Dreamlogue & Interpretation: Bookstore on Wheels; Crystal Underwear

Dreamlogue & Interpretaccione 06 Sept 2008

1) BOOKSTORE ON WHEELS

2) CRYSTAL UNDERWEAR

1) BOOKSTORE ON WHEELS

My father has purchased the bookstore from the owner of the first bookstore I worked in when I moved to Philadelphia in 1991. It was an LGBT bookstore which also specialized in feminist and children’s books. I loved working there and the owner of that bookstore became something of a surrogate father to me for the five years I worked there. In so-called “real life”, the bookstore was in three parts: retail, wholesale, and mail order.

In this dream, the bookstore became one focused on black women’s culture and interests, and operated as a store, and a separate vehicle to go around selling books.

I am in the store; my father is at a cash register doing “important things”. He’s wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and an apron. The store is very busy. Women in business wear are making notes in their books of which books to consider making required reading for their college students. I am having such a good time working there, looking around at all the beautiful shoppers (not all black and not all female). The store is large – not chain store large, but large enough, and brightly lit. We are running a smooth ship here.

At one point, I am in the vehicle portion of the store. I am driving from time to time, sharing the journey. It’s fun!

Interpretaccione:

This dream is about healing, reconciliation, and the possibilities those concepts in action present. I am experiencing both the physical healing of incorporating more and more raw vegan foods into my innards by drinking a lot of green smoothies, eating lots of fruit, and the occasional raw salad. I feel the cooling and soothing effect of shifting from a more acidic body (thanks Mickey Ds!!) to a healthy, more alkaline one.

The significance of my driving from time to time is in reference to my being in, or taking charge/leadership in my life.

I’ve learned recently that there is such a thing as the “emotional immune system”. One can be relatively healthy, not often get sick, as I am, and with a pretty strong immune system, but then emotionally be under stress, have a lot of unresolved family and other relationship issues – unresolved anger, unforgiven circumstances. I found out recently that I have a compromised emotional immune system. Because of the high level of stress I’ve lived with, and ignored, for decades, and also because of my longterm fractured relationships or my many short-termed superficial ones, I am not as healthy as I thought I was, and I am willing to change – to do all the repair work I need to do to be just as resistant to emotional discord as I am to the physical. (Of course, I am bursting with good cheer, gratitude, and appreciaccione for my lifelong good health, thanks in no small part to my childhood attitude that one didn’t get sick from: going out in the cold with wet hair, being around people who sneezed, or other such silliness. And now, after reading Dr. Lleila O. Afrika’s classic “African Holistic Health”, this is confirmed. He says our intake of toxins create so-called “colds” which is just the body getting rid of the toxins through our mucus and other fluids. The fact that so many people tend to get colds only means that so many people eat junk and are exposed to other (environmental, for example) toxins. Anyway, yeah, so I’m healing my existing relationships and approaching my older ones with new eyes and actions. Back to the dream!

This dream is also about blending two supposedly opposing figures. In making this new attempt at going raw, I am reminded by something my raw food teacher David Wolfe says. He says that good and bad/black and white thinking is really to be avoided and non-spiritual (I’m paraphrasing here). Every time I’ve gone raw, I’ve totally put raw and cooked into good and bad categories. This time I’m not doing that. Since I’m not going for 100% rawness right now (although as of the last two days I’ve been at about 90%), I’ve had plenty of time to remember and exercise this concept. It is creating a major shift in Moi.

In this dream, by the combining of both of my father figures, (who, in my “baby dyke” years I used to classify as one being good and the other being evil), having them know and work with each other, I am reconciling cooked and raw vegan foods. I allow myself to have a healthy relationship with my natural father. Of course it takes two to tango, so I am sure to protect myself at all times also. But there is always more room for love and patience, as opposed to the hypersensitivity I carry which would make me angry whenever he slipped into behaviours which annoyed me again.

Lastly, this dream is an extension of the work I’ve been doing to build my dream career as a musician and a writer, as well as my work wo/manifesting my next, and or best, relationship. Some of this work involves re-membering your most joyous times, and what was joyous about them, so you can name the essence(s) and create circumstances that mimic them.

