In my little garden, out back, I’ve been attempting to save the lawn. Aside from the trees that were planted some years ago, a couple of David Austin roses, and a fairly abundant array of spring bulbs, the back garden has largely been left for my son to kick a ball around.
It’s the way it should be. He won’t be young forever and it wouldn’t take long to establish some flowerbeds, and while he grows the trees do too.
It’s all good, except for the pummelling the lawn has gotten and to be honest I’ve largely neglected it. There are several bare patches, notably where the goalkeeper stands, and a clear desire path that leads from the house to the football net. Wembley it ain’t. But at his age, anything it possible in the youthful imagination.
This year I decided to repair a few areas where the ball doesn’t often go; one patch behind two apple trees, and another where I recently planted out a bunch of hostas my dad gave me. This is the shaded corner I often read and record my poems.
I’ve scarified, I’ve added topsoil, and I’ve scattered seeds and to my great astonishment, within a week or so, these areas are starting to regain life. In the process of doing this, I’ve begun to notice how varied the plant life is in the lawn. I don’t pull out the so-called weeds, so plants like the dandelion are indeed thriving, there are daisies and buttercups too. I also noticed another plant I didn’t recognise, low lying, vibrant, almost elongated heart-shaped leaves. The more I looked the more I saw of this mystery plant.
Taking a few photos and turning both to google and plants books I have, some which came from my dad and others from random secondhand bookstores, I have deduced that this plant is Prunella Vulgaris, Otherwise known as Selfheal.
Well, I can tell you, I’d never heard of Selfheal before. Not as a plant anyway. Now it would be easy to take this discovery literally. “There’s a plant in my garden called Selfheal probably ended up there due to the birds”. There. Done. Move on.
But the presence of Selfheal is not lost on me. Seen through to the image itself it is one of marvellous potential. It invites me to look closer. To see its low-lying habit, close to the earth. How it spreads and reaches, sideways and upward. How its leaves are green and, as mentioned, heart-shaped. No, less so heart-shaped, more so shield-shaped. Now we’re getting somewhere. A green shield, called Selfheal.
The mystery arrival of Selfheal is serendipitously celebrated. I have begun reading Ed Ticks book Soul Medicine, Healing through Dream Incubation, Visions, Oracles and Pilgrimage.
Ed has worked extensively with returning soldiers, and on his own personal journey too, through pilgrimages to Greece, notably Poros, spiritual home of Poseidon.
When it comes to dreams I’ve been recording my own these past years. It was an action I took after studying with Michael Meade. What’s interesting about this process is that I rarely used to remember my dreams. I’d wake up, either believing I’d not dreamed, or that upon waking the tiny fragments of Dreamtime would evaporate almost instantly, with me desperately scrabbling to hold on to them. It is frustrating to say the least to lose an important dream, but with increased dedicated and intention, including physical placing a pen and pad next to my bed, I have noticed how my dreams have become less able to escape. They either stick around upon waking, or, like this morning suddenly reappear in my psyche.
Last night I had three dreams that I can recall. They are tiny moments of no doubt larger stories. But the sections I remember I know hold significance.
The first I was just a lad hanging around with a group of other mates, it was night and therefore dark, and we came across another group of boys coming up the path towards us. The situation unraveled fast. We were set upon by this unknown group. Thinking fast I managed to escape down a driveway, belly to floor, moving at pace. But alas I was spotted and that’s the last I remember. I always note the core emotion experienced in my dreams. This dream felt threatening.
I realise in writing this down this morning that I have had a version of this dream before, one that took place in a park at night. Taking things literally the dream loses all its potency. Taken imagistically, however, I am noticing that it could represent the tension spoken of in myth when a part of ourselves meets another, unrecognisable, foreign, part of ourselves.
In the second dream all I can remember was that my wife and I had decided to send our son to a school in France. I can tell you that our boy is never being ‘sent’ anyway, least of all to a foreign country for school. But again, that would be to completely lose the energy in the dream. I see it more as an image of me learning a foreign subject. Soul, Dream images, Daimon, Myth. All foreign subjects written in a foreign tongue.
And the third dream, well, this one was odd because I was drinking a very specific drink, 1% ABV beer made from Olives and I was in a cavernous pub, multiple floors, big rooms, but none of the lower drinking rooms had anybody in, it seems all the punters were in the higher floors.
Well, I couldn’t resist googling Olive beer and it seems to be pretty rare, though some folks in Spain are brewing it. So what does this dream mean for me? I’ll sit with this a little longer. Incubate it.
But here already we have so many metaphors, so many images: Selfheal, dreams of foreign teachings, of hostility and hospitality, and of Olives, the fruit of ancient stories, of Athena herself. That’s a “Curious Brew” to borrow a phrase.
Did you dream last night?