For those who wish to follow up

Over time I have shared many of my creative projects on this blog. Often, I take you through aspects of the process - from inception to completion. The two projects listed below are still 'open' (i.e. in motion, in the works). Please see below if you are a regular reader of Now is Wow and are interested in following up on their progress and eventual outcome (beyond the blog).

Veronica's House
Habitat for Humanity has partnered with us to ensure that the house for Veronica and her children is built. Once the necessary 'red tape' is cleared (e.g. Town and Country Planning), work will officially begin. All things running smoothly, the house will be finished within 2008. Those who wish to be involved in the construction as volunteers can contact me at nowiswowisnow [at] yahoo [dot] com for further information. Or you can contact Habitat directly (see their website for contact info) and indicate your interest in being a volunteer for Veronica's House and/or other Habitat projects. You do not have to have prior construction experience. Volunteers will be needed for all kinds of tasks, from making phone calls to painting walls to more 'concrete' jobs, literally.

Within the next few weeks, the designer of the Veronica's House website will update it to reflect the recent changes (as a result of Habitat coming on board as a partner).

*
*

Source of photo

The Tree of Dreams
The Tree Planting Ceremony will take place as announced on Saturday 3rd May, 2008. Thus far 20 of us have confirmed our attendance and, on that day, will be making the hike up the mountain to plant the dreams which various people placed into the Dream House. I have chosen the Flamboyant as our Tree of Dreams. When the flamboyants are in bloom on the mountains, their vibrant orange presence cannot be ignored. They are visible from far and wide, like fires (i.e. fires of flowers, not flames) on the mountain range. One day our Tree will be one of those striking orange beauties, standing testament to the blooming of our Dreams.

Full moon heart

Last night I went to a barbeque on top of a mountain on a friend's estate in Santa Cruz. It was a medium sized gathering. We had an adventurous roller coaster ride up the mountain in various four wheel drives, along steep and bumpy, freshly excavated dirt roads. The view from up there was great - stars above and, in the distance, myriad dots of lights along the crest of ridges and in the valley. And of course the moon, which was full, bright and huge. Being so high up, it looked and felt extremely close - as though if we climbed to the top of one of the trees, we would be able to touch it. I pointed my camera at the moon and swirled it around in a heart shape motion, on a slow shutter speed. The above photo is my attempt.

This location, but a bit higher up the mountain, is where the long awaited ceremony for the dreams that were in the Dream House will take place.

Invitation to come this week.

Full circle

The Cosmic Web in the tree under which it all began

*

Yesterday my friend Glen came with his pickup van. We went to collect the Dream House from the Raj Yoga Centre where it has been since it left Alice Yard. I was going to keep it at home until I figured out where next it would go.

However, on the two-minute drive back home from the Raj Yoga Centre, a decision was made which may surprise some people. Dismantle the entire Dream House ... rather than keep it, sell it or put it anywhere else. It was an unexpected decision, but it felt like the right thing to do and the right day to do it. No amount of thought was involved and I felt no attachment to the piece. We parked in the driveway. Glen got out his screw driver and started to unscrew everything that was keeping the lamp together. I went inside and got a bucket with a cover - to keep all our dreams in (until I source an appropriate clay vessel). Within minutes the Dream House as we knew it was no more.

As of yesterday, this physical structure no longer exists.
*

The original idea was (once Veronica's House is built) to gather all of the dreams that people have put into the Dream House, place them in a clay vessel (time capsule), hike into a forest, bury the vessel of dreams and plant a tree (still to be decided what kind) on that spot. This will still be done (at a date and place to be announced), but as of yesterday, the timing has changed. I will do it before Veronica's House is constructed. Energetically, the Dream House and Veronica's House now feel like two separate entities.*

The dismantling process felt very freeing. I made the comment to Glen that it felt as though we were doing something for everyone's dreams. As soon as I said it, a sudden light rain sprinkled us, lasting a few seconds.

"Blessings," Glen said.

I know some people will be taken aback and will ask (as has already happened): "How could you do that to your artwork?!" or: "Why did you destroy the Dream House?!!" But it is not destruction. It as a part of the process. It is in keeping with the way I followed my feelings and instincts (about this window) from the very start, so I trust it. Glen took the parts back home - to somehow reuse the wood and metal in his factory. I kept the bulb and lock and the dream catcher/cosmic web.

I took the cosmic web and put it to hang on the same tree at the bottom of the garden under which the original window (Kairos) once stood. As I hung it, I suddenly remembered that in the beginning, there had been a spider's web being spun above that very spot. This is the web that had inspired the dream catcher/cosmic web in the first place. This confirmed for me that everything was right and had come full circle.

