Let the haunting begin

I had an opportunity to visit with my favorite neighbor for a while yesterday evening, and we got to talking -- as we often do -- about dreams. So of course, when I woke up with a somewhat bizarre dream still festering in my head, I was more attentive than usual, and spent some time looking at it during my meditative process.

But dreams are a bit like photographs: you can read lots of different things into them, depending on who you are and what's going on in your life at any given time. I'm particularly aware of that after yesterday's post: both comments and emails revealed lots of different ways of reading that image of the two different boats.

So now I'm thinking -- wouldn't it be fun to start a new blog, a cooperative one, where I'd just put up images and let people dialog about what they see in them? Because I think we could learn a lot -- both about ourselves and about each other -- from our responses... I've often thought it would be fun to lead retreats that just consisted of posting photos around the room and inviting people to respond to them.

So this morning I found this image in my files, and liked its haunting quality. I like the rows converging in the distance; the way the fog obscures the mountains and trees; like the structure in the distance -- is it a tent? a pavilion? -- and love the brightness of that lone orange pumpkin in the foreground. But there are SO MANY different ways I could approach this story, and the choices are so colored by the discoveries of self-critical thought patterns revealed by the dream that I find I just want to stop here and let you tell this story.

This week in Lesser's book, The Seekers Guide, we're dealing with the foes and demons that rise up in meditation. And now I see the foes and demons aren't content to interfere with meditation; they seem to want to leap to the foreground in dreams as well. But rather than lay the shadows out before you here I think I'll wrestle with them in private for a bit.

All of which brings to mind the lyrics of a Talking Heads song called "Name."

There's a word for it
And words don't mean a thing
There's a name for it
And names make all the difference in the world

Some things can never be spoken
Some things cannot be pronounced
That word does not exist in any language
It will never be uttered by a human mouth

Let x make a statement
Let breath pass through those cracked lips
That man was my hero
And now that word has been taken from us

Some things can never be spoken
Some things cannot be pronounced
That word does not exist in any language
It will never be uttered by a human mouth

Give me back my name
Give me back my name
Something has been changed in my life
Something has been changed in my life
Something must be returned to us
Something must be returned to us