Economy & ecology, home and heart

I’ve been a reader of Satish Kumar’s blog for a while now, and the current situation has reminded me of a post from last year, in which he examined “the relationship between Economy and Ecology. Just like Nature and Nativity, Economy and Ecology come from the same Greek root – oikos meaning home, nomos meaning management, and logos meaning knowledge”.

The level of related meaning suggests that we cannot manage our homes without some degree of understanding – both what we are doing within it, and how it impacts on the external elements with which it – and we – come into contact.

In a period of turmoil – in environmental, social and religious terms as well as purely financial - it feels increasingly as though we are attempting to manage a runaway train, with no understanding of the message that we are out of control. Rather than attempting to stop the train, we are throwing more track down in front of it, in a cartoon-like display of frantic fire-fighting. Will we realise we’ve gone over the cliff when it’s too late to turn back, when we have the awful moment of realisation that the world has dropped out from beneath our feet and we’re running on thin air, and there’s nothing more to do but face the camera with a rueful shrug and plummet into the abyss? Or will we recognise that we need to make some fundamental changes to what we are doing to address the situation, and save ourselves?

Have we mortgaged our future for a cheap rush of consumer satisfaction? It seems increasingly obvious that the current economic model is not sustainable: the jenga tower of resold debt and speculative derivative gambling is tumbling, resources are starting to run low, and the negative, destructive impacts of our energy addiction is poisoning our children. Here in the developed world, we live in a bloated and - both financially and morally -bankrupt society, and there is little if no recognition at government level, nor amongst senior business, financial and institutional figures, that there is a need for fundamental change.

Greed, growth and increased consumption are not clever evolutionary or economic steps, nor do we have some sort of fundamental, inherent right to consume FMCGs and processed food at the current astonishing rate.  Rights are not inherent at birth, nor are they a fact of existence. Rights come into existence as a result of human interactions and agreements, and are codified and given weight by the guarantees and sanctions of legislation. The UN Convention on Human Rights, the over-arching text on which most states and individuals would concur in terms of civil and political rights attempts to guarantee such basics as rights to self-determination, equality, privacy, liberty, freedom of thought, movement expression and association. The later Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights for individuals and nations include rights of entitlement to wages that support a basic standard of living, equal pay and opportunities, and rights to own, trade and dispose of property freely, not to be deprived of means of subsistence. Considering those terms, it is perhaps unsurprising that this Covenant has never been ratified: it would present a major barrier in the exploitation of third world labour and resources for the greedy developed world. It is interesting to note, though, that nowhere in these two declarations is there any mention of a right of consumption. It is also interesting to note that in certain developed countries, some of these basic civil and political rights are being eroded. Our freedom is not measured by how much we are able to consume, it is measured in terms of those rights. As we start to lose rights in terms of privacy, freedom of thought, movement, expression and association, increased ability to consume is inadequate compensation.

There are those who would argue that, from an evolutionary perspective, survival of the fittest is defined by those who can acquire, secure and consume the most resources. It is ‘natural’ to be competitive, and it is therefore ‘right’ to strive for a continual increase in the amount we can acquire, secure and consume. In a competitive world, with an exploding population, it is ‘right’ and ‘natural’ that those who do not have the economic power to acquire, secure and consume resources should fail. Even though they never get the opportunity to do so? Are we really no more than acquisitive hungry monkeys? Or, do we have these highly developed pre-frontal lobes that allow us to reason, to take control of our impulses and wants and self-regulate so that we take and use what we need, rather than what we want? Is it a clever evolutionary step to strip our territory of all the resources that can sustan us, or is it more sensible to manage our own behaviour and resources to secure our long-term genetic survival?  Is it a clever evolutionary step to gorge ourselves on the oversupply of convenience foods stuffed with chemical additives, sugars, salts and starches which we know have negative long-term health impacts, or should we move away from these back to a simpler, slower, whole-food approach to nutrition that is less ruinous to our health and to the environment, that requires less intensive farming and minimal processing, that requires a greater degree of integration and understanding between consumer and producer? Is it a clever evolutionary step to create vast social divisions, insurmoutable levels of exclusion and hatred, and then hope that disease, famine and war will address the resultant over-population problems, or is it more sensible to work to implement social, cultural and reproductive rights for all women, acting on the evidence from the developed world that improving social conditions, economic opportunities, education and life expectancy and reducing infant mortality actually lowers birth rates to sustainable levels?

