Dream arts arise from a group process orchestrated by Victoria Rabinowe in which we share and discuss a dream, apply a theme to it and assemble a three-dimensional structure or a book. Next, we write from questions, finding answers in the images we have collaged, painted, drawn, and/or constructed. Finally, we present our creations and read our stories.

The short period we have to accomplish all this forces us into a state of creative and intuitive free flow. There is no time to stop and think. We mine our psyches, unearthing raw material galore, the stuff of paintings, poems and personal evolution.

Ancient Game of Chance

Dreams wear all the passengers on the bus.
Fools, benefactors, murderers,
goddesses, painters, victims,
poets, gardeners, healers,
house cleaners, kings, ecstatics,
dead fathers, judges, lovers,
clothe their shifting forms in knowing.
Eagles, deer, wild horses, ants, mountains,
deserts, storms, fire in forgotten basements,
willow branches reflecting,
sacred shrines,
war zones running with blood,
cloak their meanings with my nights.

Dreams smell of old Chinese boxes' secret drawers,
childhood attics, forbidden memories,
dust motes dancing silent afternoons,
gas stations, engine grease, dirty rags, of dishwashing,
strawberries picked hot in June, airplane air,
tears at my mother's funeral,
salt tides and rocks with sea anemones,
sticky kisses in a teenage Buick.

Dreams voice new directions.
Clean up that mess.
Give away dull clothes.

Pick up your sketchbook, talk and laugh with friends.
Look, the surf swells huge. Dive in now.
Stop denying what means most. Water those trees you planted.
Don't park in front of the temple door.

Dreams eat unawareness, gnaw windows to lucidity,
dissolve barriers to entering many tiered paintings.
They feast on spiraling shells woven by moonlight and tides.

Held in living waters of the Dream Maker,
washed,
a seed in the sea afloat
I crack open into green corn sprouts.

Dreams make a living driving me to the mountain.
Their headlights become sprinklers
watering flowering almond trees.
They accomplish their job
sweeping floors, scrubbing toilets,
building futures.

I can recognize where I'm going,
share ceremonial prayers,
take the quickest path.
I am a great old resort where people learn
to perform a series of dazzling leaps,
gypsy-like, toward the ceiling.

Dreams dream that the actor hands me sweet dates.
Eating, I begin to fly.
They know dead habits have been burnt.
I wind red beads around a young girl's brow,
inhale blue bloom of hyacinth
smelling of sex and warm wine.