Of Councils And Unicorns

Snow Skadi, Gold Unicorn

“A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

When I was a child, I was obsessed with unicorns. By “child,” what I really mean is “from toddler years up through time now,” and by “obsessed,” well, I mean that unicorns have remained an ongoing fascination with greater and lesser periods of intensity. Watching Rainbow Brite was my introduction to magical, horned horses, and my fascination culminated with a compilation of literary works devoted to the unicorn for a middle school literature class. I remember being about 12 or 13 and traipsing around the woods behind my house with my best friend Amphitrite, searching for traces of them. We followed hoof prints that likely belonged to deer, and we collected twisted pieces of wood that we called shards of alicorn. We glimpsed shadows in the distance and raced after them, wandering and wondering in equal parts. We’d stay out until the darkness finally chased us home, where we would drink tea and giggle over our secret adventures in the forest. We never found any unicorns, but the magic was there. The magic is always there in childhood escapades.

Then came high school, and my priorities shifted: cross country, homework, papers and projects, boys, college. I still secretly read stories about unicorns and wrote them as characters into my own, and I still would go for hikes whenever the notion struck me, but I was not searching for unicorns anymore. I was searching for something equally elusive and magical: myself. Then came college, and after that work, and now I am left wondering what my original point was.

Ah, yes. Unicorns. Recently I dreamt a dream about a unicorn and the consequences of its presence. It was the first dream in quite some time that I remembered upon waking, so I spent several weeks chewing on its potential meaning. The dream and its interpretation follow below:

I was in a rich, dense forest wearing its late-summer emerald green. I was standing with a group of faceless friends about 100m from a mist-enshrouded lake. There was a wide, pine-needle coated path leading down to the lake’s edge, where an old, crumbling dock extended over the water. Suddenly I saw movement, and my friends urged me to go down to the water to see what it was. I approached slowly, and out of the mist stepped a tall, slender horse with a honey-brown coat and a golden mane and tail. A pale, latticed and spiraled bone horn protruded from its forehead, and I recognized it as a unicorn. I felt my breath catch in my throat, and I was afraid to go any closer lest I scare it away.

The unicorn looked directly at me, lowering its head, and so I called out softly, “Hello?” Then it nodded to me, and I returned to my slow, cautious approach, holding my empty hands out in front of me. As I got closer, I could hear the unicorn’s voice in my head, greeting me, although I did not see his mouth move. Eventually I was close enough to put my hand on his neck, which I did. He was warm and smelled like earth and lake. He told me his name, and I told him mine, and we talked quietly for what felt like hours in dream-time. Then I asked him if I could take a picture with him to show my mom, and he said yes, so I pulled out my phone and took a selfie with a unicorn (probably one of the more random details, but hey, even in my dreams apparently I wield a smart phone). Then he told me that he had to go, and he turned and faded back into the mist on the lake.

The next thing I remember, I was in a coffee shop, and a faceless man in a suit and tie approached me. He told me that I was summoned to testify and present evidence at a military council concerning the existence of unicorns. I asked him why, and he said the government found out about my photo, and that I had no choice but to give it up to the Army. He left, and I immediately tried to call my mom and Amphitrite, but in my dream neither answered their phones.

Then I was waiting in a paneled room, sitting alone on a wooden bench. I was wearing my military dress uniform, and I waited for what felt like forever, feeling very anxious. Eventually a door opened, and an older man with a kindly face entered. He was also wearing a dress uniform, and I saw that he was a Lieutenant Colonel. He stopped in front of me and told me it was time, so I stood and followed him through the door into a much larger, open chamber spread out like a giant courtroom with benches and pews and a council of gray-haired, uniformed men at the very front. The officer walked me to the front of the room, which was filled with military personnel and government officials. I was terrified, but I was determined not to let my nervousness show. I also remember being painfully aware of the fact that not only was I the lowest-ranking person in the room, but that I was also the only female.

Then, before I ever reached the podium, I woke up. That was it. No conclusion, no resolution, just me walking through a room full of critical eyes, unsure if I was going to prove that unicorns existed or protect their existence by saying nothing. My feeling, upon waking, can only be described as unsettled.

I have talked to several people about this dream, to include my fiancé Orion, my mother, my brother, and of course Amphitrite (who remains one of the best dream-interpreters I know). If you try to look up unicorn appearance in dream interpretation resources, you’re going to find a different meaning in every single source. In Chinese folklore dreaming about a unicorn was a mixed symbol, representing the imminent arrival or death of a loved one (or, in some cases, an important political figure). While remembering this tidbit of information from one of my research-heavy periods of fascination, I was particularly nervous about my fiance’s deployment; however, the unicorn from my dream was decidedly Western in appearance (despite being brown and gold instead of the more stereotypical white), as opposed to the Asian styled dragon-deer-horse-ox creature combo. Thus, that fear was at least temporarily quieted. In Western folklore the unicorn is far more often a symbol of purity and magic and innocence, not a harbinger of death.