* Brief update: we are partnering with Habitat for Humanity to build Veronica's House.

Drumming, dreaming, mid-air dancing

I keep dreaming I am in Toronto. Every night for the past week or so I'm there (sometimes briefly, sometimes for a long time) and it just feels like an extension of where I already am. Not as if I've made any drastic moves or used any forms of transport to get there. Many times I am sitting in a particular place. I don't know where it is or if it exists ... but it always makes me think of an American Diner and it is largely white with plush red leathery seats and couches (quite like the image on that link). The frontage is pure glass and looks onto a tall brown brick apartment building.

Last night there was a gathering of 'natural' people, wearing recycled clothing, hemp, etc. I was with them and we were pulling out our instruments on the sidewalk. I pulled out Dandelion and started to play her. The sound that came out was different: deep and slack. At first I thought she needed tightening. Upon looking more closely I realised there was a slash in her skin (a hole). I was horrified, but my first thought was: "Thank God I'm in Toronto" because my first instinct was that I had to go to Saikou, at whose shop I had bought Dandelion.

In another part of the dream, I was there (in TO) yet here (in T'dad) and looking through the window to the grass where the doves feed in droves. Suddenly a single dove flew up ... or rather, it rose in a straight vertical line (as if being beamed up by a force). It did not need to flap its wings in order to be airborne. Rising with it from the grass was a strange-looking yellowy-creamish creature. I couldn't make out what the creature was. The two of them were in mid-air responding to each other in what appeared to be a dance. They headed to the window and came inside, still in their mid-air dance. I retreated, so as not to disturb them ... and also because I had no idea what was going on or what the creamish creature was.

There was someone else with me (not sure who).

At some point the creamish creature dropped to the ground and the person who was with me went and picked it up and brought it to me. It was a baby swan.

A strange dream that somehow makes sense

Last night (until early this morning just before waking) I had a long dream which makes me think of something George Orwell could have written.

I remember it vividly, as if it actually happened to me. Maybe it did.

I was in an extremely large warehouse type of building. It was full of women of every imaginable type: nationalities, race, size, age ... you name it, a woman was there representing her. I was "a new one" and was the only one wearing normal clothing (I had on blue jeans and a black top). The other women wore dark green tent-like poncho-like pullovers with white fringes and ties, like what you would see someone wearing in a hospital - only this was not a hospital. I still don't know what it was.

The women were all sitting or standing around in groups, talking with each other and observing me as I was led through the space by the dark, squat female 'guard' (if she can be called that, because it wasn't a prison either) into whose care I had been placed.

My guard/caretaker was kind, which I found out as the dream progressed. Her kindness was not obvious by just looking at her because she never smiled. I think she was Trini, as she had that way of walking slowly with an expressionless look on her face, reminiscent of a reluctant store attendant who would rather be chatting on her cellular phone than attending to the customer. She led me to the centre of the large space and placed me above a small round drainage grill in the floor. These drainage grills were all over the floor of the 'warehouse'. When she told me to take off my clothes and get ready for 'the shower' I realised that this was why the women were all wearing the kind of hospital robes. They had all already been through the showers.

At first I was hesitant, not knowing why I was there and feeling strange about stripping and being bathed by someone else in a room full of women staring at me. My caretaker told me to relax: that everyone had done it and when I take off my clothes it will be "what everyone else has".

I decided to go with the moment and took off all my clothes. The other woman who was with my caretaker took my clothing and disappeared. It didn't feel strange standing there fully exposed to everyone and it was not threatening. The thousands of women around the warehouse continued chatting with each other ... although I noted I was hearing nothing - no murmur of voices. Their chatting was completely silent. The room was silent. Some of these women were looking at me, but not in an ogling or 'macocious' way. Their eyes just naturally rested on me and then went back to their companions. I felt that it was natural to be in this state.

There was one woman who stood out. She was tall and white (the transparent kind of white like a gekko, where you can see the blue veins under the skin) with short, 'zogged' brown hair. At one point the dream skipped and I was walking behind her down a long corridor. There was a moment where she slowed down so that I was walking next to her and, without saying a word or even looking at me, she told me something important ... then quickened her step and walked ahead back into the room with 'the showers' where everyone was.

The dream skipped back to me being bathed by my caretaker. (N.B. Even though I was being 'bathed' by her she was not actually bathing me and I was not physically bathing myself either. Not sure how it was happening, but I was 'being bathed'). She was more like someone just watching over me, 'in charge' of me, attending to me.

