Invoking the angel of Joy caused her to just stop and listen. She heard the black capped chickadees nearby and soon saw two of them. They foraged for food in the windowsills above and below and in the eves of the house across from her.
Sunrise is over the street at present shining into Rose’s porch.
One landed on the tree between her and the house next door, on a branch near her and then jumped down, not using wings until mostly down to break the fall. Rose’s stomach lurched involuntarily and she broke into a laughter at her reaction to the falling flight. It was such a joy to see this and the little bird is full of beauty, complete with his black and white capped head and his body and wing movements, falling down and going up in delightful half circles.
A Vulture Couple
And going down her street later, in her car, she came to a sudden halt to see if she had seen what she though she had seen. There were two vultures outside the open shadowed eves window of a house. The birds looked at her curiously but did not abandon their new accommodations as Rose got closer on the ground with her camera. She loves to see those big birds up close and personal in all their glory, looking macabre, even if others find them repulsive.
Rose went down the street later in the day to get out of the house. She really wanted to see the vultures again. They were gone. She told Gwyneth about them and she said it made her day, “very cool.” Rose asked the work man at the junction of Broad and Wolfe Street, who was guarding a blocked off street, all day long, if he had noticed them. He was full of affirmation. Rose asked him if he saw them leaving and he had not noticed. Rose wondered if they had gone indoors for the night already. It was sunset and near five o’clock.
In the evening sunlight, plants can look lovely
On the way back home she talked to a neighbor who likes to sit out on her porch using it as her office. Rose mentioned the vultures to her. She knew the house. She did not want to see the photos but liked the “mystery of it all.” Rose talked to Crystal twice, coming and going, and Crystal said she would never want to go into a house after a Vulture was so close to it. When Rose saw them first she did worry someone might be deceased inside but decided that the house is no longer inhabited. Another though they would have a nest in there with babies.
The black cat visited this morning and went under the porch before crossing back in front of Rose toward the chairs he usually sits on. Rose has remembered his name “Cocoa” and he usually pauses as a response to that call. He got up onto one chair and climed back toward Rose to get on his usual chair. She forgot all about the cat being there. Then there was a big noise and scurry of leaves. The black cat had leaped off his chair to chase a mostly white cat with a black tail off the yard. Rose got the fright, as it was so sudden, so near, noisy and unexpected. The white cat turned to face the black cat and both cats stopped suddenly. The black cat had a confused look on the face, in response to Rose’s sudden shriek. Cocoa got a little adrenaline boost from this anger and possessiveness and was not ready to relax yet. He returned fifteen minutes later and was up on the chair when Rose glanced around. He continued to have a restless morning coming and going a few more times, and getting up on the birdbath for some water.
A teacup mandala
It is time to draw again as Rose has not put a brush into water for a few weeks. So she got out her colored pencils and focused on the dream from last night drawing a little teacup mandala first and then going ahead with drawing the dream. She had something to say about it all and came away with the feeling that she is not to attach her worth to how much she is paid but rather to her inborn gift of being able to interpret dreams for herself and others, noting how the dream always brings a person around toward wholeness.
A 75 dollar note at the bottom, three people in the middle examining it and the city on top in the distance.
She connected her dream to many past lives when dream interpretation was her occupation in ancient cities, with companions, where money was not yet the issue it is today. The money note that was found in the dream was for $75 dollars, an old battered note with a “bite” taken out of the corner of it. The note itself looked more like art than money. It was a sum she paid her dream and art therapist, mentor, and psychic, once a month for twenty-one years. It was an education in and of itself and very supportive, to a young hot tempered immigrant trying to negotiate this totally new place, with a young family and making her way through James Madison University for her undergraduate degree and through Eastern Mennonite University, for her masters in counseling.
On the porch in the early morning, after 7 am.
And if you have a dream that offers up cats, or vultures, or strange money notes, be sure to contact me and I will be glad to work with you in delving into that which wants to direct you into a fuller awareness of all that you are, in all your beauty bringing delight as you go about your ways on this lovely little blue planet. Check the home page for my rates and I do a sliding scale for those who need that. A little bite out of the note, in your favor, can always be done, to reflect a time in the past when this kind of work cost nothing and is valued and a time in the future when it will cost nothing because it has been valued. Love from Rose.
Rose Longworth Counseling 