For example, I remembered that one of my lifelong happiest memories was when I was a kid living in NJ, our home was used to host the wedding reception of my aunt and uncle.

I remember how full the house was with people, family, and close friends from the Haitian community, working on the back yard, setting up the tents and tables, all the food that was being prepared and smelled so good. Our pretty dresses, the menfolk looking handsome and smelling of aftershave and cologne; the women and girl doing hair in the kitchen. My boyhood crush who was also there, a beautiful, dark, dark Haitian black boy I fell in lust with at age 8 and never stopped until we were both adults. Since we never hooked up, I still think about him sometimes!

Anyway, we were all busy about preparing to have one of the most joyous times of the year. I also recalled this morning when piecing together my dream segments, that this was probably one of the times I felt safest in my house. That the bad things that would sometimes happen, from the very bad occasional things to the overall feeling of doom, pressure, and darkness, was not possible to occur in this space. So the feeling of safety was bliss as well. Not having to look over my shoulder because everyone was too busy doing something good to “bother” as some southern black people say, a little girl.

During this bookstore dream, I had the same feeling of bliss. One of knowing that I am safe because everyone is busy working on something good. Everyone is accounted for. I can see, and am looking right at the guy who hurt me, and he ain’t posin’ no threat a tall.

Lastly, this dream is about my favorite parts of running the Black Women’s Arts Festival from 2003-2007 – the during-show-runnage (a.k.a. “runnery”). My favorite times, and the ones I run in my mind over and over again (such a great and fun exercise – you try it!) was during a couple of the first ones, at the Rotunda. I was wearing super casual clothes, feeling comfy yet sexified. I’d be handling the monies at the door – okay, that’s my favorite memory, heh-heh, people giving me money!! Hooo!! I loves me some honesty (and money)!

Then I’d run around and make sure everyone had what they needed –vendors, etc. I checked with the volunteers. Deud, even emptying the trash was a blissful, liberating experience for me. I loved being all bossy and safety conscious – setting up a bouncer at the door for riff-raff and non-wanting-to-pay-ers.

So the bookstore dream was about that, too, running a big event and having a lot of fun with it.

Lately, I’ve been doing the work of switching from “day job” meaning something like what I’m doing now working at McDonald’s (in the past it’s been bookstores, retail outlets, etc.), to making “day job” mean working as a musician and writer.

I was hanging with a new musician friend the other day and we talked about this. We both have non-music “day jobs” and want to have music day jobs.

This dream was also to show me that I can have a job that I love, and have it be about something that is important and meaningful to me.

2) CRYSTAL UNDERWEAR

I’m at an airport talking to a beautiful tall, dark skinned woman with smooth skin like chocolate. She has lush curves in all the right places, breasts I wanted to weigh in my palms, and rounded full hips that make my nether-reggiones a twitter just thinking about now.

We’re talking, apparently we’re in the new stages of hook-uppery (sometimes it’s not “dating”, let’s just be honest about that, folks!), because she’s being somewhat flirtatious with me but in a very passive, strong Diva femme way. At some point she strips (yes, at the airport) down to a bikini, which is a deep plumb pinkish color, sort of a dusty fuchsia, if you can imagine that. It’s a string bikini, and I am much more focused on the bottom than the top part, mostly because tied at each side is an exact replica of my sacred crystal. One that was charged and given to me by Sanaya Roman (www.orindaben.com), whose books and CDs of Thaddeus music I’ve admired and used for years.

I thought it was incredibly hot to have crystals on one’s underwear, but I also felt ashamed and less than, and unworthy of her, because holding my own satin underwear together were not crystals, but safety pins.

(During the dream, I was dressed urban butch casual: expensive white jogging suit – very Missy Elliott.)

I possessively (and rather butchment, I might add) held her hips and pulled her to me… I was about to continue, but the dream ended with a rather unglamorous need to pee, which occurs frequently in my life.

Interpretaccione: Get rid of the safety pins! Even though it’s only this one pair of undies I have, which is part of a whole huge set of pretty satin panties I love- this one had its elastic loose and stretched out on both sides, and the other day I used two safety pins to keep them tighter so I could still wear them, because I like them.

