Creative Journal Pages and other meanderings

When I was in my early 20s I had a dream. I had never seen this image before - in fact in my dream it was a female image - she also had more arms than the images I've seen subsequently. Later I found out it was Shiva.
Dreams are interesting - an inner eye...

who knows what this dream meant - or where it originated - or why. But whenever I see this image - I remember the dream.
The dancer who was dancing - music and inspiration

This deity was brought up again recently - this time by a Didi (yogi nun), who also said my appearance reminded her of Shiva - my long wavy hair, I think.

I did a bit of reading; Shiva is destroyer and restorer - and more.

When I was studying at art school, my teacher, Bill Ainslie, taught us about Dionysus who was also a complex god and my sense is they may be similar...

Does Shiva have a role in Buddhism, I wonder and find myself answering - whatever emerges in my life has a role....
I just don't always understand it intellectually.

What is Shiva or Dionysus to me? Same answer...

mm... I've never been able to fit into a neat box
and my sense is neither Shiva nor Dionysus (nor you) do either
and maybe this is exactly what they're about...
this creative thing which only births through
order and chaos


Life is this death and birth thing:
this thing of:

everything as we know it
changes

everything is like the breath;
inhaling and exhaling

...comings and goings...




Other creative unfoldings...
A friend's blog inspired me to write a poem:

DREAM


Were there flowers before longing created them?
or is it the sigh of the bees
that awakens this field before my eyes…

or the murmur…
- is it the murmur of the breeze
caressing the flowers

that dreams me into being?