When She Was A Winged-Wolf
Not a Fiction.
‘On a warm afternoon, she was sitting on a chair looking at a piece of white pasteboard and a ball pen on the table. The heat from last night’s dream seethed, making the day rather torrid. The lilting rustle of aspen leaves affirmed pleasantness yet her body burned. It wasn’t the weather. The heat emanated from her. ‘This must be how the sun felt.’
The core of the inferno inside evinced last night’s mutation. A fiery rage crawled under her skin. It was so intense and she was so frail that reasoning the rage was impossible. The lucid film of passing images scalded her temples. She tried to resist the recurring flashes but the resistance added to the heat. The cold perspiration couldn’t help. She tried to cool herself down but it wasn’t just the heat. A terrible soreness in the back singed her wakefulness.
Before she knew, her hands grabbed the pen and pasteboard, and started scribbling away the eerie swelter. As she scrawled, the fury settled. The intensity of the heat receded with each stroke on the pasteboard. The random flickers began to organize. A shape slowly emerged from the dense fog. The With the ebb of the anguish a fatigue infused inside.
The exhaustion melted the surrounding. Her fingers kept the grip on the pen as it traced the shape on its own. With every hatch the heat manifested itself on the round pasteboard. In the absence of conscious control, the inertia of the dream took over. She was soaring. When the sketch was done, the dream lost its grip on her chest. She drew her. She was a she-wolf.’
I dreamed of flying in stark space passing through screens of scattered lights. I had my hind paws curled. My wings carried my hot and heavy body. I clearly remember the sinking feeling in my stomach, and the flap of my wings. The unfamiliarity of my own body urged me to reason but in that surreal vastness there was no space for rationality.
It’s been years since I had the dream. The memory is engraved in my consciousness. I wanted to discuss, reason, interpret this feeling but I could never bring myself to do that. Whenever I tried, I felt a resistance. When I examined the resistance, I found an innocent possessiveness for the dream, which is odd but real. I want to keep that feeling only to myself.
Dreams. There are two ways we perceive them. First one is the irrelevant subconscious string of images that we easily forget the other day. Another, a purpose: ‘I have a dream’. The first perception of dream has an intensity scale. Either we associate the images contriving an extrinsic interpretation or we don’t care. Nightmares have the highest intensity on the negative extreme of course. Pleasant lucid dreams are on the positive end. The in between measure of the scale is dreamy.
Dreams are internal. Although we are good at internalizing outside occurrences, we are not very good at understanding or even accepting the inside. Hence, an interpretation seems reasonable. Dreams cannot have an interpretation. The only reason we can give to dream is the passive activity of subconscious mind without a conscious control. It is like our desires running wild and we have no power over them. Without our control, desires are nothing but fleeting impulses.
Every emotional reaction is captured by our subconscious mind to make a better use of it in our living. Dreams film our unfiltered desires using those captures — the reason why they seem intriguingly relevant. They simulate our subconscious emotional experiences that does not have any empirical relevance the conscious experiences. How one wants to feel about their dream is completely personal. Nobody else can interpret dreams for others. They can interpret emotions, actions and thoughts but not dreams.
The other form of dream is not a motion picture of crude desires but a solicitous purpose imbued with the power of will. This one is not personal. We act in the outside world interacting with other. Our action directly affects outside world, and vice versa. This purpose has many inlets for errors. If we are not cautious it gets corrupted in no time. We need to keep checking the congruity of our purpose, which takes immense effort. It is better not to have a purpose than to have a corrupted one.
When we want to do a thing, the first step is to visualize it. Without this vision we can get lost in the maze of distractions. All visions have limits. Like our eyes cannot see in 360 degrees angle (for our own good), this vision has a limited range with respect to our life experiences. Doubts are generated in the obscurity. Healthy doubts lead better but recurring negative doubts thwart progress.
The expectation of the unexpected is how life progresses. But our cultivation of this expectation is erroneous. Vision manifests but the manifestation is not the vision. We cannot have the result exactly how we pictured. The outcome and its foresight are similar but not one. This variation is negatively discerned. I would like to question why. The variation is needed in a progress. Growth requires the cut-and-try learned from variety. Without it, capability languish.
Dreams are internal. Interpreting them with the outer signs is futile. The forced relatability between symbols and dazed life situations coaxes the conclusion into a presumption. This presumption conjures a relatability train fuelled by instant gratification. But it fails to find a stand as its simply fallacious. Only dreamers can know their dream. It is internal and its interpretation (if there is any) can only be internal. It can be heard, accepted, and cherished but can never be rationalized. This applies on both types of dream.
The purpose can change in the process of fulfilling it. With constantly changing environment, our priorities keep shuffling. In general, we either lose our purpose or cling to it; the success of fulfilling our true purpose lies in the mean between these two extremes. Like we improve by keeping a check on our ability we must keep a check on the pertinence of our purpose. So that if the purpose is same, it replenishes and if it has changed, we declutter.
When we are not flexibly focused on our purpose, it becomes a burden. But if we keep adjusting our focus with reference to our current need the outcome can never disappoint. Switching the track or staying on the same is a decision we constantly make. There are lots of other factors here like time, effort, ability etc but I am safe to say that choice tops everything.
We can learn so much from our ability to dream. Dreams signify nothing unless we make them significant. Our acumen is our redeemer. The significance we assign engenders our purpose. For this we need right perception and variety of experiences. Majority of us do not have sufficient data to choose their path. Some pretend they have it all sorted, some keep walking without a purpose. In my opinion, the latter is better.
If you are striving to achieve your dream, be honest with yourself. If you are finding your dream, be honest with yourself. (If you are interpreting your dreams, please stop). In both the cases we tend to skip the initial steps like the terms and conditions clause. This is hazardous. The solution is to be internally transparent (being honest, again). The initial steps have all the answers we need, don’t rush them. You are the dreamer you know what you need. The dreams always give. It depends on you what you take from them.
My dream brought out my long lost creativity. I was on a holiday. I did not have a sketchbook or even a notebook with me. The round pasteboard was part of packaging of a frying pan. The dream made me feel terrible next morning but the delirium birthed a beautiful sketch (one of many).
When I was a winged wolf, I was assured. Assured that I, a two-legged primate, is now a four-legged canine who had large wings. Assured that no matter what kind of animal I am, I am always me. Do I need to reason it — I don’t think so. The memory of the experience has no influence at all. It’s just there. What do I do with it depends only on me. Dreams give you that power.
Why do we dream? Because we dream.
The purpose keeps modifying. Dreams keep changing and we must live on.
