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Splat! Splat! Splint! Outside my window, water droplets animate lilac leaves lifted in supplication like raised palms before their god. Too early have scorching suns aged the longed-for-greening of shrubs and trees in our neighborhood. Jets of sprinklers spew water over distressed lawns, and flowerbeds peak with riotous colors.
Splat! Splat! The moistening continues, albeit more slowly. Hesitant breezes spoof droplets, careening into larger ones emptying into gutters like bobsleds on iced tracks. A juvenile squirrel skitters up the stippled trunk of the sweet gum and disappears in thick foliage.
Then, the watering stops, the oatmeal sky brightens, and breezes muffle their meanderings. Only solitary droplets remain upon the leaves. Sidewalks dry.
No drencher this morning, no spring-step mists, no soaker-hose-rain to massage clods of dirt—just Splat! Splat!—the ground only tattooed with dark swirls.
Such dryness nudges my psyche, bereft of dreams for several days. Deprived of my compass, I list about seeking this or that, in hopes one will reveal its élan and reconnect me with significant moorings.
So my dryness continues … until the next dream.
It was clearly my intent to honor my fatigue and cut back on the frequency of my blogs, but my Dreamer had other designs. At 1:30 a.m., this dream pulled me from deep sleep; it would be worked with. Since it’s about obedience of the heart, here goes:
I’m at the airport. In a bin, I spot a large plastic sack filled with multi-colored crocheted yarn squares that the deceased Betty Savard had worked on, intending to join them into an afghan. I retrieve the sack and will restore it to her family.
Airports suggest places of departure and certainly reference my present circumstances: homebound yet on the move, solitary yet with a different orientation to life. In the dream I’ve not boarded my flight, as there is more work to be completed.
The large bin, a container filled with unclaimed odds and ends left behind by other passengers and later found by airport employees, suggests my unconscious. And Betty Savard, a gifted seamstress and friend, was devoted to her life, not without hardships.
My discovery of the multi-colored crocheted yarn squares is the nub of the dream: colorful pieces of my life still to be worked into a new whole. Since I do not know how to crochet, I’ll have to ask for help. And I will …
Aisholpan is her name, the thirteen-year-old Mongolian girl whose bright spirit has captivated the imaginations of countless moviegoers around the country in the documentary, The Eagle Huntress (2016).
Aside from her pigtails tied with pink ribbons and her lavender nail polish, and aside from her scholastic excellence at the boarding school she attends five days each week, she lives for White Wings, a golden eaglet she captures from a precipitous cliff in the steppes. Under the tutelage of her father Nurgaiv, a champion eagle hunter, she nurtures her pet until mature enough to train as a hunter for rabbits, foxes, and wolves: for centuries affording their people food and clothing for their nomadic lifestyle.
However for twelve generations such hunting had been a father-son endeavor, until Nurgaiv persuades the elders otherwise, and Aisholpan’s training begins for the Golden Eagle Festival in Olgii, a provincial Mongolian capitol. Garbed in traditional fur and embroidered hunting gear and sitting tall on her horse with White Wings on her arm, her father riding next to her, she confronts dauntless challenges with grace. It’s as if the same spirit endues both girl and bird, pushing them into the impossible and we with them. Such striving supersedes words.
As the documentary concludes, the inspiring lyrics written and sung by the Australian Sia, “Angel by the Wings,” challenges the audience that indeed, “You can do anything.”
This documentary is playing at both the Plaza Frontenac and Tivoli Theaters in St. Louis, Missouri.
