dreaming of shi(f)t
creative plungers, agency, & catharsis
I keep dreaming of shit.
A few scenes from the psychic depths over the past couple months: trying to find a toilet, heating up a pot of diarrhea to drink, my cat shitting outside, a sewage truck seeping, full of community shit. I haven’t had many reoccurring dreams that I remember, so I’ve been curious about the emergence of this theme.
In one of my classes this semester, we’ve embarked on an experiment in social dreaming, movement improvisation, and collective imagination. It’s invited me to think in symbols and let non-linear thought patterns spool from my mind. Take the pressure off from figuring something out. Give space and time for patterns and meaning to emerge.
So I’m dreaming of shit… It’s got me thinking about creative power, tapping into the bowels, making a mess, releasing what is no longer needed, getting it ouuuutttt. When I feel plugged up (creatively), thoughts get stuck in loops, circling like there’s nowhere to go. Like a car spinning its wheels in mud.
It’s taken quite a few dreams about shit to remember that I named this newsletter IN DEEP SHIFT. I laugh out loud at my prophecy. Clearly, I’ve been asking for this all along. I love it when I remember. May the forgetting be generative, loose, and free.
I notice a desire in myself to wrap things up in a bow and be coherent. This sometimes leads to a beautiful piece of writing or dance, but often ends up clogging creative flow, inflating the ego, or otherwise getting my panties in a bunch. Right now, I’m letting myself speak and write in bullet points (or as a friend and cohort member said recently, talking in drafts), and it feels really good. What are my creative plungers? What does pouring draino (or a less eco-violent alternative) feel like in my body?
Asking for something, expressing a need is really vulnerable. Showing your sadness, depression, uncertainty, or anxiety is really vulnerable. This can all feel quite dangerous in a culture where any perceived deficiency is cast as a burden. Sometimes a smile is a mask or a shield, and that is okay to use it as such. Notice your embodied armor; you get to decide when and with whom to use it. Give thanks to those who soften or remove their armor in your presence. Cherish the spaces and people who receive you as you shed parts of your own armor. Take a deep breath and notice if you feel a bit lighter, softer or a little less pressure, less rigid.
Now is the time. It is painful to feel that your life is just beyond your reach, in another place or another time, or with different people. To feel that the self I want to be is just on the other side of the workshop, training, degree, or commitment to a new morning routine– this is a deep fracture that cuts me off from a sense of knowing and agency. Now is the time can feel like urgency when coming from a place of grasping, but it can also feel like a warm satisfied belly with two feet firmly in the ground, toes wiggling as you catch the wink of a friend or lover. Now is the time to do the thing, to be in love, to join the protest, to take a nap, to initiate the convo, to get the tattoo, to make a new friend, to say yes, to say no.
There are more layers, more depth, more oomph in the body, in this life, in the cafe, in the grocery store, in the woods. Stay just a moment longer. Linger with a question, notice something really small. Notice how you feel, what you hear, what you see that might not be visible.
A dear friend-lover told me recently that during her workday she rewatched an old video of me dancing in a parking lot with yellow pants from last May. Hearing her talk about it, it brought to mind mirror neurons which I’ve more recently learned about. Mirror neurons1 are a class of neurons that are activated when one observes someone else doing an action. I remember that day, that dance, and have myself watched it a dozen times. Today I may not have the time or energy or access to run around in a parking lot, but sitting here, I can not only bring it to mind but the body can remember and feel something. How might we share expressions of grief, joy, and catharsis with one another, regardless of whether or not we are doing/feeling the exact same thing?
Is a dance some kind of excrement? Something the body needs to release? Ephemeral, in the moment, never to be exactly repeated? Something to offer to the earth? When does it nourish, compost, soil, or poison?
I hope a field of grass or some warm concrete calls to you for a dance.
May we move through the shit, let the shit move through the body, this body, the collective body. May it be loud and satisfying.
em
omgg I've been dealing with so much dog and kid poop lately... i really appreciate this fresh look at all the shit ❣️
Reminds me of when I fell asleep on the toilet of the Amtrak train last weekend. Diarrhea + Melatonin is a weirrrdd combo