I would argue that a more co-operative model is a fitter way to survive, a recognition that we are all a part of the same tribe, and that we are all in the same boat – we sail the seas of space on the same planetary vessel, and if it founders, we all go down with it. In that scenario, it won’t matter how many millions of dollars you have in your bank: it’s not the sort of crisis that you can buy your way out of. By that token, we should start to distance ourselves from the current financial/economic model and adopt a more egalitarian, compassionate, inclusive and sustainable approach to the overall management of our home – this planet.

What does this mean? I think that this means, by and large, that our governments should stop trying to prop up the failing banks and businesses that got us into this mess in the first place, and focus their efforts on stimulating areas of the economy that will reap long-term benefits. Yes, I think more banks should go to the wall, and yes, I think that, for example, at least one of the big car manufacturers should be allowed to fold rather than be propped up artificially with taxpayers money. To do so would be consistent, after all, with the capitalistic proposition put forward by Adam Smith, and it would be consistent with the evolutionary model as well – survival of the fittest, not survival of the fattest.

And yes, I do appreciate the impact that this would have on countless individuals, those employed directly by the collapsed entities AND those employed in both vertically and horizontally integrated businesses. I don’t deny that such a measure would be drastic and painful in the short term, but where there is good historical evidence that suggests recessions and depressions trigger massive social change (Industrial Revolution, Great Depression & FDR), and we recognise that there is a need for vast social change, it might be prudent to take the pain and let it happen.

I read an article somewhere recently (and I apologise for not being able to give the appropriate credits) where someone said that they found it hard to feel sorry for Chinese workers losing their jobs (because the demand for Chinese manufactured goods has gone through the floor) when there was so much unemployment and hardship caused locally by the availability of cheap Chinese imports. I found this attitude hard to comprehend. Surely, a more appropriate and compassionate response is one borne out of understanding such hardships and recognising them as a bond that links us, a shared experience of our common humanity, rather than a vengeful satisfaction that they should suffer too? I think the same goes for all the big manufacturing entities currently experiencing pain. Those of us involved in the ‘green’ movement should not sit back and think that these individuals are suffering a well-deserved come-uppance for their involvement in an unhealthy industry. Instead, there should be compassion and understanding for a plight any one of us could experience – the pain of rejection, the fear of loss, the dread of being unable to feed and clothe and shelter one’s family.

The Chinese worker in question still had an ancestral pig farm in the grim remote province of Sichuan to fall back on – it would make no money, but it would feed him and his family. Such options are not available to all those in the urban, industrialised developed world, who have lost contact with rural roots, nor is the land available to all who might want it.  The puts an onerous requirement on us to address and mitigate the suffering that allowing the current model to fall away would generate. We could and should extend the hand of mutual aid to those who might otherwise fall by the wayside, recognising a wider familial and tribal boundary than we have done before. We should look to even out the peaks and troughs of the haves and have-nots to a more equal, balanced stability. And we should shift our stimulus activities into businesses, enterprises and initiatives that are more people-intensive than resource-intensive, that are labour-using rather than labour-saving, that work to propagate and nurture the earth that propagates and nurtures us, rather than stripping it of everything that gives it value.

We should make sure our inquisitive, acquisitive brains start to work towards constructive, sustainable solutions to the current crisis, rather than just blindly laying more track in front of the runaway train of consumption we’re riding into the abyss. What do you want to do?

(photo credits: greek villa, David Geddes (Picasa). Bedu Woman and child, Hugo (Flickr). Tree – Vista Sample)

Leila needs . . .

Now here’s a fun little meme, and one that proves to me that you can hocum yourself with just about anything – i.e. you see what you want to see, and the simplest and broadest sets of data can set you off on an odd mental trail that helps you realise some insights into yourself and your behaviour. Thus with fortune-telling . . . you pick the relevant data and apply it to yourself, and ignore the rest!

Marina over at Pecked by Ducks ran this a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I’d pick it up and play with it a while. It’s simple and fun. Go to google, type in ‘<your name> needs’ and search. What do the needs that are listed mean to you?

Here’s what I got:

Leila needs to play her wild card …

Leila needs to pay attention to the little details …

Leila needs a strong motive …

Leila needs a friend …

Leila needs to learn some interview skills …

Leila needs a scientist ….

Leila needs vodka ….

Leila needs something to fill in the gap …

Leila needs to be the princess ….

Leila needs a role model ….

Leila needs to do her homework …

Leila needs to be more aggressive ….

