This Lammas Full Supermoon marks a year of logging my dreams. I have had to sleep a lot, and I finally accept this as part of a deep, necessary process. Doing anything intense—like working to keep my shop humming along or writing stuff—will need to be slept off.
Yet, things happen even in sleep. [Willem Dafoe’s acting teacher monologue in Asteroid City comes to mind. I enjoyed this film a lot]. In my year of sleep I have discovered all teachings, the deepest information, is processed this way as the body resets and heals.
Lammas is a time of sacrifice. It’s the first harvest but also a moment for loaves and ideas to rise, to unlock the life-force stored in every seed and bring it home, inside us.
I think of Briar Rose and her curse where the whole kingdom sleeps alongside her. What did they dream? Robert Coover’s disturbing, surreal novel of the same name explores this at length. I’ve always been jealous of its premise and felt I could do it better, but then I never did.
Or have I? Last year, my dreams started coming at me, hard. They were the key to mourning my father. They became a hard reset for living in a pandemic when the rest of the world thinks it’s over.
The kingdom is asleep in so many ways. When it wakes, will it have used its dreaming well?
Transformations—unexpected and profound—came with writing Ashes and Stones, a book that is part memoir. The changes could not be sorted in my waking life, and dreams were my body-mind’s wisdom; they held on to me until I exorcised them.
Pre-order the US edition of Ashes & Stones here.
Or get a copy in the UK now.
I bought a journal for this. It has Angela Harding’s “Fishing Otter” on it and closes with a satisfying magnetic click. Thus, they are contained. I release them here, bound in poem.
Let the overshare begin under the paywall.
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Missives from the Verge with Allyson Shaw to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