I can sew them together, or I can throw them away, but this dream tells me I cannot wear safety pins to hold together my undies anymore! I know this because of how inferiour I felt when I saw my lady’s crystals.

Now another thing I have to ask myself is this, “Why all this lesbianism in my dreams last night?” While I am, as I like to say, “ambidextreux”, I am solely focused on, and interested in, having serious relationships with men. I believe that these dreams are about my growing self-love of myself as a woman and my maturing sexualitay.

And why am I dreaming of black lovers, when I have mostly dated the paler genre of boys and girls? I believe this is also about self-love. I am not REALLY dreaming about the lady in the crystal underwear, I am dreaming about myself. I should have crystal underwear.

I am perhaps more influenced to having these types of dreams about women, because I see countless hotties at work and while just walking down the streets of Manhattan.

I don’t relate to them, because they seem to be mostly dressed to be sexy for men. I am now learning to (when I’m not on stage) be dressed sexy for ME. But I must say that grabbing her hips reminded me of my happy Lesbian days, and I wonder if I’m missing out on something truly good and juicy and good for me or both of us being as strictly dickly as I’ve been. Regardless, I am following my he/art and after all, it’s not as if being with a woman isn’t possible if I’m with a man. It’s happened before and it will happen again so help me god.

(Oh, and the significance of the airport is that I’m ready to fly, or go to the next, higher level, of success.)

(c) 2008 by Cassendre Xavier a.k.a. Amethyste Rah. All rights reserved or you’ll be sorrier n’ a cat in a tub.

For previous Dreamlogues & Interpretaccione, please visit www.groups.yahoo.com/group/cassEndrExavier. Oh, and iff’n you like “Dreamlogue & Interpretaccione”, you’ll love “One Lucky Girl” and “Green Smoothie Raw” blogs, all viewable at www.myspace.com/cassendrexavier or www.cassendre.livejournal.com. Of course, there’s “ME! ME! ME! The Cassendre Xavier Newsletter” (which no one really should be without), also available at the aforementioned.

Cassendre Xavier is a self-described “renaissance negresse”. Although she also enjoys the craft of acting, and making visual art, this first generation American of Haitian and Chinese heritage is mainly a musician and a writer. As a singer-songwriter/guitarist, Cassendre has released 7 albums of music Borders described as “a cross between Tracy Chapman, Sade, and Enya” (Steven M. Wilson). Her sound has also often been compared to that of Roberta Flack, Joan Armatrading, Joni Mitchell, Pheobe Snow, and India.Arie, among others. Her latest musical recording, “Live at Tin Angel” was honorably mentioned as #9 of “Top 21 Local LPs of 2007” (M.J. Fine, Philadelphia City Paper). Under her self-assigned soul name Amethyste Rah and featuring the music of Thaddeus (Sanaya Roman), she has a growing line of spoken word/guided meditation recordings called “Affirmations for Survivors”, the first two being “Spirituality” and “Self-Love”. Her “snappy and redeeming” (Karen Gross, Philadelphia City Paper) multi-genre writing has been published nationally in various literary anthologies and periodicals, as well as previously self-published chapbooks “secrets and lies: poetry & other words” and “Making of a Woman/Artist: a book for every black girl and every black woman who has ever wanted to be an artist”. She wrote, directed, and starred in a 5-actor play called “Sex for Survivors” which ran for three days in the Philly Fringe Festival 2003. An award-winning cultural arts advocate, Cassendre is the founder and former director of several arts initiatives in Philadelphia including the Women’s Writing & Spoken Word Series (Robin’s Bookstore, 2002-2006) and the Black Women’s Arts Festival (The Rotunda and other venues, 2003-present). She received a $15,000 Leeway Transformation Award in 2005 for her work in art and change. Now reinventing herself as a musician and writer in her native city of New York, Cassendre practices an active, raw vegan lifestyle, braiding her own hair extensions, and getting as many naps and hot dates in as possible. Visit often at www.cassEndrExavier.com.