 

What does this set of needs tell me about myself? Why pick these out as relevant over any others? Some, simply, were funny (Leila needs a vodka, for example, appealed purely because after a weekend of hedonistic enjoyment, reality isn’t as much fun and I could use something to numb the impact )

Other things speak to me on a deeper level. For example, the idea of needing a role model, of being more aggressive and of doing my homework resonate in terms of my textile art – I need to find someone successful in the same/similar field, with a similar business model to my own, and understand how it is that they are successful and what I can learn from them to help me on my way. I need to do my homework – understand what the market wants, needs & expects in more detail and focus my work towards meeting that a little more in order to trigger some orders, rather than pleasing myself at almost every turn, and hoping that enough like-minded people react in the same way, and with sufficient strength, to place orders and commissions with me. And I need to be more aggressive in my marketing, in following through and following up on contacts, at self-publicity when the occasion presents – for example, I need to be a bit more confident in talking about my work to random people and in dishing out business cards at every available opportunity . . .

Other areas are those of self-recognition – I need a friend is less about needing and making new friends, and more about recognising that I am not ‘an Ilande, entire and whole of myself’ – I need my friends (and my family) to support and understand me, and I need to give them that same support and understanding – mutual aid and benefit. And understanding that at times I do need to be the ‘princess’, to be at the centre of things, and to get recognition and reward for the things I do, for my achievements, large and small. This includes recognising them in myself, and acknowledging them internally, as well as the external validations and lauds of others. Needing a strong motive is clear. If I don’t have one, I don’t move, and I think I’ve learned the lesson well enough over the years that there’s a strong distinction between ‘want’ and ‘need’, and also that in the list of ‘things I’d like to do’, there always has to be some sort of prioritisation, and I need to examine my motivation for wanting to do these apparently incompatible activities, understand the drive, and work out how to either realise it (given sufficiently strong motives) or to translate that need into something that is more compatible with my current lifestyle, commitments and routines.

The other needs all relate to my writing. I need to play a wild card in the sense that I must dig deeper and further into the ideas and sweet-spot areas that spark my muse, to try to let go of my more rational, controlling self and drop the barriers of fear etc that stop me going too far into my nightmares and downloading them into my stories. I’m not talking about any sort of catharsis here, any sort of personal therapy or resolution, just to be more in touch with the creatures of my deep imagination and to let them out into the stories – where it’s probably a safer environment for them to explore the limits and boundaries of their capability. To do so does not endow them with any special power to escape and become real.  Interviewing skills I need in relation to my characters, to get more sense of who they are and what they want, and how that interacts with and drives on the conflicts inherent to the story set-up – that will bring more depth into my writing, as will paying more attention to the little details of setting and grammar and sentence structure. The scientist is the part that applies method, coherence and structure over the top of the stories, that changes them from well-written but pointless sketches into fully-fledged and marketable stories, and Holly’s course is working on that side.

Hmmmm.

This came out much more in depth than I thought it would - a simple and fun meme has triggered a number of thoughts and recognitions about myself and my work that I need to keep in mind. As such, a useful exercise!

Serpent of Colchis – edits finished!

I finished the edits for Serpent of Colchis on Friday night last week, and have taken a little time out to reflect on the process and understand what went well and what could be improved for the next time . . . I’ve got a fair bit of editing to get through this year!

Using Holly Lisle’s One-Pass method works an absolute treat for me – I’ve used it before and I’ll carry on using it in future. The critical element is to capture the essence of the story – its themes, major and minor plotlines and the main character arcs, and to use these as a guide for the whole edit process. This works well for me, because I start with the big idea and translate that into a story, so I usually have that information to hand. In this instance, it was a little different, because working with an existing narrative, with myth and legend, sets challenges of its own.

For example, it surprised me how little actual resolution I felt in the 3 separate myths I pulled together (all involving the same group of characters) and how little relation there seemed to be, when the story is taken as a whole, between one and the next. It makes me wonder if, from a historical perspective, these three narratives really did involve the same group, or if time and the convenience of labelling/branding has meant that the same names from one have been applied to others, to depict certain types of character rather than individuals? From a writing perspective, the challenge was less to resolve that question and more to develop a coherent arc across the entire set to unify them and deliver a satisfying, complete story, rather than staying faithful to the original detail.

