Dear friends!

I’m writing today to ceremonially welcome you into the Dream Teahouse.

After more than a year of exploring dream territory in writing, in blogs and this newsletter, I’ve put down roots and constructed a light teahouse, for us to gather within and talk dreams.

We used to go down to this underground area in the shopping centre. It had different products in it, it was sort of like a hall of bargains, or totally random things. I’d often go down there if I was bored. One day I was showing you around the shop aisles on the normal level, and thought it’d be fun to take you down to the basement. When we reached the place where the ramp down used to be, there was just an empty space. I looked left and right, and finally saw a little crack in the wall where I could see through, down the ramp. It was lit still, with those sterile fluorescents, but nothing was down there. It was completely empty. I looked at you like “what were they thinking?” - blank - and then we looked over to the right, and there was a class of people doing aerobics in the entry hall.

Basements are where things are stored, forgotten about, shoved, hidden, and placed when they don’t have high value - the bargain basement. They’re also ‘out of sight, out of mind’, and easily forgotten. They can be scary because they’re dark, or full of things we don’t know, or full of things we do know and don’t want to. Even the passageway to a basement can be hidden or lost. What do you place in the metaphorical basement in your mind?

Going down to a basement for bargains, for the trash and treasure, for the appeal of finding something that has been judged unworthy: where have you gone down to the abandoned or forgotten places and found something wonderful? Has this happened in cities, in crowded suburbs, or in your thoughts?

When have you loved what you found that was unloved, and wanted to share it with someone else? Do you know the way to show someone else in to that forgotten place? Did they recognise it too? Is a part of you loving what you are finding and another part kind of disgusted and impatiently stamping to leave and go back to the shiny area of agreed valuable things?

What is the prison that we never see?

What is the pale white room you are in that doesn’t feel like a prison because it feels like the whole world?

What is an unquestioned condition, pattern or behaviour? A loop, a well-worn path, a mental model, a pattern of behaviour, a set of rules.

What happens if you question it? When was the last time you or someone in this condition (like a workplace) questioned a pattern there, or the whole system, or the whole premise?

Do you have strong experiences of places in dreams? Geography or cities you return to again over time?

There’s a dream geography I return to often, and it feels like a place to assess options from. It’s an asian market, attached to a greater city, with multiple entrances and exits. It features indoor asian groceries, with a large range of foods, and outdoor stalls, with specialised foods - vegetables in one, barbecued meats in another, brooms in another.

Although I sometimes have time to wander and explore, to catch my breath in the shops, it’s usually the scene of a chase of some sort. Rushing past the sauce jars, skidding past the bbq pork stand; one time a small train with pursuers onboard followed me through the indoor shops.

There’s an alley I used to go down in a town I grew up in, which linked Chinatown to the main mall. There was also another lane which linked a main street to an underground bus stop complex, which I used regularly as well.

In dreams, these two well worn locations have been entangled, so that there’s a dream geography place I visit in Chinatown, with amazing food restaurants that feel so familiar - one in particular has these great handmade noodles in a silky chilli soup, and it’s always open late, fake bamboo out the front, on a dark night, with red lanterns. And indoors is empty but they always have the soup ready.

Sometimes I go in, other times I wait out front talking with friends, and other times I order iced fruit tea from the late night iced tea bar. It’s so familiar to me I just find myself there again and again.

I’ve changed email systems and the “from” email has changed too - so, FYI, this is The Dream Stream in a new format, but still the same person, me, Lara, writing it!

Welcome to this first dreamplay note, and thank you for being here and coming along for this journey. These notes are likely to be more shorthand, experimental, and I hope prompt some helpful reflections or dream interpretations or activities.

This new year we have a gift with Neptune, our dreaming planet friend, coming into Aries, a place of firey action.