Dreams are tricksy creatures. They come into our brains at night, amusing and scaring and confusing us while we sleep; but the tricksiest dreams are the ones that linger, that paw at the edges of our waking psyche, wanting to be revisited and reborn. This was the first time I have ever, in my many years of persistent fascination, actually dreamt of a unicorn. My dreams frequently take me into summer woods and post-apocalyptic cities; I’ve walked through the mouth of a sun-god; I’ve been a superhero, fought demons with magic and zombies with swords, and chased giant spotted ants through a fire. But prior to that night several weeks ago, I have never dreamt of a unicorn. So I’m wondering why. Why now, why after 24+ years, after a lull of not thinking about unicorns at all, do I finally see one in my dreams?

I think I saw one because I needed to. Magic and mystery were missing from my life—I have been as remiss in my magical practice as I have been in my blogging—with all my energy being channeled into work, which in the case of the dream was represented by the government wanting to take the one magical thing left in my life (the photograph of myself and the unicorn) and turn it to their own benefit. I didn’t want to share the photograph; I wanted to keep it to myself, to hold onto the memory of the magic.

So that’s what I’m trying to do, remember the magic.

Re-Education Through Fire

The engine roars, and then it gives,
but never dies. We don’t live,
we just survive. 

~ Rise Against, “Re-Education (Through Labor)”

You know, I don’t often say this, but I’m not sure where to begin on this one. Generally the problem I have is that I can’t fully latch onto any one of the million half-formed ideas swirling about my head. In this case, it’s that I can’t seem which one to pick first, because it struck me this morning as I was driving home from dropping off Orion at work whilst Tim McIlrath’s scratchy voice blared from my speakers that all these ideas are connected. Not necessarily *all* of my ideas in the sense of everything I think about, but *all* in the sense of the ones I have been bouncing around lately, albeit not necessarily blogging about for want of coherence (and, as always, time).

What are these connected, bouncing ideas, you ask? Well. Back to my original dilemma: where to begin. I think I may just throw them all out there at once and then see where that takes me. Sure, because that usually works, and by “works” what I mean ever so sarcastically is “leads to a coherent end product.” So here it goes.

Disregarding any accusations of being a broken record, I really did spend a good chunk of my childhood running around the woods barefoot and climbing trees, and when I wasn’t getting in touch with my inner fae-amazon-native-hippie-athlete, I was reading books. Devouring books, in fact. I think I might have read The Hobbit before I read The Magic Schoolbus. My point is that I was either outside, learning straight from the source—albeit unbeknownst to me at the time—or I was inside, learning what others had learned before me. Then, of course, I became a pre-teen and discovered that music consisted of more than singing songs about bees and trees and flowers and the things I saw in the woods, and I picked up a guitar. Thus began my semi-rebellious stage. I listened to Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, the Foo Fighters, Soundgarden, Rage Against the Machine. I didn’t exactly understand which machine RATM was raging against, but I liked their music nevertheless. I dressed like a cross between a punk and a hippie with occasional goth-prep elements. (Is that even a style?) I even went so far once as to walk downstairs sporting black lipstick, which was promptly nipped in the bud by laughter from my parents. But really, that was the extent of my teenage rebellion.

My parents never instated a curfew, because I never needed one. I never stayed out late or got in trouble or even ran with a semi-rough crowd. I ran with the track team instead. Sure, I went to the occasional punk show, but those were always straight edge, and I use the term “punk” here incredibly loosely. My parents loved me and always treated me like a thinking adult. All my teachers loved me, with the exception of the 8th grade fiasco. There were no authority figures in my life that I deemed unfair or unworthy, let alone tyrannical (again, excluding 8th grade). However, a part of me always longed for a cause, for a reason to fight the system—any system, really—for a revolution.

Then I went to college, and not just any college, a military one. I became part of the system without even realizing it, and now I serve the machine of the government as the “fourth branch.” However, I will get to that whole service issue later. Back to my college days.

Enter Rise Against.

This song always gives me chills. There are a few songs that do that, all for very different reasons. There is just something about the combination of the screaming and the rebellion and the mechanical references and the driving beats that sends tingles all up and down my spine whenever “Re-Education” scrolls across my iPod screen. While they’ve been making music for much longer than I’ve been listening to them, this song—released in 2008—was my introduction to the band. Even now it affects me with a wave of nostalgia, inspiration, rebellious longing, and just a twinge of fear. Funny how music can do that, and that’s part of my theory on why music is magic, but that’s another post entirely.

