Remembering fearless dreams

When I was in my 30s, I had a recurring dream of running at top speed from the top of one building to another in an unknown large city, performing astounding acrobatic feats. Someone was chasing me, but I knew they could never catch me. I was fearless.  What a revelation to see my younger dreamself in these young men flying through the air with such grace and landing on their feet with no loss of momentum.

Many thanks to Doonesbury's Featured Videos for another splendid offering!

That gouache and watercolor painting I did in the late 1980s is "Beloved Person in Bird Costume Crossing the Night River." Here is another one from those years.

Something of that old fearlessness is coming back to me in my 66th year. It comes and goes.

"How long can I stay drunk on fear out in the wilderness?"
(Bob Dylan)

Talking Fertile Land with Ocean

(Gouache and watercolor, 18" x 24", from the 1980s, by am)



What's so bad about being misunderstood?
(Bob Dylan)

BOB'S KOANS / LIKE A ROLLING KOAN

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

(from "Like a Rolling Stone," Bob Dylan, 1965)

Yesterday when I walked into the grocery store, I heard the 1965 recording of Bob Dylan singing "Like a Rolling Stone." Although I've heard that song countless times since I was 15 years old, I heard it again as if for the first time.

The "sound" of the song (not the scornful taunting words) has always had a kind of celebratory quality for me. At 15 years old, I didn't feel anger directed at me as a young woman. Instead, inexplicably, I felt a sense of being included -- that someone cared enough to ask me how I FELT.

On hearing that song with its koan-like questions as a 15 year old young woman, I experienced the parodoxical feeling that although I often felt I was "without a home," I certainly wasn't alone anymore.

There was something in Bob Dylan's voice and range of songs covering the spectrum of emotions that gave me peace of mind for years after that, well into my 40s. I never stopped listening to him, but gradually the "peace of mind" feeling was replaced with a "trouble in mind" feeling. In recent years, I've had to learn to find "peace of mind" within myself but have never felt entirely alone since first hearing what to me is a beloved, bewildering and distinctly expressive voice.

Hearing that voice yesterday gave me a "trouble in mind" feeling.

("Woman With Her Hands Full," gouache, watercolor and pastel on paper by am, 1984)