Out of the shadows

I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening attempting to create a 5 minute video of myself reflecting on what I learned in class last Saturday.  Believe me: the worst of it was NOT having to master the new technologies involved!

As I'm sure you can imagine, the most difficult part of the process was having to watch myself speaking.  I'm used to hearing my own voice (I did a radio show back in my youth) so that wasn't difficult.  But watching my face.  Ouch.  It was like every shadow I own was out in plain sight, marching across and through my facial expressions -- and the shadows seemed to WAY outnumber the parts of me I'm used to seeing in the mirror; the friendly more youthful parts.

So it's not surprising that my dreams were rich in symbolism.  In one there were a bunch of women standing in the shadows, some veiled, some not, and there was a faint light streaming in over them from a crack somewhere, illuminating here a nose, there a chin... mostly they were in the dark, talking quietly among themselves, as if they were waiting in the wings of the Vagina Monologs before appearing in that piece about the Burqas...

And in another I was in a plane, landing at an airport somewhere in the midwest, where I grew up; I was there to deliver a key of some sort, but wasn't quite sure to whom, or how long I'd scheduled to stay.   I'd lost my ticket and forgotten my cellphone, and all the phones in the airport -- or was it a bank? -- seemed to be either broken or busy...

So then I woke up, thinking the clue to what was beginning to look like a really painful personality split must be buried somewhere in my midwestern past.  Then I looked out the bathroom window to see this curious pattern engraved upon the sky -- and couldn't help but wonder at it.  Am I the tree being hit with that flaming zinger from above?  Is the cross supposed to comfort me?

I don't know, and don't really feel like presuming to guess.  I think I'll just trust it will all come together, that there's probably some work I need to do, it might sting a bit, I need to get conscious about loving all those shadowy pieces of me --

And it's all good.

No, Really!  Just a little unnerving sometimes...