Coyote's Den

Some folks may have heard me mention this. I'm one of those flakes that thinks dreams can sometimes be important. Here's one that is unusual in that it seemed to impinge on waking life in some way. Read the story, and see a scan of the picture that someone painted of me... I posed for this picture. Funny thing is I was asleep and posed in a dream and never met the artist. Co-incidence? Maybe. Delusion? Perhaps.

I had a strange dream a while back. I didn't write it down at the time, but it was vivid enough that I have recalled details even after all this time.

In the dream, I was wearing, of all things a buckskin cloak (over jeans and a t-shirt). I was carrying a kind of weird stick... it was shaped like a rifle, sort of. Long, and with one end shaped like a rifle stock. I thought this was odd when I woke up... but later I saw the movie "Last of the Mohicans" and one of the characters therein used a club shaped that way.

I was walking along the perimiter of a place that I knew, in the dream, was a piece of rural property that I lived on with a bunch of other folks. Nearby were the bones of a bull that I knew had been slaughtered by some feral, furred thing, which I did not consider a threat, but rather something that belonged. I felt that this critter was sentient, but feral. I remember feeling briefly sorry for him, because I knew he was unable to live around anyone else because he was so angry.

To one side of me, were poles... with rope and old power cables and junk strung between them... like really tall fence posts with cord at the tops... no fence... they were simply a kind of boundary marker. It was fairly cold, and there was snow over everything.

Anyway... in the dream, I was very angry... I'd had a fight with someone at home. I was preoccupied, and was surprised to realize that I had come upon another person. I remember thinking.... "well... no-one should be out here and we've had trouble lately" and kind of hoped that if the person were hostile, that they would think that I was (and this is the really corny part) a hostile Injun with a gun (the stick/club) and leave. In the dream, the property I was on was located near a reservation.

Well.. as it turned out... the person was an artist... and behind them, I noticed, was an easel. We talked a bit... and the person talked me into letting him paint a picture of me. Which I thought was really silly... I explained that if they were into that southwestern "native american thing" that I wasn't a native american at all (I don't look the least bit like I am of that ethnicity... but amazingly some people - who have never MET a native american in their lives occasionally think I am, because I go by the name Coyote... I've always thought it was stupid). The artist said no... he wanted to paint _me_. I was a little surprised, but for some reason, I let him. Then the dream ended. I never asked the artist what his name was.

Now... as it happens... more than a year and a half passed. I'd told my ex-wife about the dream, but I don't think I mentioned it to anyone else. There wasn't much earth-shattering in it, so I didn't think about it afterwards. My ex-wife and I threw a yule party at the end of 1993.

A friend who I hadn't seen in a while came by. A friend who I had not known at the time of the dream. This friend told me "I have a really weird present for you... it's supposed to be a painting of an indian guy, but I think it's really a painting of you, don't ask me why".

I unwrapped it. And it was rather obviously, the painting that the artist from the dream was painting. It's somewhat crude, but many folks who have seen it ask if the person in the painting is supposed to be me. I was rather astounded, as the whole scene was so obviously the one from the dream.

The painting is of a person standing, holding a funny rifle-shaped club, next to the boundary markers, wearing a buckskin robe. Under the robe at the neck... if you look closely, you can see what appears to be a regular t-shirt collar... the tight round kind. Weird thing is this... At the time of the dream, and at the time I recieved the painting I had a beard. I still do. I always wear a beard. In the dream, I didn't have a beard, I was clean-faced (which I thought was odd upon waking). The figure in the painting is clean-shaven. There'd be no real reason for my friend to see that beardless painting and think it was me. Also, the figure in the painting appears to have a streak of thinning hair on his scalp... and my hair has begun to thin in the same place in a similar pattern. At the time of the dream, and the time the painting was given to me, there was no sign of this thinning hair.

I'd really like to meet the painter, Rob Brown, who did the painting in March, 1993.