Saturday April 17, 2010
At church book sale, picked up a copy of
an Alan Watts book I didn’t own and have not (to my recollection) ever read:
The Two Hands of God. Once owned by B----. One epigraph is “Let not your
left hand know what your right hand doeth”.
One chapter is “The Cosmic Dance”.
Note my dream of last May 15th...
Dream fragment: I’m in the local
convenience store negotiating some sort of refund – I place a coin on the
counter, a loonie – the clerk (Middle Eastern) commends me for placing it with
the loonie facing up. Some people would
place it with the Queen facing up, which he would regard as an insult (for some
reason). Later in the dream I’m puzzling
out this cultural conundrum – is it that his people resent the Queen, or is her
image seen as a form of idolatry?
I think then I’m in the beer store and finding I don’t have enough
money. Then I am outside, taking a bus,
and I realize I don’t have my windbreaker, I must have left it at the
convenience store or at Penelope’s.
That’s why I’m on the bus, I’m going to Penelope’s. Except, I head too far north – perhaps I can
walk the distance – this is a fairly “downtown” looking stretch of street with
stores and illuminated signs. The bus
turns left at the top of it. I recognize
this part of the city (St. Clair) from other dreams I’ve had where I walked
even further north. (My “city wandering”
dreams often recollect each other in this way – a dream that I would not have
ever recalled waking I remember vaguely while in another dream.) In this case the bus has stopped near a
cul-de-sac at the end of which is a Catholic Church – the signs outside
indicate to me that this is a liberal Catholic Church – advertising a
discussion of various religious poets including Milton. Then I am aware somehow
that there will be a sacred dance event there, and in ancient sacred dance, the
dancer would move as if each side of their body was independent of the other –
I picture a dancer with arms upraised demonstrating this –
& this is where
the expression “Let not the right hand know what the left hand doing” actually
originates.
