Back in January 2020, near the dark moon, I had a dream. It was a very meta experience. In the dream, I was in bed asleep and was awakened by a large albino white pelican squawking from atop my nightstand. When I “woke up” inside the dream and heard the pelican I was startled with fear but also frustrated that my sleep had been disturbed. The pelican gestured with his bill and wing toward something right in front of me. I looked directly ahead of me, toward the ceiling as I was still lying down. I saw a frayed white feather from the pelican float down toward me. I reached up with my left hand and grasped it.
When I did, the dream transformed and I was in a transportation hub that looked like a private air base. Once inside the air base, I was looking for my flight. I took just two steps in the air base and found myself inside a lounge. The lounge had very large almost floor to ceiling windows. Through the lounge windows, I could see the main concourse. I could also see into the surrounding hangers. There were very few people walking through the concourse. Nearly everyone was with me in this very strange lounge. There seemed to be at least 50 people in the lounge. Most people were on their smartphones. It felt odd that we were all waiting in the same lounge and that no one else was on the concourse, but I quickly let that thought go as I realized that we are all going to the same place.
I observed the lounge and the people in it for what felt like several seconds inside the dream. When I turned my gaze to the window in front of me overlooking one of the hangers, I saw a large group of people passing through in front of an aircraft. They were not boarding or deboarding the aircraft. I wondered as they walked, trying to figure out where they’d come from and where they were going. I noticed their appearance. They were incredibly fair-skinned and appeared to be deeply saddened. Their grief and pain hovered over them during their deeply silent passing through the aircraft hanger. The people wore an odd combination of white floor-length robes and orange high visibility traffic vests. As the people passed, I heard music from the Lord of the Ring soundtrack (Evenstar from the Two Towers).
After noting the people for several moments, while they were still passing by on the other side of the glass, I looked up to the wall above the window which contained several signs. The one that I could see clearly was a no-exit sign. When I looked more closely at the scene unfolding before me, I realized that the displaced and grieving people were walking through the hanger toward the open hanger door in the west. The hanger door was open to the runway and I could see the setting sun in the distance directly in line with the hanger door. It looked like one of the final scenes from the season 4 finale of Z-Nation where Lt. Roberta Warren plans to fly off to save the world.
In a moment, I realize that this passage before me is important and very likely ominous. I feel in my bones that we are witnessing the end of an era or some other major potentially negative transition. Everything suddenly feels dire. I prepare to take a photo in order to document the moment and carry it forward to create change. While inside the dream I actually do not realize that I’m dreaming but I know that the message has to be carried forward. As I’m about to take the photo, I notice that everyone else in the dream stands to take a selfie with the omen unfolding before us as the backdrop. The other people in the room somehow don’t get how foreboding the situation is. After I took the photo and worried about the future, I woke up.
This dream had a lot of small but interesting moving pieces. Here are a few of my thoughts about this disconcerting ride:
I was born and raised within a stone’s throw of the Atlantic coast and never in my life have I dreamed of a pelican, albino or otherwise. After doing a little research on pelican symbolism, apparently pelicans are sometimes associated with taking social responsibility. This tracks for me because this dream solidified my sense that we are watching our own destruction unfold like Saturday night at the movies, too wonderstruck and/or amused (and willfully ignorant) to do what we need to do about it collectively. The dream felt like a call to wake up, pay attention, and do something.
Television and cinematic universes are connected to the collective unconscious and they can communicate as much to an open psyche as any ancient legend, myth, or symbolism. Both the Lord of the Rings and Z-Nation universes provided much needed context within this dream. Movement of the people into the west, the need to valiantly fly toward hope for a better future, and the imperative to get our hands dirty to make it happen were all shorthanded in this dream via movies and TV shows that I’ve seen.
Directly related to my previous point, I decided to learn a little more about the Evenstar’s lore inside and outside of the Lord of the Rings universe. In the LOTR movie universe, the Evenstar has many emanations. It is Evenstar is Arwen, a necklace, and a song. As a song, it plays while Elrond is speaking of leaving Middle Earth to retire to the Undying Lands in the west. Outside of the movie but still in the LOTR lore, the Evenstar is an elfstone designed to show what is withered and decaying as young and full of life once again. As I was making heads or tails of this dream, I took the Evenstar music that was playing in the dream to mean that there is hope but if we want more than appearance of things getting better, we have to wake up and make intentional and meaningful changes.
Outside of the LOTR cinematic and literary lore, Evenstar is short for Evening Star which is the planet Venus. As the evening star, she appears bright in the sky shortly after the sun sets, only second in brightness to the moon. Venus symbolism includes themes of brightness and reflection. Given the white robes and high visibility vests, I get the sense that someone wanted me to pay attention.
Lastly, and perhaps ironically, the revolution will not be televised because we won’t be holding cameras and selfie sticks when we crack this thing. We’ll instead be holding dirt with dirty hands where dirt means new strategies and resources, better systems and infrastructure that take planetary and environmental needs to seriously, a healthy sense of personal responsibility for how this hot mess of a movie turns out, and each other…we’ll be holding each other, moving through the mess of it together.
Wandering Woman Wondering 