Holy Roll in the Hay


Yesterday when I closed my eyes after the first waking I dreamed Jim and I were trying to capture some guy driving a limo. Jim had his old red Toyota and he tried to block the road but it wasn't big enough and the limo roared around it. I hit the supercharger on my black truck and was in hot pursuit. I wonder who was in that limo? And was I like one of those dogs that chases cars? What will he do with one if he catches it?

I was walking with Sammy over Thumb Butte this morning and I noticed that what was coming to mind was James Cann, in "Dogville." He was the father of Grace, and he was known as "the big man." He was in the back of a curtained limo, from where he directed the use of power. Grace had come to Dogville like a goddess coming to earth, and she was for awhile kept hidden in the mine, like a rich vein of gold. Grace was initially received by people as if they were humble, and even self-deprecating, but gradually they experienced their power over her, because she was wanted by the authorities. Even if she was accused of something she could not have done, because she was in Dogville, it didn't matter. What mattered was that she was enslaved. Finally she was shackled to a stone she could barely drag around.

Linda and I saw Dogville in Palm Springs, because we had some time to kill while waiting for Coachella to wind down for the evening, and let the children spill back out into the hot desert night. Sometimes a movie seems like it's going to bore me and I lean over and ask, "Do you want to stay?"

"Yes, I do," Linda said.

It was a theater so I didn't elaborate on why I wasn't sure I wanted to sit through the film. It is a stage set, and the houses are chalk outlines. Even the dog is a chalk outline. Later on I learned more about Lars von Trier and his Dogme 95 manifesto. No film quite affected me like Dogville. It wasn't evident until after it was over that I'd been hit in the head. We'd both been hit in the head. We drove in silence. There wasn't anything to say. The ending was a killer.

The ending was James Caan collecting Grace from disgrace.

Does that have anything to do with my dream? I don't know, but it did come up and when it did I realized I understood the images a lot better, of the good people who live according to their instincts, and how they treat Grace when she manifests among them. She is turned into a servant and a sex slave. And then one day her father shows up, and it turns into a Dr. Zeus story from there.

So I suppose this dream had something to do with my relationship to the community, and my relationship to Grace, who seemed to me to be in the role of Aphrodite. There are lots of stories about the goddess of love being found in poverty, boiling stones to flavor the soup, in the absence of potatoes.

And this morning another dream turned up, which bodes well for the inner marriage.

"I'm not even going to tell you what I dreamed," I said, which of course means the opposite, but is sort of like asking for a release of liability. "I'll skip the foreplay as read, but the way it ended was this sweet babe was wrapped around me, and I was taking her to where we could have some privacy. I was passing people I knew and I felt a little bit ... well ..."

Linda said, "No you didn't."

"Okay, but maybe just a little bit. She was nestled into me with her legs wrapped around me, heart to heart. I was thinking about a holy roll in the hay."

"I think you're leaving out the best parts."

"I don't recall."

Posted: Wed - August 27, 2008 at 03:41 PM