Stories of the Street - Twenty Five

“Dreams are a special way of connecting yourself with the forces around you and within you.” She began as she watched the small group raise their eyes and focus on her.

As she talked she was thinking of the route she had walked to the small hall today. There had been a blackbird singing with virtuosity and urgency as she left her street and cut down between the houses to the canal towpath. Sunlight had turned the still waters into a wide path of mercury and she had imagined throwing a stone into the water and watching it break up like mercury into silver balls rolling around in the basin of the canal. It had turned everything she had looked at afterwards into a set of alien things. The stunted trees by the path had become more like emaciated animals with ragged green pelts and a squirrel scurried up the back of one like a sinister insect – perhaps a parasite like a flea or louse.

As her thoughts had grown darker and more exotic she had realised that the dream was turning into a nightmare and she had shaken herself out of the reverie before it had overwhelmed her. Echoes of it had been returning ever since and the bearded man sitting to her left began to take on the appearance of a badger, his black hair and the bleached white streaks in his beard adding to this metamorphosis.

She realised she needed to break them into groups soon so that she could have some camomile tea and focus before the main chunk of her talk started.

“Dreams exist alongside our conscious life,” she concluded. “Every time we compliment ourselves on our rational thoughts we should be aware that they are only possible because our subconscious is being occupied with the dreams that keep us alive and fresh. Tapping into this side of ourselves opens up new possibilities for all of us.

Before we start the next part of this morning’s work lets break up into small groups and find a space to sit together and explore times when this subconscious dream world has leaked through into our ‘rational’ world.”

Soon she was in the small room she used as an office brewing some tea while quickly checking her emails. Her assistant, Mary, was late again. She could not cope with Mary’s irregular life. Another confrontation was coming up and she searched for a way to deal with the problem without it flaring into an emotional helter-skelter.

She shut down her computer and stepped out into the small hall with her tea warming her cold, thin hands. The camomile was doing its work; she was calming and focussing again. It was time to see how they were getting on.