The valley of old houses

I had a dream last night that felt metaphorically like it was tied to the healing process I’m experiencing since I started this blog. It felt so vivid and powerful to me and as usual a melody fell out of the sky and into my head (of course at 5AM or so). I ended up heading straight to my recording studio to quickly record a short version of it. It clearly was the soundtrack to what I was feeling in the dream. I’ll embed the tune at the end of this post.

For the last 5 years we were living in a house (beyond our financial means really) in a fairly upscale suburb. Even though we were renting, I remember when we first moved into it, my inner child thinking, “I DID IT. I MADE IT HERE FINALLY.” All those nice houses that my childhood friends lived in, that I was so envious of growing up because I never had anything close to that, I now lived in one! It was one of those generic track homes of the 90’s type neighborhoods, everything was white and there was lots of shiny brass hardware, ugly light fixtures, closet door mirror combos everywhere…

About a year or so after moving in there, I remember how that sense of accomplishment, very clearly tied to the size of this 5 bedroom house in an overpriced neighborhood, was slowly deflating like that bunch of helium-filled childhood birthday balloons, 5 days after the party, where they’re sort of floating still but also falling to the ground at the same time. Some of them are more deflated than others, but were clearly on their way out…like that accomplished feeling I had about moving into that house in the beginning.

In my dream I was in a version of that house but it was sitting on a cliff overlooking a valley of sorts. It was creaking all weird and then all of a sudden half of it started to slide into this valley but it didn’t feel violent or scary. Even though I was falling with it, it felt like I was more stuck in molasses slowly sliding down the cliff with it, kind of just going with the flow of this trash heap that this house was becoming. I looked around and realized this valley was full of old houses as far as the eye could see that had also crumbled in a similar fashion, like this was someone else’s childhood trauma and this valley was where their issues went to die in the form of garbage and demolition. This was a place where others had also healed from the past and had experienced what I just did.

I remember getting to a point where I thought I was going to drown in it. And then, almost as if it was an inflection point emotionally, the garbage flow stopped moving. I had the option of either being completely swallowed up by it, letting it finish the job and crushing me, or taking a deep breath and climbing out of it. In the dream the decision was easy but the path to drowning was clear and real and available.

I chose to breathe and climb out of it and slowly walked across all the broken houses to what felt like a sort of shoreline of peace. I walked around and everything felt gentle around me. The space was very open and calm and quiet like a California desert in the morning. While it wasn’t crowded by any means, there were others walking around feeling the same thing I was and there was a light thin layer of dust and fog that was sort of floating and settling around us all, like we had all just left our “old houses” in the pit behind us with an open mind and heart ready to move on. It was the most peaceful thing I had felt in a long time.

That’s when I started hearing his melody in my head at a ridiculously early hour. I woke up and barged over to my recording studio before the sun came up and scratched the soundtrack down so I wouldn’t forget it.

I’m grateful for the healing process…