kindly minding the 4 tins of Canadian sardines I absently left behind here the other night, returned to me just now.]

gloria

20:40 10/09/2002 

Hi Geoffo, Angela, from the member's forum, pointed me in this direction after I wrote up a drawing I did which had a blue feather in it. I have analysed the drawing as if it was a dream and have come to some conclusions which may be relevant for you. Without presenting all of the reasoning, I came to the conclusion that the blue feather was symbolic of my intuition and that it also represented reading and writing (i.e. communication). I am working on a book, although frustrated with the lack of progress. The word 'pen'comes from pennae, latin for feather and feathers were of course used for writing before the availability of pens and pencils. I was also led by synchronicity to Richard Bach's book 'Illusions.' It has a beautiful blue feather on the cover. It is a wonderful read and quite short so if you haven't read it, it may have a message in it for you. There is a method in it for magnetising a blue feather.

I enjoyed your dream.

Regards, gloria

gloria

20:41 10/09/2002 

PS You can check out the book at amazon.com

G.

Geoffo

12:36 11/09/2002 

Thanks for that Gloria, after ploughing through some other unread books I have at the moment, I'll have a look at that one.

Geoffo

Geoffo

16:05 26/09/2002 

For a further more intimate waffling on about what this dream means to me, particularly the blue transformation, please see my thread 'Parisian Blue' in the Synchronicity Forum, the ninth post down.