I woke up this morning to a very strange dream.
It began with a car accident.
I was driving my car and as I headed towards a red light at a busy intersection, I discovered that my brakes were only half alive and as I pressed the pedal down as hard as I could I slowly decelerated but finally crunched into the back of another vehicle. The next thing I remember is bring my car to a repair shop with many congenial men running about busily repairing various autos. There was a hispanic man who spoke very little english in the back and I ended up addressing a man probably in in 30s with long dreaded har and a beard, red, but very respectful and knowledgable. I told him I needed to repair my car and he examined it dinted in in the front and the insides mangled. I told him I still owe $3000 on this car, but he looked at it and said I'd be better off selling it for parts; that I might get up to $1400-1600 for it. I asked if he would give me that much, because I was ready to cut my losses and release myself from this headache of a car. He considered it, but then a video came on the television. We both looked up and it was belly dancers, specfically members of the belly dance superstars, all in purple costumes, heavily beaded lycra dresses with cutouts. They were dancing in a music video and the camera panned in close to their torsos, then it took an amazing edit and suddenly we were looking at three completely naked women writhing against one another. I was surprised, but noted that they probably got away with it because the way they pressed their bodies together, they were concealing their nipples and other private parts from the camera's view. But I must have wondered outloud why theses belly dancers would dance nude and in such a manner, because it was then explained to me that these were actually not the same dancers, but some other women that did this sort of dance and that I might notice that their bodies were a little different, a little more voluptous actually. Then I awoke.
As my dreams often do, this one lingered with me. I was feeling it's feelings and wondering what it meant. My husband used to interpret my dreams for me, albeit reluctantly at first, his mother would interpret his when he was young and he became so frustrated by her intrusion that he made it a habit to purposefully forget his dreams. But he softened one day, I don't know why, and started to tell me the interpretation when I would tell him my dreams. But for myself, I usually understand my dreams better than any mystic could divine, because I know myself, my life, my heart.
I know what this dream means and it has very little to do with the true reference to my real life car that needs fixing, once again. It is about my feeling that I'm not completely in control of my own destiny. It speaks of my sexual frustrations and the ambiguity that surrounds my feelings about belly dance. It speaks a little of my secrets.
I met a man once, who invited me to stay in his apartment and share his bed and enjoy a night with him. I told him that I couldn't possibly because I was married and I wouldn't want to hurt my husband in that way. He told me, it doesn't hurt him if he doesn't know. He felt that there was nothing wrong in little affairs, people have affairs all the time, and that if I kept it to myself I could go on happily married for the rest of my life. I insisted he was wrong because I could keep no secrets from my husband, that my relationship with him was totally open and I wouldn't want to have anything to hide. I did not go to his apartment that night and I have not seen him since. But some part of me absorbed what he said. I don't plan on having any affairs, I would be eaten alive by guilt, but I now think perhaps there are some things that should be my little secrets, even from my husband. Some thoughts I shouldn't speak, some feelings I should keep as my own.
I watched a movie this morning. It has been sitting and waiting for me for a month. It was a documentary about Picasso - Magic, Sex and Death. It told his life story and illustrated it with his art and with photographs. His art seemed to change with each new woman in his life and he regularly exanged one women for another until his death and as an outsider you were led to view each woman as she became first goddess and then wretch. I wondered to myself if I would be better able to make art if I were to follow my passions more liberally, if I were to exchange man for man as I found a new one that engaged my attentions, if I were to imbibe in the drugs of life more liberally as he did. But it's a moot point. I will not willingly ever wreck myself in that manner. Slowly but surely I will work to remove the traitor in me. But I do not want to deny myself life.
I will return to myself one day, I tell myself, and paint again my secrets. Maybe today this will happen again, I don't know, but if I paint again like myself, I will feel that I've finally returned home. That my passion has returned home and I will give up on trying to please anybody. I am often jealous of those trained as artists from birth, like Picasso. But what do they have on me? Are they living my life? Can they paint what I may paint? NO! So it is up to me, if it will be said at all, to say it. If death doesn't find me first, hopefully I will return to myself once again.
