Dream Catcher

My potentially defunkt (yet
still funky) dream catcher

We ran again this morning, this time with a larger group. It was equally as cold and windy, but a slightly different route. This one was pretty flat, and the run went at a much faster pace. The entire time I was thinking about how much it would suck if I was running barefoot. One of my friends was wearing the Vibram Five Fingers shoes, which I’ve been considering getting since it forces a more natural stride. Maybe it would help my knee pain when I run? The only issue, in my opinion, is the expense. I’m willing to go through the initial calf-pain of training up with the new shoes. Anywho…

I made a dream catcher recently to see if it helps me remember the good dreams and forget the nightmares. So far, it doesn’t seem to be doing its job. I made it out of leather, cotton yarn, some pheasant feathers, and a few natural beads from my collection (including a nugget of blue lace agate, a polished labradorite circle, a few shards of quartz, a nugget of carnelian, some little wooden spheres, a tube of carved copper, and a flat circle of mother of pearl). I used crochet thread and wire to attach the beads and feathers, and used the yarn to hold the leather bindings in place as well as to form the web within. I started the web by making a pentagram, and then filled in around that. The pieces that form the central pentagram are marked with the wooden beads. While it was a joy to craft, inhaling the scent of the incense and focusing on the simple weaving and looping and intertwining patterns, I’m not sure if I made it effective as a dream catcher just yet. I’ll bless the finished product in circle, I suppose, and maybe that will make a difference. It certainly won’t hurt.

According to Dream-Catchers.org, “Native Americans believe that the night air is filled with dreams both good and bad. The dream catcher when hung over or near your bed swinging freely in the air, catches the dreams as they flow by. The good dreams know how to pass through the dream catcher, slipping through the outer holes and slide down the soft feathers so gently that many times the sleeper does not know that he/she is dreaming. The bad dreams not knowing the way get tangled in the dream catcher and perish with the first light of the new day.”

Therefore, the reason I wonder about my dream catcher’s efficacy is because of the dreams I’ve been having upon my return to school. I’ve kept it hanging above my bed since it was finished the night before I left Virginia (need I mention the fabulousness of that state again?), but my dreams have been elusively forgettable still, and the snippets I have remembered have not been particularly pleasant. I think I got stabbed in one of them, but the nightmare has since faded from being too long awake. It was just one of those dreams that I woke up from feeling a little disturbed, and not in the good way that my forest dream did. Perhaps my Native American blood is too diluted to make a good enough dream catcher, or perhaps I just need an extra spark from my Deities to bind the bad dreams and keep the good. Hopefully any dream messages meant for me to unravel and understand will also know how to pass between the web.