Cosmic Dive 02: 2008
About that dream in Cuba
I am still finding my way on this Substack thing. My goal here is to show up, every week, and write. Sharing a weekly newsletter feels a lot like tossing a message in a bottle into the sea. There are so many voices out there, so many opinions, so many lives searching for meaning and creatives seeking fulfilment.
What am I seeking? Why am I here?
I’ve been a paid writer for over ten years, mostly in film & tv. I started writing travel stories and submitting them to local papers and travel sites when I was twenty-five, backpacking Australia, Thailand, Cambodia on a second tour of the South Pacific in 2007. Sometimes people published them. Sometimes they didn’t.
Misadventure landed me in the Cayman Islands the following year. I could describe this time in many ways - and I will in future Stacks - but for now let’s say, somehow I ended up in the Cayman Islands working at the Hard Rock Café.
Living and working in Cayman is a lot like waking up on Pinnochio’s Pleasure Island, a cursed island that turns mischievous young boys into donkeys. It’s big for Canadians to head down there to work the resorts and restaurants, party on the beaches and generally get up to no good. You could enter the Island on a traveller’s visa but in order to work there, you needed a work visa. This could take time and you needed to be off-Island while they processed the application.
I flew to Cuba while my work visa was processing. I’d been to Cuba before in 1996 on a high school band trip, but had stayed in hotels with chaperones. This time would be very different. I didn’t have much cash. It was mostly me, my ever-constant pile of journals, and a sun hat. I stayed in a Casa Particular.
Casa Particulars are when a local lets you stay in a room of their house. Most include a home-cooked breakfast. I stayed with Marcial, an older gentleman, very kind, with bronzed skin and crinkly smiley eyes. I enjoyed his company and having no money, would sit and eat the delicious meals his mother, “my Cuban Grandma”, would whip up. We’d chat for long hours into the day. Strong coffee and eggs. I hardly speak any Spanish, but his English was pretty good and we’d talk about Cuba and life.
I kept awaiting word that my Visa had been processed. Back then, I didn’t have a cell phone and Marcial didn’t have the internet. I had bought an international phone card and would carefully type in one hundred million numbers and wait an excruciatingly long time to connect with the Visa office in Cayman. Sometimes the connection worked, sometimes it didn’t. The Visa office was too busy and they were delayed. Not ready yet. What started as a week long stopinski turned into being stranded in Havana for nearly three weeks.
It allowed time for introspection. For nearly two years I had been following a boy who didn’t love me around the world. He wasn’t good to me and I was desperate and jealous and love-starved, but I loved travelling and he was a risk-taker. He was always cooking up a plan to go somewhere and do something, and I liked that. There was never time to stand still, and that’s what I feared most: I didn’t want to stand still.
Now, here I was in Cuba, standing still. I walked around the city alone. Tried to drink mojitos (shudder - I hate rum), and generally hung about. I met some other ex-pats my age. Most seemed younger to me. By this time, I’d lived in Thailand alone for a year, gotten a theatre degree from U of T, performed on-stage in Prague, Au Pair'd in Paris, run the VIP section of the hottest night club in Toronto, fired an AK-47 in Cambodia, and had my heart broken in Brisbane.
My new friends wanted to go out to a night club. I checked my purse. Not much in there, but I could always get a boy to buy me a drink. I agreed. I went back to the Casa Particular to say good evening to Marcial. He was already tucked in his side of the Casa. I could hear the Cuban television blasting.
I went to my room and sat on the edge of the bed. I felt woozy. I felt off. No night club tonight. I changed into pyjamas and curled beneath the thin covers. I fell asleep, and had a dream that would change the course of my life entirely.
In the dream, there was a wall of moving images. The wall was illuminated, as though each square were its own boxed screen. They were images of me, my life. I stood before it. Everything around me was pitch black except this great wall of moving images. I could hear a man’s voice speaking but it sounded garbled and far-off. I looked down and at the base of the wall was a small handheld tape recorder. It was playing a recorded tape. Here was the source of the voice: a man was providing an astrological reading. It was as if he was speaking in another language… “The mid-heaven line goes across into Jupiter and this juxtaposes Pluto and there are many maleficent planets in the fourth house…” I knew nothing about astrology back then. I didn’t know what I was hearing.
Suddenly, it was as if I was being electrocuted. A painful electrical shock coursed through my body and I could feel myself in my bed, fists clenching the sheets. I could feel my head pushing hard against the headboard. I remember knowing, this is a dream. How is this a dream when this is also real.
An Angel appeared. The Angel appeared with no face, just swirling purple energy amidst the engulfing black. The pain in my body and the voice in my head was unrelenting: “When are you going to do what you came here to do?”
I saw a vision of a child. I saw a vision of my daughter, standing there, looking at me, eyes like midnight pools. I saw her grow up before me and run away, long brown hair bouncing.
Then, there was a great flash and the blackness crashed in. An astrological sign hung in my mind’s eye, outlined in neon blue, an image of double fish hanging in the air. The electrical currents in my body stopped and I opened my eyes, drenched in sweat.
I was back, in my bed, in Cuba, but I could still feel the electricity coursing through my body. I was terrified. I didn’t sleep another wink all night, but sat up and began writing it all down in my journal. Everything. Every detail I could remember. I could not get the image of that child’s face out of my mind…
The next morning, I ran to meet Marcial, tears streaming down my face. “Marcial, I had a dream and it was a crazy dream and there was this Angel and-and-” Marcial became very uncomfortable. I could see him pull his energy inward, afraid of me and my intensity. Afraid of what I’d seen…
That morning, my Visa went through. I hopped on a plane, returned to Cayman Islands, broke up with the boy, and flew home to Canada. I was shaken and vulnerable and felt blasted open. Anyone who I told about the dream would laugh and call me crazy. “Well, Kate, you know, it’s just a dream…You probably ate too many chilis and had indigestion…You know you sound crazy, right?”
Ya, I know I sound crazy. I know. But it happened.
My mom believed me. My mom is very spiritual and very open. She’d had her own indescribable experiences with Spirit herself…but never like this. She called it a “spontaneous Kundalini awakening”… I called it a mind-fuck. Even writing this story down now, I can feel my back tingling with the energy of that dream.
From that point on I was relentless in my pursuit of purpose. I was supposed to do something here — but what was I supposed to do? My mom knew of someone who hosted Vision Quests. Her name was Edwina, and she hosted them on her property.
A Vision Quest is where you pick a spot in the forest and you stay there for three nights and three days. There is an imaginary circle, ten ft by ten ft. You can walk the circle, you can stand at the edge of the circle, but you can’t leave the circle. If you leave the circle, the Vision Quest is ended. You bring nothing with you into the Quest. You do not eat. There is no shelter. There is water in a jug that is replenished daily by Edwina, but you do not see her and you do not interact with her.
I sat my ass in that circle for three nights and three days and wept like a baby. I sang and sang. I cried for all the pain I had caused others, for the pain I had caused myself. Travelling the world isn’t for the faint of heart, and I had been travelling nearly non-stop for over three years, but I had been on the run for much longer than that. I had been on the run since Thailand. I had been on the run since my brother died.
I had several visions during that Quest, but two messages were most significant:
one — my purpose was documentary (?)
two — trees can survive storms and bend in the wind because their roots run so deep.
