June November
Sleeping Under The Dream Catcher
Faith in the things that feel right (and how much I hate sleeping.)
The main thing I really wanted this past Christmas was a dream catcher. There’s a few reasons as to why I’ve suddenly felt I needed one again, but the main reason definitely has something to do with the dream catcher that hung over my bed as a child. I’m not sure as to how or when it got there. My best guess is that it was a gift from my Mohawk grandmother. This first one was made of wood but painted green, and had a feather hanging off the end. Suspended from a string, it rested above my bed nestled between the window and cubbies attached to my headboard. I had this dream catcher for most of my childhood, but it was one of the may things left behind when I stopped living at my father’s house around the age of eleven. Fifteen years later it likely hides underneath the lid of a bin in his basement.I’ve never been a good sleeper. If it were up to me I would go to sleep at 6:00am and wake up at noon. For some godforsaken reason those are my prime sleeping hours. In the window where everyone else is getting ready to start the day, I sleep like a baby. Outside of those six awkward hours I become a menace to anyone I share a bed with. If you are interested in being kicked in your sleep, awoken by involuntary scratching or mumbled, allegedly English sounds, help comfort me when I tear awake from one of my five rotating nightmares and can deal with the fan/space heater that must be on all night so I can tune out the outside sounds that drive me up a wall, feel free to come take up the other two thirds of the double bed I barely managed to fit into my apartment. You’ll need to bring your own blanket though, because my weighted blanket rolls me up like I’m a burrito and I will not be sharing. Also, I’ll maybe want to cuddle for the first hour but after that point I’m good and would rather be left alone. Yes I will get annoyed when you so much as make a sound in your sleep.Honestly It’s gotten to a point that when people actually stay the night. I warn them in advance,
multiple times over, that I am some sort of sleep criminal and probably would have been burned at the stake for my crimes. I have no clue as to what I did in my past life to deserve this, but I can’t imagine my sleep felonies are caused by natural phenomena. Antecedent lives isn’t something I’ve experienced or felt personally, but if that were the explanation as to why this problem has existed since some of my earliest memories it would make sense. Either that or eventually a witch will tell me I’ve had a sleep demon my whole life.Some of my earliest memories are lying in bed at night staring around at the walls, trying to fall asleep pondering if I actually am gay. This usually lasted for about three hours before I found myself sailing in an endless void of three dimensional shapes. When I closed my eyes as a kid, I used to see all these large shapes and vast black on black mountains descending into pits. I’d soar around this endless plane of existence in my brain hoping to eventually fall asleep, wildly unnerved at the “sights” around me. I’ve never liked voids or large spaces like this. So being confronted with one every night was quite troubling. After a while, I learned how to adjust the focus in my eyes when closed to alleviate these scary eye tricks. By the time I was twelve they went away fully. Yet, like nearly all young adults, I’ve sometimes wanted to experience any childhood feeling again. Would it still scare me? Would the shapes change? Is that feeling of weightless flight ever going to come back?If there’s one major thing that hasn’t changed since I was a kid, it would be the familiar rotation of
nightmares I bounce back & fourth upon. I can’t really remember the last time I had a positive dream experience. In-between the circus of my usual stress dreams and assorted sleeping panic attacks, a warm, fully pleasant, dream graces my memory. These are the exception however and arrive quarterly. The most vivid one I had in recent memory was well over a year ago and revolved around being a student again, but this time my education was a lovingly accepted experience. Which probably tells you enough about what my dreams usually entail. The two most common stress dreams I have are the June gets sent back to high school dream. (This one also sometimes turns into the school shooter dream where me and others I love are hiding or on the run). Or the its the opening night of a play I’m directing and nobody knows what they’re doing. (This one also morphs into a first day on set chaos dream. Sometimes I’m also not directing and get fired in a way so bad I’ll never be employed in the film industry again). I’ve heard from others the play opening night dream is quite common so I’m assuming for anyone else who had a deplorable experience as a student, the you’re back in high school dream is also common. In America the prevalence of the school shooter dream could probably be studied.The other nightmare thread relates to home. I’ve moved a lot in since the pandemic. (Between Toronto & Ottawa, across both cities.) So I frequently have a dream where I’m at one house but suddenly I don’t live there anymore and the other house is kilometres away. Plus my phone is dying so good luck figuring out how to get there. Ottawa has a malefaction against public transportation called OC Transpo. So I used to have this dream a lot more often when living there. Since moving back to Toronto last year this dream has mostly gone away. In it’s absence, the oldest of my stress dreams has become rife. For nearly as long as I have been young, my mind keeps returning to the scenario where I am alone in one of my childhood homes and people are trying to break in. Home has always been a perturbing space for me. Growing up, it was one of the few places I felt comfortable so I always felt like it was going to be taken away in an instant. Even during the day I was always acutely aware of unknown cars parked around the street. Someone pulling into the driveway to turn around was a matter of my full attention. In the dream, I’m usually trying to make it known the house is not empty and trying to get a hold of anyone else via the phone to get help. I can’t fully explain how futile