Tonight I did a little more than I thought I could. I always think that if I could just get organized I would be able to sit myself right down after a day's work, pick up some sewing work and go after it, but maybe that's a perfect world.
I planned meals for the weekend, bought groceries and set my sauerbraten to marinate. It will have to marinate two days since the recipe specified at least 24 hours and I will not be home until late evening tomorrow.
I wish I had written out my Black Dahlia dream earlier. I could remember it better then. I woke at about midnight with my blood running cold. I got up and checked all the locks and even looked out the window. I don't really understand what scared me so much, because I wasn't in danger in the dream.
Some murder details follow.
In my dream we lived in a dorm, one of those with covered walkways between buildings, and the exterior walls that look like they've been laid in glue, then laid in some rocks. The areas on either side of the walkway were filled in with pebbles, and on my way through the glass doors I was wont to look at beautiful objects I found within the pebbles each day. In particular I gazed at some amethyst-colored glass marbles.
Then one day I learned that the Black Dahlia had been murdered in my dorm/home, and her limbs were partially buried in the pebbles on either side of the exterior walkway, and they looked like alabaster pieces. The beautiful marbles I noticed every day were actually her eyes.
This filled me with numbing horror.
In reality an actress in 1940's Hollywood was murdered by a surgeon acquaintance who disconnected her limbs, drained them of blood, and cleaned and polished them so meticulously that a woman pushing a baby carriage down the street saw them standing upright in an overgrown field and thought they were pieces of a mannequin.
For me when I read the story I felt a vicarious horror at the woman who discovered the body. To see something strange and artistic, like a Salvador Dali painting, and then realize it's the work of a murderer, that you are looking at a corpse.
The actress was given the name Black Dahlia in hype surrounding her death and partially-unsolved murder, due I think to her pallor and black hair which gave her a gothic look.
Anyway, I was surprised Gothic Beauty didn't actually describe the murder, since I doubt most people know the story.
To me it sort of relates to my search for beauty, my reaching out and then being stunned or deeply disillusioned, as far as the dream. The dorm is one of the ultimate visions I can conceive of a standard-issue no-frills building, and I think I felt betrayed because when I finally found something beautiful in my dull environment it turned out to be deeply profane.
When I woke I felt the presence of God. Through the mist of my fear I felt a strange and stern guidance, perhaps even a rebuke.
I don't really know what God may be trying to tell me. He needs to know that I can't be force-fed other peoples' beliefs, theories, churches. He needs to know I can't blindly go along. I want to be his sheep, but not the sheep of other humans. I haven't been reading my Bible or making time for meditation. I feel guilty about it, and I can't find God through my guilt. I have felt very frustrated about that. If I stop altogether my study and prayer I stop my relationship with God; however I don't want God to become a routine or something I feel guilty about skipping. This is a huge struggle for me, and the more I hear what other people think and do with God, the worse it becomes.