Seasons change with the scenery

SEASONS CHANGE WITH THE SCENERY

The leaves covering my drive and garden like a golden, brown, orange carpet make me think once again of the seasons and that life is cyclic. We each of us go through different seasons and cycles all the time. Some things reach full circles faster than others only to begin again and many of them overlap. 

The past few weeks of my life have been a reminder of that also bringing to mind the lyric ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ Perhaps a prompt to keep moving, or to keep turning and changing and adapting. Among other lyrics turning around in my head J has been The Rolling Stones Ruby Tuesday, The Ally McBeal theme written by Vonda Shepard, China in your hand from T’PAU, A Hazy Shade of Winter by Simon and Garfunkel and last but certainly not least the ever eloquent and evocative Leonard Cohen with A Thousand Kisses Deep.

So this week’s theme finds me in a somewhat pensive and thoughtful mood. While a sense things shifting and changing on levels deeper than what is consciously on the surface of things lurks in my consciousness, it feels like it is causing pause for thought and reflections with the help of some other wise beings in the form of musicians and the music and lyrics which constantly play in the background as a soundtrack to my life. 

Those who know me well know that I always pay attention to the current track/s playing in my head! The theme is a lyrical one so I do hope you enjoy the musical/lyrical/poetic reminiscent journey with me as I rediscover some of the wisdom often shared in music and lyrics.

I almost always remember my dreams and I mostly have very vivid technicolour dreams (always have had long before I experimented with anything that would help this process along). I also dream in themes. Sometimes cartoons dominate for a while or plains trains and automobiles, or certain people. 

I also have many dreams that always go back to exactly the same place. The circumstances and people and events in the dreams change. However, never the location it’s always the same park, the same street, the same city, the same shop. Often the same island with a long winding beach road that goes over a bridge, where there is a little guesthouse (it looks a bit like the house that Jack built), I seem to have something to do with running/owning this guesthouse. (I like this one a lot!). Waking up from these vivid dreams can leave me feeling a bit like I’m in two places at once on certain days and it can take awhile to sort one ‘reality’ out from another.

I’ve long stopped questioning whether or not these places are real. They are as real to me as my waking time/space continuum. It’s why I like to sleep more than most; I get to visit those other realities more regularly. Very often I wake up to an accompanying sound-track to the dream still tripping around in my head. These songs in themselves often reveal a focus of their own and usually over a few days one or even sometimes two of these start to dominate – a recurring message emerges that can’t be ignored.

So when the Rolling Stones, long having been one of my all time favourite bands (apart from always having believed Mick Jagger to be the sexiest man on the planet – I’m told by my friends there’s no accounting for my taste in men), woke me up in the middle of the night a few nights ago with this little snatch, I started to listen…………..

"There's no time to lose", I heard her say

Cash your dreams before they slip away

Dying all the time lose your dreams and you

Will lose your mind, ain't life unkind?

Written by Keith Richards and Brian Jones apparently for a girlfriend of Keith Richards Linda Keith, though there seems to be some debate about this.

Next came T’PAU, I heard the song on the radio a couple of hours later………………I’d never really paid attention to this song before, I remembered it only as an old 80’s classic……………….the lyric jumped out though immediately

‘Don't push too far
Your dreams are china in your hand
Don't wish too hard
Because they may come true
And you can't help them
You don't know what you might
Have set upon yourself’

So by now I was asking what it is exactly about my dreams, waking and sleeping I need to be paying attention to.

And then there was the Ally McBeal theme popping in for a little reality check

I’ve been down this road walkin’ the line
that’s painted by pride
and I have made mistakes in my life
that I just can’t hide’

Hmmm!!! Simon and Garfunkel helped eventually to clarify the message…………..

‘Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I looked around
for my possibilities
I was so hard to please……………………….

Hang on to your hopes, my friend
that’s an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
simply pretend
that you can build them again…………………..

Seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry……………………..’

Leonard Cohen added the final part of the message a few days later as he joined the others on my dreamscape soundtrack and I woke up to

‘You live your life as if it’s real, a thousand kisses deep’

As a backdrop to all of this recently I’ve been question many things in my life and as mentioned in previous motivationals the realisation that there are things that simply have to change and there are certain things I’ve long held so close to me I’ve had to let go of. As this letting go process has been unfolding in the last few months and culminating in recent weeks it’s created a vacuum, an empty space that has felt like nothingness or emptiness. It’s caused some panic and consternation as I’ve fought against that empty/nothing feeling in fear that there is not going to be anything else to replace what that which has been discarded.

It has felt in some ways like many of my illusions are of course self-created have been stripped away some of them rather suddenly and unexpectedly. It’s left me in a place trying frantically to fill the vacuum. To find ways to quickly stock up again on the non-essential things I’ve oft tried to tell myself are necessary for my reality to look and feel the way I want it to.

For me, the messages playing on the current soundtrack are simple and clear. Define what you want. Make sure it is what you want. Take stock, look at where the past and old way of thinking has brought you, move your pride and stubbornness out of the way to still be able to let go of more stuff in order to move forward. Remember that reality is a relative concept and self-created, most importantly it’s self-created, it’s only as real as you make it. 

There is a wonderful quote on the subject of reality I heard from a friend recently ‘I like reality – it tastes like bread’. Allow hopeful and realistic dreaming to lead you, there is a difference between wishful fantasising and purposeful ‘reality’ creation. Making sure you can have what it is you think you want. Lastly and most importantly the dreams and desires you have are important so follow them.

Please visit my website www.shoowah.com for more information about me and the therapies I offer as a Tarot, Rune, Hand Reading (Chirology), Spiritual Counsellor and Massage Therapist (including sensual massage, you can visit my sister site www.feralgrace.co.za for this) from Buccleuch Sandton and one day a week in Randburg. You can contact me on 072 298 7628 or by email info@shoowah.co.za