With the parameters set in such broad terms, the second phase, the manuscript slog, went quite quickly. In retrospect, I think I could have spent more time. Using the conceptual information as a guideline, an astonishing amount of extraneous detail got chopped out of the story, and I started to notice a number of lazy writing habits creeping in – too much description, too much internal narrative outlining either what had just happened, or what was about to happen, and WAY too many adverbs. The crime of too much ‘tell’ and not enough ’show’ is one thing – and relatively easy to shift narrative perspective to make these passages active – i.e. contributing to the development of the plot conflicts/resolutions WHILST developing the characters/interactions, instead of stopping everything to explain it all to the reader. It should all be clear from the story, it shouldn’t need additional explanation (and if it does, then this needs to play out through the action, not as an adjunct to it).

I’ve never really understood the big deal with adverbs until this novel. But here, where I’m working with a slapdash Nanowrimo draft, the poisonous nature of the little devils has become apparent to me. It’s lazy, for one thing – write ’speak softly’ – what does that mean? A whisper, a murmur, a low voiced mutter, a mumble? Each one of those, and I could probably come up with a lot more, means the same as ’speak softly’, but each is much more precise in meaning and conveys a specific atmosphere. Write ’speak softly’ and I need to qualify it with an explanation that detracts from the story, because it diverts the reader’s awareness from ‘the story’ to ‘the author’ sitting at his/her elbow muttering. Distracting, and annoying. AND, where adverbs lurk, so too creep in all those passive verbs, the lazy was/had/were axis of evil – immediate slowers-down of action and distancers, to break up the story and take away its dynamism.  These are bad habits I need to break. It will be difficult to do so, because the writing and editing parts of my brain are distinct, and when I’m throwing words at a first draft, I don’t know that I want to be worrying about words to that extent. BUT, if I can train myself out of it, then I win myself a huge saving at the edit stage. I’ll be giving it a try in my next few expeditions into short stories . . .

The concept gave me a firm foundation on which to judge what to keep, what to throw, and what needed to change, and I am happy that the changes I have made have ironed out a stack of inconsistencies, and made the story overall much tighter, much cleaner, and hopefully more satisfying from a reader perspective. I’ll have to wait for the comments from its first readers before I know how far I’ve succeeded on that front. There are a number of areas I’m still a little anxious about, purely because I pushed myself way out of my comfort zone with this one so I’m feeling exposed in all sorts of areas.

Some of the science parts I know are shaky, because science was never my subject – to me, the dividing line between science and magic has always been pretty slim, and some of it is as much about faith as any belief in a deity or other supernatural being . . . but as this is soft SF rather than hard, I’m hoping that it’s credible enough for the genre and this story. Neither of the main characters are conventionally heroic, so I’m concerned whether or not they will generate sufficient interest so that the chaos and destruction that surrounds them holds the reader rather than turns him/her off, and I also hope that the gradual reduction of them as characters from start to end works as a coherent narrative – it almost feels like a reversal of the normal order of things when compared to a conventional space opera. And when it gets down to brass tacks, I’m just not sure about the sex scenes. I knew when I started that these would have to be pretty full-on, because the nature of the erotic, obsessive relationship between the two main characters is what drives the story, so to try to draw a veil or softsoap it somehow was just never an option . . . and in the edits I had a constant fight between ‘me’ who wanted to tone it right down (& fade it out if possible!) and ‘the story’ who dictated that it had to be full throttle. I hope that I’ve come out in the right place, but my fingers still twitch every time I cross it. Lord knows, I wouldn’t want either my mother OR my daughter to read ‘em

Where I think I made a mistake in the manuscript slog was a couple of places where I just circled passages and noted ‘needs tightening up’ or ’shift perspective’ or similar comments, without actually working through the detail. In those instances, when it came to the write-up, it took me too far out of ‘typing’ mode back into ‘thinking’ mode, and I feel now that I will have to revist some of those flying changes to make sure that I haven’t ripped continuity, or slipped back into bad-habity-writing. In future edits, I’ll put a full suite of notes into the manuscript slog, and then, subject to actually being able to read my own handwriting, the write-up face should be much quicker and smoother.

The process from end-to-end took 4 weeks, in which actual working time amounted to some 19 days once I took out time for admin and half-term holidays and the round of illnesses. Holly reckons on a 2-week turnaround, and I can see that it would be possible given more available time (or a cleaner MS to start with), and I think that will be my ultimate target, however, what I am learning is that real life doesn’t like plans, and will disrupt them, so I need to factor in more slippage in all my planning.  On the one hand, this is disappointing, because it means I can see the end of this phase of editing and reworking of back-catalogue extending further out than it does currently – even though I knew I was setting myself aggressive targets from the get-go. On the other hand, though, I’d rather work at a realistic pace and put my best work into what I am doing, rather than rushing slapdash through it just for the sake of ticking off a progress chart to say it’s done (and then having to revisit it again in such painful detail after either crit-rounds or, worse, a round of rejections).