I’ve listened to this song for years now, yet my first time actually watching the video was just moments after I decided to write this post. Finally, several paragraphs later, you’re about to understand why this and why now. It's all about the fire. While I do not condone the tactics displayed in the music video, I can’t help but be moved by the symbolism. Obviously, terrorism = bad. But fire? = pretty. Anywho, before my carefully suppressed pyro flares up (flares? get it? I made a pun!) I am going to get back on topic. The fires they start in the city—which at least on the upside appears to be entirely unpopulated, apart from the bike-riding firestarters themselves—resemble the spark of knowledge, that destructive, creative, purifying force in the universe. The fire of suns, fusing hydrogen atoms into helium and releasing massive amounts of radiation that make life on rocks such as Earth possible. Food cooking over a campfire, in an oven, in a microwave, nourishing life further. Bodies burning calories, always consuming in order to produce. Fire is light. It’s energy. Fire is life as much as it is death. In this particular music video, the fire is used to cleanse the city of the tyrannical elements it represented, leaving the ground purified and ready for rebirth, for a new order, one in which differences are respected and celebrated.

If you can’t tell, my normally earthy-nature is on a fire kick lately. I think it may have something to do with all the coffee I’ve been drinking. Regardless, between Rise Against and Robopocalypse, my feelings about the future are a mix of excitement and apprehension. Whenever I crack out my tarot cards and ask for insight into the future of this country, of the world, I pull the Moon and the Tower: hidden mysteries, uncertainty, ultimate destruction necessary for rebirth and re-creation. I don’t know where things are headed, but I know I want to be there to put the pieces back together as necessary. I want to be that Amazon—a Warrior-Priestess-Leader—to set things right again once they go terribly wrong. Whether we are approaching a slow economic decay or a sudden, violent collapse; whether we are about to explode into another war or implode into a failed state; whether we are to turn a corner and reclaim our regional hegemony or even achieve global status (believe it or not, we have never quite qualified as a global hegemony by IR standards); I want to be there. I am a part of the system, yes. But what I pledged my loyalty to, what I signed up to potentially lay down my life in service to, is the Constitution. That pledge I hold as holy.

It’s a fabulous document, full of all sorts of wonderful knowledge and governmental ideals. You should read it sometime.

Goodbye, Graf! Hello, Ninja!

Grafenwoehr Tower. I couldn't seem to
track down who drew it originally.

I’m leaving Germany early tomorrow morning. Although the work part of this three-week detail was not nearly what I expected (and far from productive), it has been a productive trip in other respects. I managed to track down a few cute Yule presents without which I would have been hopelessly lost. (What does one get a boyfriend’s parents when meeting them for the first time? My solution: German gingerbread cookies in a cute little cookie tin that sings a German folksong when you open it up. Couldn’t get that in Texas!) I’ve also finished writing the 11th chapter in Circle: The Spinner’s Journey, which will be my first ever novel…if and when I ever try to publish it. I have even written the first five pages of the 12th and final chapter. All that’s left after the actual writing process is complete is the massive editing. Since I began writing many years ago, and went years without touching it, there’s a noticeable style difference between the first few chapters, the middle few chapters, and the final few chapters. On a personal level, I like how my story currently displays my progression as a writer; on a practical level, I want it to reflect the peak of my abilities the whole way through, and that will require an editing mostly for stylistic consistency.

The whole first three chapters, and almost certainly the prologue, may get re-written…but at least I know where I’m going to have the most problems.

In other news, I am the best big sister ever. Well, at least when it comes to Yule presents. Last year I put together a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Kit for Little Brother, which I had pieced together from various survival necessities from Ranger Joe’s and Amazon. You’d be surprised what you can find online. I found a water filtration straw—literally you can use it to drink out of a puddle in a rock and be perfectly fine—and a few other unique (but necessary, in a survival situation) items. I thought that was going to be difficult to top, because my brother is as much of an apocalypse nerd as I am. However, this year I managed to outdo myself. Because I am 100% confident my little brother does *not* read my blog, I’m going to go ahead and spoil the surprise right here.

I got him ninja swords.

Not just any ninja swords, but rather a set of high-quality, full-tang, tactically finished in black stainless steel ninja swords, complete with their own carrying case you can sling across your back. He’s going to faint when he sees them. I’m so excited! I literally can’t wait to see his reaction.

I’m actually even kinda jealous that I got them for him…because I definitely want my own pair.