Reflection on "green girl dreams Mountains" by Marilyn Dumont

Camping on the prairie by Paul Kane
Scene shows the artist with a Metis guide en route to the Buffalo Hunt

I read the unseen. Her eyes are the milk of a hollow cow, branding the misjudged beauty of a new and timely pride in the human self in all its fascinating breadth. Her words are a first kiss, and the smile afterwords, even if the kiss was a little sour.

This is my first read into Marilyn Dumont's work. A Cree/Metis poet, who is widely celebrated as a must-read in contemporary Canadian literature. Her words are bittersweet, and do not say too much. She uses language for its brevity and with singular pausing, announces the mystic inclination to wonder with a sad grace. One can easily and cathartically empty their mind of doubt when reading page after page of brilliant humility. Her self-knowledge is evident as she prints words into the mind of a page with the delicate necessity of breath.

I read this book from cover to cover in one sitting as welcomingly as opening my door to a new friend. Now, I'm looking forward to welcoming, "that tongued belonging" her latest work.

I heard of Marilyn Dumont through Black Coffee Poet, who interviewed her for Indigenous Sovereignty Week

_________

Entering the distant cottage, there is tranquility. Mindful, the air is welcoming. It is a refuge for Aboriginal intellectuals. A group of women converse softly over tea as I wander the grounds. In the backyard, a lively, well-kept garden is lush with Canadian summer vegetables and medicinal herbs. The light hangs slowly from the deep, curling cloudscapes in the wide, Midwestern expanse. 

Battle of Duck Lake

Overlooking the property hill, a bustling cruelty unearths the dry heave crime of migratory blindness, as settler compunction fills the writhing horizon with a crooked smile. Endless houses, misshapen and identical, curve along the wasted prairie hills, and there is only a dim emanation of life. As I stare into the perfectly reflecting window of the cottage, an aural wisdom speaks in silence, carrying my body to the comfort of our Mother’s home: land.

________

Holy Rope

Holy rope glean
           Setting off the executioner’s raffle
                     In a dream state, turning the mind
                                To a pentatonic, indigenous scale
                                To the antique buzz in our lonely natural surroundings
                                             That prepares a decadent life

Amidst the misty hilltop laughter

                                       That echoes in the contemplative breath on high

Rock Marooned on the Margins of Plains and Desert

Pastures in the Otztal by Albin Egger-Lienz

On a high plateau, a full-on butte in the open prairies meeting with the seemingly infinite sands of the painted desert. Upon the head of the butte I am rock marooned with a close friend, an older lady, maybe my stepmother. There are three children with us, two are dark-skinned, the other a whole lot paler. The pale-skinned child has two horns. She runs like a heated ram from within the center of the butte which is quaintly fitted with a bustling steam of desert dust kicked up into the frighteningly high altitude air by a pen of bison and bull. My stepmother takes one of the more complacent, darker skinned children up into her arms and edges against the end of the butte. The vertigo takes hold of the wide midwestern tip of the desert land on this near-impossible butte formation's unlikely vertical stretch towards the Earth's atmosphere. Suddenly, she finds a humongous cylindrical metal pole bending slightly from just under the butte edge to the floor of the desert in the rest of the butte-filled horizon. There is some leftover rope nearby on the ground of the butte, remnants of the misplaced material culture of ranching. I follow my stepmother who steps off the edge of the butte, sliding downwards, she with two of the children. I have tamed the half bull, half child enough to wrap her in my arms for the descent, my stomach in my chest.

Death of a Beloved Feline

Women with the Cat by Renato Rodyner

1^st Dream

A cold, dark wintry night. I look out my screen window out to a ground level balcony. Consciously, I wanted to see a cat because, as memory would have it, it resembled the balcony of my first apartment. There were a couple of cats around that would visit. I open the window, there is snow all over. There is a shadow of a cat bouncing around. I let the cat in. It huddled next to the heater with its back facing me. I realized right away it was Max, my cat who had passed away a couple of weeks already. As I went down to pet him, he hopped away. I wake.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

2^nd Dream

An open field, prairie setting. Windy, tall grass. Tall fields of wheat, as it appeared, being blown by the wind. Very warm, windy prairie day. No rolling hills, all flat. In some bungalow, rickety, wood house, my mother is there. I speak a lot of Cantonese with her in the dream. I felt something brushing at my ankle and shin, something that I instantly thought was a cat. To my pleasant surprise, I look down and it was exactly the image of Max, his coloration, his distinctive markings on his forehead…his chest. I actually went down and interacted, he let me pet him, and he leaned into my leg very firmly. He went on his back, exposing his white stomach. He is emphatically friendly, in life he was temperamental, though in the dream he is the opposite. There is no voice, I can’t hear his voice. I think he opens his mouth, but I couldn’t hear a meow, I only felt his warmth and the way he feels in my arms; his size and weight. I have his face in my arms, and spoke to my mother in Cantonese that my cat had come back to life. Then I looked at Max, then I told him I would call his Daddy, and have him come out and visit. His Dad would be so pleased to have his best friend back. I kissed Max between the nose and forehead and woke. When I woke up, I looked outside and it was a really windy day. It turned out to be a very warm day too.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

3^rd Dream

Unknown, hazy location. Cloudy, foggy, blurry, with a glow. It was quite quick. I’ve always been thinking about Max in my waking days these past few weeks. I think my consciousness sinks into my dreams, and works with my subconscious in creating Max right away. So Max was in my dreams, but he appeared to be more silvery, more angelic with a glow around him. He is really animated, but in the most friendly way. In life, he was very animated but in a somewhat aggressive way. So, in the dream, his Dad was in the dream, squatted on the ground. Max crawled and stretched up to his right thigh, and I was kneeling behind the Dad on his left shoulder, admiring Max and wondering why he was so wise, glowing and silver, I reached out to Max and he put his right paw on me and his left paw on his Dad’s knee. I picked Max up and I whispered to him “how wise and angel-like you are.” I woke.

Monday, October 3, 2011

These dreams make me question a lot about conscious versus subconscious. What is dream and what is lucid, and what is passive observation within your sleep state. Having these dreams of Max solidifies my own personal insight into the subconscious as being a data-bank which stores our so-called real-life experiences and in the dreams, our subconscious supplies us with the tools to be lucid because it is a reference point. Sometimes, our dreams are random and chaotic and it doesn’t make any sense, and it’s some part of the brain working that I don’t know how to call. When I find in my “lucid” dreams, I find when I wake up that “it makes sense” that my subconscious is a memory bank and of course I would be lucid in those situations when those situations have to do with my cat. I like to entertain the mystery that Max is somehow still with me communicating to me through my lucid dreams of him. I can move on with that. I can never accept his death, but I can move on because I am dreaming of him.