twice the trickster

Last night in a dream I met the trickster in two different personifications. The trickster is an archetype who appears in the myths and legends of every culture, and lives immortally and eternally in the deeper layers of every human psyche.

First he appeared as a singer. I had returned to my lapsed musical career, and my old partner Carrie and I were the backing musicians for a new and exciting young singer appearing at a big outdoor music festival. I had never head this guy before, as he had recently arrived from his homeland in Africa, and I only knew his name (wait for it) -- Barack Obama.

Carrie and I happened on this young man as he was rehearsing a capella in his tent, with the flap open. His voice was amazingly smooth as he crooned a jazz standard with great feeling, but at the same time not overdoing it. He had complete command over that wonderful voice, which was enchanting and hypnotic. When he had finished, I began to enthusiastically praise his performance; "You might be the best singer I ever heard," I told him. But I didn't see what his reaction was, because I was watching Carrie, who was fuming with jealousy. She was, after all, the lead singer in our old group years ago.

There was nothing in the dream that indicated at my extreme disappointment with the real Barack Obama in the "real world," although that may have been implied by the dream Obama's identity as the trickster.

Then I found myself in a bar, talking with a youngish fellow in his mid to late thirties. He had very long, curly dark hair and sported the tight striped trousers the trickster often wears. He was friendly enough, and asked me if I wanted to go outside for "a treat," and I eagerly accepted.

Just outside the bar he pulled out a long glass tube with multiple spouts, all emitting streams of clear liquid. "If that's alcohol," I said, "I don't want any. I never drink alcohol. Have you got any of 'the other?'"

"As it happens, I do," he said. The gin-spouting glass tube went back under his shirt (or wherever he produced it from) and was replaced by another one, a complicated contraption in which the smoker ignited a stream of vodka, then sucked the flaming liquid upward where it ignited a charge of the green herb. The smoke then passed through a cork filter into the smoker's mouth and lungs. It was a wonderfully mild blast, and the magic molecules immediately refreshed the brain.

I awakened to ponder this strange dream, and was at first baffled by it, and unable to discern any connection between its two parts. But by concentrating on the content and the "pictures" repeatedly, I finally unlocked it when I realized I am now traveling through the trickster's realm. You have to watch the trickster all the time, for as the dream shows he can lend his talents to either providing pleasure or making mischief.

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