February 6, 2007


Asleep with a river nymph~~


Up from a night of beautiful dreams and deep sleep

There was a river with beautiful water, and a furrowed riverbed and a woman, a naiad (not a Palma Vecchio version, but lean with long dark hair and a flowing sun dress; [I found her picture on line*]). On my knees I wanted to move through the river, down or across I do not know. She warned me that the water was more treacherous than it looked. There was a passive desire to be dissolved into the river, a dream of non-being. I recognized the river and have dreamed there before or so I dreamed. And so in dream I gain as much as I lose in sleep: the beauty, the ephemeral pure presence, the taste of adventure (salt?) that is constancy. And I wondered after seeing the picture if I dreamed I was a merman.

When I woke I read of salt and of fire.
For everyone will be salted with fire.
…
Have salt in your self and be at peace with one another.

The reverie of fire is an attempt to inscribe human love at the heart of things.

Having ended her confession, she throws the string into the fire, and when the god has consumed it in his pure flame, her sins are forgiven her and she departs in peace. This happens as the men are searching for the cactus that will en-thuse them, enthios: put them in god, a dream of non-being.

The river is dangerous but good and beautiful; there is no surrounding terrain: there is nothing else. The woman is ephemeral and pure, the fire purifying, burning away the excrescences, leaving the salt and peace in the non-being of God.

*my.opera.com/I_ArtMan/albums/showpic.dml?album=4993&picture=50596)