Scrying for a man on my birthday

11/24/1996 My birthday. Full moon in Gemini. Carmel. Geraldine Gaur’s Italian friend, Eda, tells me to hold up my gold ring up to the full moon to wish for the love of my life. I hold my amethyst ring of Italian gold up to the moon. There is magic afoot! I can feel it! In the moonlight he is so tangible, I can almost taste him. He’s nearby. I can feel it in my bones. Who is he? If only I could “See” better! 

I carefully reiterate up my wish list remembering to focus on all the necessary details (reviewing all the knowledge gained from my long list of past relationships): a man who can match me intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, psychically, physically, sexually, who is also secure and creative in his own right, who has already done time in the straight business world (as an after thought I add: retirement in place and all that), who is now ready to grow, expanding his art form. He will be a Gemini, this I know without knowing. 

I make a few (wise?) addendums: a European man (as usual) a man from my own background for a change. Maybe this time an Irish-Catholic who speaks English! (I’ve always avoided them like the plague, but it’s time to come home to my roots.) It’s just too hard to not have a language in common. Been there, done that.

This time I want a deep friendship well established before we become lovers. This time I want to do it right. No more mistakes. No jumping into bed (slut that I am!) before we really know each other, for when sex begins, a part of me shuts down, I want this man to be my twin flame on all levels. I am ready for marriage, a life partnership, and I desire the resolution and fortitude— whatever it takes to make the vows “ ’til death do us part” both joyous and holy. I’ve done the suffering. I am ready for joy and willing to let it into my life. I’d like a child as well, but the man is central to my being. Whoever he is.

Carmel, full moon in Gemini

Dream Journal, Neil O'Neill

10/95 An unknown man comforts me, he comes back again and again in my dreams. I don’t know who he is. A short, stocky, older man with thick white hair, distinctive dark eyebrows, he keeps coming back in my dreams. Who is he? What does he want?

2/27/96 I’m in a long run-down building in a room with that same man I keep seeing in my dreams. He is someone I love—I'm seeing him agaon after a long absence. Who is he? The many rooms include classrooms, workspaces. At one point, we’re teaching teenagers theatre games—it’s out of control. The biggest issue? Establishing authority. In another room I fall asleep. He often comes in and watches me sleep. He loves me but we seem to have trouble connecting, or even being in the same room. Something keeps separating us. Many cream-white rooms. Breakfast together again, buttering the toast. Who is he?

6/13 Recap: I met three men in a dream: I haven’t yet met them in real life, don’t know who they are, but they are very important, for I dream of many adventures with them all night long. (They turned out to be Chilean poet Waldo Rojas, Neil O’Neill, and Paul Evans—all of Irish ancestry). In one dream, I was making love to Waldo, then to Neil (but not to Paul), understanding that I’d soon meet them all in the real world, for it wasn’t just a dream. It was the future.

6/21/96 Summer Solstice: After making love to Waldo in Rotterdam, I dreamed of the unknown man making love to me again—confusing me, for he looked a little like Waldo (body type) but he wasn’t him. Who was he? And why did he come to me again and again? There were a couple of Scotsmen I’d met (poet Adrian Mitchell & photographer Dave Hansen) with white hair and faces similar to his, but they weren’t him—wrong body type, personality, aura, though the accent was right. I kept wondering where (and who) on earth he was. I had to be content to wait.

I saw Paul Evans that first night in Rotterdam (June 14), through a glass wall, he was reading—just like in the dream, but it was weeks later that I met him at the Winston Cafe in Amsterdam. We clicked (instant recognition of the other), and hung out together. On 6/21 I didn’t yet know the other man was Paul. I waited for the signal. It came in July as I was housesitting in a flat I’d never been in before, Paul came to dinner, stood in the doorway, afternoon sun, talking of his sisters and mother—I knew what he was going to do and say next, having dreamt this meeting and flat before.

(I wrote: I find my voice, small phrases tucked beneath your tongue and as the solstice approaches, the urgency of our Celtic blood desires conjugation. The origin of language embedded in the languid vocabulary of thighs… Celtic law requires lovers to sleep together three times before marriage…the dream lover and I must be man and wife by now…). I didn’t yet know who Neil was, but he kept coming back to haunt me. I was getting used to meeting him in my dreams. I kept thinking how highly unlikely it would be, for I wasn’t attracted to his body type. Besides, at this point, he was a figment of my imagination… (He was first identifiable in October of 95—there may be earlier entries, I’m too fatigued to trace them.)

9/16 Full moon. Dreams of that man again (I’m at Walker Creek—near the site of the accident.)

9/28 Wild dreams of driving along roads so narrow they resemble dykes or bicycle paths. I’m in the back seat with a man I don’t know. (A man and woman in front. They switch places. She drives.) The car slips off the road at a right angle, and down a grassy knoll. It is as if the car had turned itself around. I crawl out, feel the cut grass with my hands. We’re in a maze, hard to see the way out. No one’s in charge, certainly not the driver. The countryside is pleasant. We’re caught in a maze, can’t see, we need help but we’re in a strange country, far from home.)

10/3-4 More dreams of that unknown lover. He’s at my house in Forestville, then we’re going through Forest Knolls. I’m pointing out the sights, showing him my childhood.. Who is he? This constant dream companion. What does he want?

11/1 I awoke from a dream singing a song of the dead for the dead. I told my unknown friend and he began to sing Imagine for Lennon. We were in a crowded room, a party. I joined in but it was too high. People stopped to listen, not knowing the reason why we sang that song, or for whom.

11/20 Reoccurring dreams of moving into, and fixing up someone’s house. White rooms. Whose? I’m alone most of the time, but I feel his presence.

Note bene—What's weird about these dream journal entries is that I didn't even meet Neil until Thanksgiving.

IN THE MIRROR

In the mirror, fish weave
in and out of light,
The gut-wrenching cry
of the war goddess,
the ancestor of kelp. A forest of death.
The Morrigan with the head of a crow
had a taste for men's eyes,
and my eyes become round stones
clacking on the shoreline.

What I remember
is my mother's hatred of her name.
I remember what she said,
the birthing pangs,
a generational inheritance,
this blood.
A cursory glance in the mirror,
my first gathering of words
on the lips: mama ma ma.

To see in the edge of the beveled mirror,
a nose or an eye strayed from symmetry,
or the long tang and surcease of the sea,
or renegade Picassos, mouths and breasts
migrating against ordinary reality.
The slow breathing of the long distance runner
asleep in the dream hills.
That's what poetry is.

Melish, the honeyed sweetness
of an ancestral language on the tongue.

As I drive down the road, I parse my face.
On the tip of the tongue
to see what mask it wears
all that remembrance
of blue verging on violet.
Why do I write? Because the mirrors
are infinitely larger than the fields.

Forgiveness, the color of mourning.
I need to see the mirror inside the mirror.
The accusing candle fingers of buckeyes
not just to touch its icy surface
but to taste the odor of other words,
and other worlds.
Flowers pointing up the dry creekbed
ask not what poetry can do for you,
they are lighting the solstice with their hue...

November 1996
National Poetry Week
North Beach Pasta Pomodoro