the cassandra pages: Dream of the Bony Fish: part 2

So who are these people and what are they telling me? I think Mike had it pretty close in his comment on the previous post. Although I don't know for sure, I suspect that my companion is my mother; it was with her that I most often visited that place and looked down into the water. There are no sturgeon in that lake, but this one seems like it must have been present in the lake forever, to have grown to such a size. I think it represents something very ancient: probably wisdom that the lake -- my subconscious, or the unknown, or maybe actual wisdom from ancient sources-- wants to show me. That the fish then turns into a woman, and the scene shifts to an interior doesn't feel odd or frightening to me; this doesn't represent a death but a transition, though how I know that is never clear.

The older man may be my grandfather, who I often saw in such a place; in fact I have a photograph of him in a grey barn-boarded interior; nevertheless he wasn't physically recognizable in the dream, but in the man's kind, protective, caring manner that created a feeling of safety. Now it gets more difficult: was the blonde woman my mother? My mother was an artist, but stopped doing artwork when she had me and never went back to it; still, it was he great love and she shared it with me. She had dark hair; she died of cancer. The dream woman looked nothing like her; the artwork on the walls looked nothing like hers. Is she an angel, a spirit, perhaps my mother but in a different form, different realm? I think so, and whether these two beings -- appearing to me like the angelic messengers who appeared to Abraham as visiting travelers -- are recognizable or not, the message of the dream seems to be a reassuring one. This life is terminal, our bodies die, but life and spirit continue, and creation -- represented by the art -- continues. I am encouraged by these two beings, both by their manner and what they show me; I should keep creating. Both the ancient fish and the messengers seem to indicate that wisdom is always available, if I look closely and listen for it.

Do you see anything different, or something I might have missed?

Tomorrow: parsing daily life for some sources of the dream