On the whole, though, I think that the process worked well, and I’m pleased with the story I’ve been left with.

In every dream home a heartache

Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt Morieris

No man is an Iland, intire

of it selfe; every man is a

peece of the Continent, a

part of the maine; if a clod

bee washed away by the Sea,

Europe is the lesse, as well

as if a Promontorie were . . .

Any mans death diminshes

me because I am involved

in Mankinde. And therefore

never send to know for

whom the bell tolls; it tolls

for thee

John Donne

I have vivid dreams almost every night, the kind that are so credible that it comes as a surprise when you wake up and find it’s not real – sometimes to the extent that I’m totally disorientated until I’ve adjusted from one ‘reality’ to the other. For the most part, I attribute this to my overactive creativity, evidence that my muse is playing whilst my consciousness isn’t around to interfere or give her reality checks, and a number of these vivid, story-plot dreams have made it into short stories purely because they were *so* real and *so* coherent. And there’s a part of me that kind of believes that when I’m dreaming I’m actually connecting with other realities (universes?), with other (past?) lives and that what I experience *is* reality for the character through whom’s eyes I experience the dream. Of course, my rational, pragmatic self scoffs at such notions as fanciful, romantic, and superstitious nonsense. But I guess keeping myself on the fence helps me with the ‘what-if’ questions that feed into my writing.

Awesome plot dreams aside, I do have a number of recurring dreams. Two of them feature houses . . . one is pretty straightforward – I’m in my grandmother’s old house (the one she had before she moved into sheltered accomodation) and I’m looking for her. I smell her fragrance, I hear her voice, I experience the house in its physical actuality as if I were there, but I’m always alone. Sometimes, towards the end of the dream, I do get to see her again, and to talk to her, and I hate it when I wake up.

She died 5 years ago, and I still miss her.

The other dream is more complicated. It recurs, but with variations each time. I first started getting it when we were househunting after we’d had Honey, and at the time it seemed an obvious connection – looking for house, dream about house – and although it puzzled me that I *always* dreamt about the same house, and that I *always* woke up surprised and disorientated because *that* house was not *our* house in reality, I didn’t give it much thought.

It wasn’t until after we moved that I got a book by Suzy Chiazzari - “The Healing Home” and I read the chapter about ‘The Inner House’ that I started to make some connections between this recurring dream and my inner status. She said that we all have an ‘inner house’ and that by doing a creative visualisation of a house which reflects who you are, you can create a structure which allows you to reflect on your inner state and at different levels. The basement and foundations represent our early years and “it is in the basement that we hide our deep-seated fears and anxieties” and fears, the ground floor level our current state. The upper levels are “those parts of our nature that link to other people and to the outside world”. The attic and roof are the areas which reflect your need to grow and change, your intellect, your creativity, and your spiritual centre.

I guess as an analogy, it’s fairly self-evident, but until I came across it, it hadn’t occurred to me. But when I did come across it, I immediately related it to the dream I’d been having.

The dream started at a time of great change – we’d changed from being a couple to being a family, we’d outgrown our little 2-bed terrace, and we’d both suffered significant losses in major relationships with friends and/or family. Everything was up in the air.

So: the dream represented a search not just in literal terms for a new home, but also in subsconscious terms for a place where foundations could be laid and new emotional structure could be built.

The house itself was like an origami puzzle – a corner plot with a garden, nothing out of the ordinary to look at, but the internal angles never quite matched up with the external dimensions, as if each room had been subtly skewed to sit at an angle to the foundations. This is something I still haven’t quite figured out, but it made the layout surprising – in so far as it continually allowed for new rooms to be discovered where there shouldn’t (according to the external dimensions) be rooms at all. The best I’ve been able to come up with, in context, is that my internal life is bigger than it seems to be than when viewed from the outside.

