Cowboy Clairvoyant is a members-only newsletter and series by Autumn Fourkiller featuring dream interpretation, tarot answers, and more ventures into the Beyond.
Dear Dreamers,
Happy new queer year, folks. And oh, what a year it has been already. As I write this to you I am sitting on a couch that is not my own, holding a little black cat in my lap, sipping a Lee’s coffee, and thinking, mourning, considering. This hasn’t been the year I expected, in any fashion, but it’s the only one we have, and despite it all, I still think it’ll be beautiful.
Yesterday, we drove south through a storm, lightning cracked and my shoes were wet, the windshield wipers squeaked horribly. One hand on the wheel, the other in the Lawyer’s. Iced coffee in the cupholders and yet neither of us drank. Eventually, we found the sun, the sky black behind us, and I said oh, look, it’s beautiful in the light. Their side of the state is flat, mine, all hills, all trees, a thousand shades of green. Before them, I’d known no one, not really, that had come from a smaller town than mine. We shouldn’t have met, and yet.
Tell me a little about you. What are your new year’s resolutions? Did you make it through okay? And, as always, send me your dreams and missives and quandaries, spiritual and otherwise. I think we’re going to have a beautiful year, too.
Sending you good dreams,
Cowboy
My wife has volunteered to do face painting at a small town, outdoor, queer party. I am attending the party with my 7yo daughter. There are a lot of adults at the party, what I would describe as sexually promiscuous pagan/goth drag happening, I’m trying to get my kiddo to participate in the kid activities, and I really really really have to poop. I can no longer avoid going to the bathroom and take my daughter to the single stall bathroom with me. The bathroom is a literal nightmare. The toilet is some kind of shallow metal bowl with no seat and has feces all over it. There is shit all over the floor and walls. I try to clean off the toilet seat and convince myself to just go. I turn around to find that my daughter sat on the bathroom floor directly in shit and she is now covered in it. I am trying desperately to help her clean her hands, but no matter what I do I can’t get the poop off. Of course, in the meantime, strangers have broken the lock in the bathroom and have barged in while I’m mid-dump and trying to clean off my kid, complaining that I was taking too long. I don’t remember how the dream ended, but I know it did – or morphed into something different. – MJ
Dear MJ,
Thank you for the gift of your dream. I am not a stranger to an “unsanitary” dream, though I ascribe that to my obsessive compulsive disorder more than anything. Though there is shame, too. When it comes to the dream you’ve given us today, I am especially interested in its relationship to shame, as well as your own.
To begin, you’re at a strange gathering. It should be one thing, perhaps family friendly, and yet it is another. While you encourage your child to participate in the appropriate activities, you are seized by that most animal of urges. You can’t run away from your body, not even if you want to. So off to the bathroom you go, and yes, indeed, it is a literal nightmare. Not only is everything you look at covered in shit, but so are you and your child. Then, in one of your most vulnerable moments come strangers, gawking ones, there to judge you in your shame.
In your note to me, you let me know that these unsanitary dreams, especially toilet related ones, are not uncommon for you, as well as that both you and your daughter are trans. Not only is the “trans bathroom debate” omnipresent in our culture, but there is also a kind of shame that the American culture bakes into every human and bodily. Those things are enough explanation for your recurring dreams, but I am curious about if you feel you are passing some shame off to your child, if you and your child feel alienated by cis family members, and when these dreams began (i.e. pre or post transition?).
Also, I do not mean to say that you, personally, are ashamed of your transness, rather that the culture that surrounds us is, and we absorb those things whether we believe them or not. Don’t shame yourself for your emotions regarding this, rather acknowledge them, call them by name, and let them pass through you.
See you on the Other Side,
CC
GROSS DREAM IMAGE JOURNAL PROMPTS
Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
FECES/URINE: What am I incubating inside of myself? Am I ashamed of my emotions, and if so, why? What am I hiding from my partner? Was I allowed to feel as a child? Do I honor my emotions or dismiss them?
BODY HORROR: What do I need to unpack about my relationship with my body? Who do I dress for? What do I need to do to make myself feel comfortable in an active situation? How do I feel about the current state of my sex life?
VOMIT: Do I let people help me, why or why not? What is my relationship to shame? How big is my “shadow” and what shape does it take? How vulnerable am I on a scale of one to ten? (Describe the scale).
