*Bowing is your only task —* Encaustic and mixed media on wood panel Laurie Doctor

All these dreams about being in a car — mostly as a passenger with an invisible driver, headed for disaster. There is always a tragedy about to happen: the car is on the wrong side of the road or careening out of control down a steep incline, or in a sudden slick ice blizzard.

Just as in the “impossible tasks” theme in the old stories, there is no apparent way through. It is terrifying. I am in one of these dreams; this time I can see the driver, but he is facing backwards. His hands are not on the wheel, and he can only see where we have already been. I am in the passenger seat, looking, and unlike the driver, I see what is ahead. The road has a hole in it large enough for a truck to fall into, and deep enough for a dozen. The faraway caw of a crow draws my attention to the distant hill, where a crowd has gathered. Then, somehow, the crowd vanishes. The driver and I are alone, heading at rapid speed toward the cavernous opening. When I try to speak, no sound comes. At the last moment, the driver, still facing backwards, adeptly navigates the car over the hole with the compass of a blind seer.

As in the old stories, help comes from unexpected places. In these dreams it is the invisible driver, as most often I cannot see who is driving — I only know it isn’t me.

What about all this steering, I ask myself. All this pulling this way, straining that way. What about the panic that rises moving through a world that is spinning out of control? The message seems to be to let go of the wheel — which I understand is quite different from resignation or indifference. No — more a paradoxical move to the center to enter more fully. It calls to mind the poet William Stafford, saying find what the world is trying to be. Pause long enough to flame what you already know. This will lead you where you need to go, the dream voice says. Instead of pushing something into shape, feel what wants to happen. In writing this means allowing one word to uncover another, topple over, go under, rise up or dangle. In painting, one color calls to another: come closer, move over, here here. Shapes not invented, but discovered.

Things want to come. Let each word unearth another, follow the thread without pulling on it, but do show up to take the end of the thread in your hand, or wait for it. Hold it without yanking or tugging — like right now, being alert, not passive. My hand is moving across the paper and something is happening in spite of the endless detours in my mind.

The grass bows to the wind, released from steering, simply by being the thing it is. The bowing; how grass bends without training or hesitation. Bowing to what is, this breeze, so that when I enter, you make strong my tongue. Insist on what I am afraid to say, afraid to know, that faith in the grass is faith in every living thing. Bowing is the pause that notices the cicada moving up out of the grass after seventeen years of darkness, red eyes and buzzing song gracing tops of trees.

Bowing is your only task, says the dream. Bow to all sentient beings: grass, tree, stone; wall, floor, road. The stranger walking past in his shabby coat, worn out shoes, whistling a tune. Bowing is listening — hear the grass bend. Doesn’t everyone long to be near? Listen, the shimmering air is humming. Sing loud what has been silenced. A hymn to the nameless things: the unborn child, the dark matter stars inhabit, the wing in the night that passes over your head, brushing your left shoulder.

Effortless coronas on the air. Weep and lament and sing. Bow to what comes. Bend without breaking. Yield. Make strong my tongue. I am not the driver, nor is the wind that bends the grass, but something between the two. Invisible. It takes me a while to realize I am praying.

Are you dreaming? Do you have a dream to share? I’d love to hear from you.