by Donna Salli | Aug 31, 2022 | Blogs
The man in this photo is my grandfather. He’s just lit a fire in the sauna. You’ll notice the sauna has no chimney—it’s a savusauna, a “smoke sauna.” The smoke from the stove swirls around the building’s interior, then out the door. My family is Finnish by descent. I’ve been doing a lot of meditating lately on the importance to us of “sauna” and “the family farm.” My grandparents bought the land in the early 1920s. My mother was born there, and she and my dad eventually owned it for forty years. After Dad died, Mom made a hard decision—to sell the farm and relocate close to me. The whole extended family felt wretched about her selling, but we were accepting of reality. I was the one who walked the house a last time. It felt symbolic, a thing to be done with reverence, putting that key into the lock for the final time. Losing the farm was a family trauma, and of course, the mind needs structure and meaning to deal with such things—and equally of course, with structure and meaning, things that happen become signs and portents.
by Donna Salli | Feb 25, 2021 | Blogs
When I was small, I began having a recurring dream. I was on my own, with no adults along, traveling the world aboard a wooden sailing ship, the sort of ship that billowed its sails through the Errol Flynn, seafaring movies my parents used to watch. The crew of my dream ship was a happy group of penguins. The birds could talk. They were charming and kind, pointing out dolphins or seabirds overhead, roughhousing, getting into exuberant tussles. Each wore a sailor’s cap and a belt—no pants, just a belt. The only thing the cook knew how to cook was spaghetti! That suited me fine. I loved my mother’s spaghetti. I would have eaten it morning, noon, and night, just as my sailing penguins did. In the dream, I felt loved, free. I had the penguin dream repeatedly, until at some point approaching puberty, the dream never came again. Some of the things I’ve written—poems, a narrative thread in a story or play—have grown out of my dreams, usually my wildest dreams. But recurring dreams are the most interesting. They offer powerful clues to what’s going on in the hidden self and, in my case, are a wellspring for art.
Recent Comments