it feels to be a scared kid, trying to hold up the fragile walls of a safe space only for the them to come crashing down. I usually jolt awake from these dreams. Sometimes it’s because I’m killed, other times its just the stress. Life has a fun way of giving you far more than you can handle, so when I walked home one day after school and was the first to enter the house I knew instantly it had been broken into during the day. Even as I entered the pass code on the electronic lock at the side door, I knew something was wrong. It’s those endless pits you get in your stomach, you just know something is wrong and it only takes a moment. Life isn’t as eventful as the dream world, so when I walked in the thieves had been long gone, our possessions in tow. I sometimes wonder if this particular home invasion dream will ever go away.I’m twenty five now, but this seems like as good a time as any to get a dream catcher again. My sister got one for me as a Christmas present, buying it from a wonderful Metis crafts person. There’s been a wide array different uses for them, many of which don’t have any bearings on dreams. They Originate from Anishinaabe cultures, particularly the Ojibwe Grandmother Spider. The idea is that dream catchers are created using her web as apotropaic magic to ward off any evil influence. Typically given to babies from their mothers to help them grow up safely. I still feel like a baby sometimes. I guess this is an early transition thing. A part of me must have felt a dream catcher’s absence in my first year, so turning the page on year two made me decide it was time to hang a protection spell above me as I sleep.While I was out shooting pool with the girls, I bought up my new dream catcher as the conversation veered through it’s usual topics. Art projects, school/work, music, where some of us met, what kind of cigs we’re smoking or the math girlies trying to teach the girls who can’t count trigonometry. One of my friends asked how much the dream catcher is something I notice the direct impact of, or how much it’s something that’s nice to have. In the moment I said, “I need all the help I can get.” I’m not sure how much it actually helps but I appreciate the spiritual company it keeps me. It’s become very apparent as I’ve barley aged, that having some sort of belief is seemingly the last precipice between optimism and completely losing your mind. Not that I am the kind of person to notice a glass is half full, but I’m holding onto belief that when I return to the tap the water keeps running.I may not be a religious person, as the extended childhood courtship between me and god via Christianity made it very clear only some parts of a faggot get into to heaven; but I’ve always felt
slightly divorced from some sort of spiritual world. It’s not something I have access to beyond the
stories of others. I wish I was the kind of girl who kept crystals and understood how they affected me, but that sort of thing never really made sense to me. I’ve never received the presence of a ghost or any spirit, and that’s not for a lack of trying! I guess that’s why I’ve turned to nature more recently. When I come across a rock in the park I sometimes wonder what kind of journey it’s had long before I was ever around. I’m not sure where exactly all this came from (other than 6mg of daily estradiol) but I’ve found so much faith in nature over the last year and change.This might be because my mother is a geologist, but I’ve always felt a rock is a rock. I’m not sure if rocks connect to some sort of spiritual realm or similar quality, or if they have feelings, but they have to right? Imagine being a boulder, fathom how it would feel to be huge, round and drying out in the sun. It must be great to be sturdy and never have to depend on anyone. To just sit there awaiting the rain. It must feel so good to get rained on after not having any for a month. If I were a boulder would I be worried about some jackass hiker man shoving me down a cliff? Or would I welcome the movement after a solitary couple years spent taking in the view? If you were a mountain would you like climbers ascending your peak? Is Mount Kailash aware it holds the honour of being Mount Meru? Being the central mountain of Buddhist cosmology sounds like quite the honour, I can’t wonder how it would feel to know devotees have been on a collective pilgrimage around my base for an unknown amount of time, or at least an unknown amount of time to humans. Mount Meru knows exactly how long we’ve been doing this for, if it even took the time to observe us. How would it feel to be so large, and cold and old? Mount Meru knows, it’s been here the whole time.And it’s that quality I’ve found faith in. The world is going to pull through, but only if humans pull
through for all of this. I know the coral reefs feel the impact of our violence. Most of the world’s coral reefs will be functionally extinct by 2030. That’s only four more years, four years ago was 2022. The death of the coral reefs can’t be envisaged by people because it’s just too great. About a third of all marine life on earth are supported by reefs. The Great Barrier Reef is a carbon sink and helps produce almost half the worlds oxygen. I’ve heard the potential death of the The Great Barrier Reef described as ten thousand nine elevens just for the aquatic macrocosm. But I have my faith, turtle island is much older than you or me, surely she can’t meet her end due to the rise of late stage climate extraction and artificial intelligence. She has some other tricks up her sleeve but also is (quite rightfully) furious with us. Natural intelligence is not in any shortage theses days despite what we read online. But the world is just whispering. She’s not yelling yet. People only act to change upon the modification of material conditions. I’m not sure when things will change, except I do because it’s happened already. This is maddening so I’m going to opt to have some faith in the world opposed to losing my mind in the whirring of life.A small card came with my dream catcher, it reads as follows: Natural leather and feathers on a brass ring. Grandmother Spider taught us that her web catches all dreams. The good ones flow down the sleeper while the bad ones are kept in the web for Grandfather Sun to burn in the morning.