Suddenly we were no longer in the warehouse, but out in the open air, on some sunny green grass, away from everyone. As I (was being) bathed, she lowered her voice and said to me: "If you are looking aware and conscious, some may try to stop you. That's why I walk around looking vacant so they don't know." It was the first time anyone used audible words in the whole dream. Only then did I realise that all other talking had been in complete silence.

In a cryptic way I felt that she was telling me that she meditates, so I asked her: "You meditate?"

She said: "Yes. It only looks like we're just cleaning the outside ... but it's the inside."

I understood that the washing in the showers was not a physical, external thing. It was internal. Maybe it was a way of enlightening all of the women in a way that was not obvious to others ... and maybe that's why the women could have spoken with each other without having to use audible words ... and why the tall transparent woman could have told me whatever she did - without using words or looking at me. We were communicating on other levels. And standing naked in front of all of the women was not about 'being naked' because it was not about the body. Perhaps in taking off my clothes, only my spirit was left standing there in the room full of women.

My caretaker took me back inside and gave me two injections. Like everything else, nothing was explained, but I trusted her and trusted the process. One injection was to my upper right arm, the other was in the region of the skin of my upper left back just above the shoulder blade. This felt necessary in the grand scheme of things.

A multi-layered night

Last night I dreamt I went to the home of a friend whose mother died recently. We were standing on a kind of dirt track outside his house and he had a strange little blue three-stringed instrument which he had made. What he was playing for me sounded phenomenal, actually. It was deep, full and resonant. I had never heard anything like it before. After playing it, he gave me the strange instrument and said it was mine.

We were then under an old time house which stood on stilts. There were the usual things that are under such houses: hammock, clothesline, chairs, etc. I was sitting on a chair and a quaint animal appeared. I have never seen anything like it before. It had long flowing white hair with some black - and very piercing but gentle black beady eyes. It's head was small in comparison to the size of its body. It was very drawn to me and seemed to have manifested specifically for me. Everything else seemed to disappear and my eyes remained focused on the animal. Moving in a strange manner, it kept approaching then retreating, eventually reaching to my side. It was wild, but extremely gentle and it trusted me. Even though it was an animal, its shape reminded me of someone I know. It's like the animal guise was merely a costume.

Then suddenly I was in the house of a girl who was an artist from some other country. She was visiting Trinidad, yet somehow the dream was not taking place here. She was staying in a simple house with large, open windows and doors. There was nothing to cover any of these openings. She had many large paintings all around her, leaning up against all of the walls - and she was working on one when I arrived. I went around looking through all of the doors and windows and I said to her "Do you realise that wherever you look there is an amazing view?" She said yes - it's why she lives there.

In particular, leaning through one of the doors, I saw a lovely old stone and wood house on a lush hill, not too far from where she lived. I was drawn to it and felt that I would be living there. It was one of those locations that I've dreamt before and which I know only in dreams.

Now that I'm writing this, I'm remembering that so many other levels of dreams took place last night. That's only the surface.

Rainbows galore

Some nights ago I had a very clear dream in which a friend and I exchanged gifts. In it, I gave her a crystal like the one in the above image. The next day I went to the small flower shop of a friend's sister, knowing that she sells crystals like the one in the dream, from India. She had one more left, exactly like the one I had seen in the dream. I bought it and sent it to my friend. There was a bigger one (above photo) which I bought for myself and hung in my bedroom window.

(On the bed. They look like guppies)

At a certain time in the morning when the sun angles in through the window, bright rainbows dance everywhere - on my bed, on the floor, the walls, the laptop. Sometimes I enter the room to find Jasper sleeping in rainbows or lying on the bed watching them dart around him ... every now and then his paw rapidly reaching out to try and catch them.

(On the floor)

I wonder what Rainbow the pigeon would have had to say about this.

That dream plan again

Hmmm. A recurring message and/or desire. Last night's dream was clearly a continuation of yesterday's. For most of the dream I was in London, only it was Toronto, because my cousins and other people from Toronto were in the dream with me, living there. It was like having Toronto people in a London landscape.

When I was leaving Toronto/London, I went to the ticketing booth (check out) at the airport. The airport was one of those places that exists only in dreams and is familiar as a result of having been there a few times before. It has many levels and a lot of glass. I went up some levels and found the Asian girl who would be dealing with my tickets. She looked at my date of departure and said "You are not supposed to be leaving today. You have more time here."

But because the date that was on the ticket was in big red figures and was standing out, I had thought that it was my date of departure. I did not see the fine print. Nevertheless, I told her I would still leave on this plane. Someone (in real life) had been saying yesterday that 'everything happens for a reason' and that phrase came back to me in the dream as I stood in the dream airport. There happened to be a seat for me on that flight, so I left on the big red date, knowing that I had seen it that way for a valid reason.