When I first starting having the dreams, I was in a real crisis – both about my identity (I was going through the mill with PND and jumping through hoops of various diagnoses and treatment proposals - ranging from OCD to social phobia to manic depression to I don’t know what – before Asperger’s was identified (something I’d never even heard of up to that point). I’m still glad that my refusal to accept medication meant that they had to keep digging for cause rather than just masking the symptoms of PND & related oddities. Added to that, I didn’t want to go back into full-time employment because the demands of the job I was in (accountancy-finance-IT project management) meant a 60-hr week as standard, and it was tearing me apart – I hated handing my child into daycare, & I hated coming home too late to anything other than look in on a sleeping angel.

The dream reflected that turmoil. In it, I needed to get into the attic. To get there, I needed to worm my way through a secret passageway at the back of a chimney, clogged with dust and earth and soot. It was a tight, claustrophobic climb and it terrified me every time I had to make the journey, but I repeatedly clawed my way up to . . . the upper rooms of a tumbledown cottage overlooking the sea, in brilliant sunshine, with the breeze off the sea blowing in through the open window. Just glorious.

And so obvious now, looking back on it, that the dream represented both my need to break out of my current lifestyle and my fear of doing so in one neat psychological trick. When I made the decision to quit the dayjob and become a SAHM, that dream stopped. I still get that dream, and I still experience moments of terror when I have to go up to the attic. The difference is that now I can get up there on a rickety ladder or some old stairs, I don’t have to squirm through that constricting passageway to get there any more – and it’s always a relief. I take that as a good sign that I am moving in the direction of my dreams, but that I have a way to go to get there.

There’s an element of crossover in the Transactional Analysis model in the therapy I went through, which also used the idea of the basement as a representation of the ‘child’ state, the ground floor as the ‘now’ state and the upper level as the ‘adult’ state, which I think also has parallels and influences on the dream and my interpretations of it (and obviously on my inner state as well).

This comes out in later iterations of the dream – when I dreamt I was lost in my own house, and discovered a magical narrow room of many drawers, and each drawer held a different art or craft material – this came when I was struggling to get to grips with my creativity and to draw it into daily life, in terms of both my writing and the textile side.

I had the dream again last night, and it was different again. Still the same house, that established by the external view of the triangular (???) house on its (definitely) triangular corner plot, and then by the internal view and the same surprise room that I know is there but always forget about until I see it (haven’t figured that bit out in full yet). Only this time, and for the first time, I went upstairs and into the rooms on the middle floor – I thought we were going to the attic and experienced the terror/relief of the anticipation of chimney scramble/thank goodness there are stairs up there now phenomenon, but I was suprised that instead we went into different bedrooms.

Applying Suzy’s analogy, this is about my relationships with other people and with the outside world.

So. Again, all the rooms were on odd angles that didn’t quite match up with the external dimensions & appearance of the house, so there were some strange shaped rooms. The best I can do on this is to visualise this aspect as some kind of odd dream-vision-distortion (kinda like acid trips, I guess) OR as an expression of my autism which puts me on an oblique angle with the rest of the world, in so far as my internal dimensions don’t “fit” with the outside pressures for structural conformity with society (&c).  Some of the rooms I went into had been refurbished – beautifully decorated, with nice windows and comfortable furniture and aspect. Other rooms were dilapidated, with ancient 1930’s aluminium framed windows in a shocking state of leaking rust and draughtiness, with damp and peeling wallpaper and cheap, shabby furnishings in various states of collapse and decay. I didn’t meet or see anyone else, and I didn’t get the sense that anyone else lived there, but I didn’t feel alone. I felt like I was engaged in some sort of dialogue, even though I didn’t speak.

The meaning wasn’t immediately apparent to me, but it’s been on my mind all day and it has gradually started to come clear. I’ve been re-evaluating some of my key relationships – attempting to become more open and less fearful that my ‘otherness’ will lead to rejection (as it has so many times in the past) – and these I see as the rooms that have been refurbished – they represent the relationships that are either healed or in the process of being healed. The rooms that are still dilapidated are the relationships that I have not yet faced up to as unhealthy or as in need of healing.,

It’s a reminder that although I’ve come an awful long way in terms of my personal development since I started having this particular dream, that I’ve still got a way to go. It’s a reminder that although *my* ‘now’, *my* ‘foundations’ and *my* creativity & growth & sense of self are well established and largely comfortable and familiar, that I cannot exist as an Island, entire and whole unto myself. I do need the others, and I do need to work harder at those relationships that sustain me, to give more thought and consideration and cherishing to those I care about. This is not going to be easy for me, but the re-appearance of the dream is a sure sign that I need to gather up my courage and make another big step forward. I think I’m going to need help.