I don't know why I keep dreaming London and Toronto together, but definitely things are happening on that (dream) plane. Maybe there's also something to do with London, ONtario?

Could also be because I have not yet put away my suitcase since returning from Toronto. It was against the wall in my room, then I had moved it to another spot and just a day or two ago I moved it to the centre of the room where it is sitting with a scarf and sweater on it, really just procrastinating about putting it on top of the upstairs cupboard where suitcases are. It looks like I am about to go again.

(Just realised the headline of this post is supposed to say: "That dream plane again", but I will leave the typo).

Traveling on the dream plane

This morning just before I woke up, I dreamt I was returning to Toronto. It was a very involved dream in which the people I dealt with were busy making the way easy for me. The people at the airline office were giving a range of prices for tickets. I was amazed at the cheap fare that was available - a special fixed rate of $200-something US (maybe it was one way?) which was hidden, but for some reason they had found it for me. Then there was a rate of $30,000 TT to go to either TO or London for a year. Of course I chose Toronto and they gave me the fixed rate of $200-something US for the year instead of the $30,000. It was a fortunate dream in which I spent a lot of time at the bank as well, preparing to depart. The woman in the bank was working with lots of data and transferring funds (I had a lot of money in the dream).

In the dream I felt purposeful and excited, eager to leave ... even though I didn't have anything 'fixed' to go to. This reminds me of the day I left my job in advertising 1999. I had 'nothing to go to' and I had not told anyone I was resigning (in case they had tried to dissuade me and put doubts in my mind). I wrote my resignation letter on the 7th of September so that my departure day (one month later) would be my birthday (7th October). I will always remember it as the best birthday gift I ever gave myself ... and one of the best decisions I ever made.

After leaving the bank in the dream, I woke up. My foot slid across the bed and bumped against something furry (Jasper, not a rat). I lay there for a while preparing to get out of bed and go through the motions of another day.

Dream

Shot of an old truck I discovered once when some friends and I stumbled upon an interesting woman and her house in the country.

*

Last night I dreamt I was competently driving a large red and black Mack truck along some narrow, unpaved country roads. I'm not sure where I was headed, but I was going there confidently. I drove to a particular point and then turned ... and suddenly there were many forks in the road and I could not remember which road I had been on.

I saw many cars heading in a particular direction and thought that it was 'the way to go', but something about it didn't feel right. I stopped and asked some men at the roadside which route would lead me back to the main road. They pointed to a road that did not look like the one I had been on, but somehow it felt right, so I trusted them and took it.

It was all unfamiliar. At some point I got to a part of the road which overlooked rolling fields. There was a house below road level at the side of the road. I parked the truck across from it (next to a rustic bar which had a few cars parked outside and a few old men sitting around) and went into the house. My recollection of what happened inside is vague now, but it contained many women of different ages - some busy, some relaxing, but all in community.

At some point I went back out to the truck and it was not there. I looked around, wondering if I had parked it somewhere else and forgotten. It was nowhere to be seen and I was baffled that such a huge vehicle could just 'disappear'. Had it been stolen? I asked around and no-one who had seen me parking it earlier knew anything about it.

I returned to the house and opened the door to a room which, somehow, was now 'my bedroom'. It was filled with long tables - the kind you find in a small lecture hall or classroom. The room was full of women who were discussing film. One of them saw me peeping in and excitedly started going on about me as a great example, a film maker, a this, a that, talking about 'all the things she's doing' ... etc.

I closed the door and can't remember what happened after that.

In that dream ...

I pressed myself against a glass wall, facing forward.

Anyone passing on the other side would see me.

It was me, but did not look like me.

Maybe it was you.

I woke up knowing what I had to do.

I did it.

Yes, my Love.

Last night I dreamt I was walking toward a tunnel, intending to enter. The upper edges of the mouth of the tunnel had long icicles hanging from them, like glistening stalagmites. It was a beautiful winter scene. As I drew closer, the mouth of the tunnel transformed, becoming the mouth of a gigantic living shark. The icicles turned into huge, sharp teeth. I kept walking with calm determination, my intention being to enter. As I got closer, the shark's mouth suddenly started to move, ready to consume me. It reminded me of this. But, as the mouth opened wider and contorted, it became heart-shaped. The teeth still fringed it, but I kept walking, unafraid. I knew deeply that nothing would or could stop me. I knew: 'fear' is an illusion and being fearful of the illusion is a waste of energy. This realisation alone made up for and dissipated any fear I had ever felt in the past. I entered. The dream that followed, for what felt like the rest of the night until I woke, was indescribably wonderful.