John Burridge

 Dream One:

I was in some sort of classroom or church.  The room had white walls and light wooden floors.  There were rows of chairs or desks or desk/chairs or pews, with a aisle up the middle.  In the back of the room, three women -- an amalgam of various red headed women I've met over the decades -- began singing a kind of medieval song (in waking life, I think I'd scrambled a new version of Qntal's "Dulcis Amor" by moving the starting bar back two beats and adding more polyphony -- maybe I'd added bits of "Ab Vo d' Angel").   

Superimposed over the image of the three red-haired women singing, there was a kind of hinged metal toy? nut-cracker?   The base was a long tongue of flat dark metal (iron), about two feet long (no longer).  A metal deer with antlers, one angular fore hoof raised (the hook of the hoof and the 90 bends in the metal of the leg stick out in my mind) stood at the far end of the metal base, facing the hinge.  The hinged arm part was also metal, but it was angularly wavy, and represented the rushing waters of a river.   Wielded to the metal river was a smaller deer, also antlered; this was closer to the hinge, and it faced the far end.  When the metal river arm lowered, there was a way for it to rest around the larger deer, and the two animals could face each other.  

The river became real.  The song continued.  Real deer faced each other, with the addition of a metal wolf (metal angular mane squares around the wolf's muzzle) on the riverbank stalking the smaller deer.  The flowing river tilted up on its hinge and became metal again, and the wolf had been added to the sculpture.  

I have a sense the sculpture opened and closed several times, transforming between a real river with animals and metal tableau.  

Dream Two:

I was walking through a wooded area.  It may have been the North Side of the hill I grew up in.  I think I found a house or inn -- the recall is muddled.   Somehow, I'd stumbled into the story of a high school acquaintance.  I think there was a woman in the house/inn -- anyway, we found my high school acquaintance's journal.  The friend had disappeared in real life, so the journal entries were from 1980.  

He had written a series of short stories where he was living in a better life as the inn-keeper of the inn we were in, which was somehow enchanted, and under the protection of a large black bear, who had somehow banished (i.e. killed, eaten, or disappeared) my friend's abusive father. 

There was a "so that's where the bear came from moment"; the bear still roamed the woods, an angry dark shadow.  I think about now I realized I was in a parallel world and that I should figure out how to get back into this one.

Dream Three:

X-rated.  But highly consensual and with good communication.  

July 2004.  Our beagle, Pickles, died of various medical complications.  Mark had found him at Greenhill after our England trip in 2001, and conditioned him from an obese, so-fat-his-back-is-flat chow-hound obsessed with food to a lean, mean eating machine obsessed with food (able to steal cookies out of children's mouths with a single bound).

Living with Pickles was sometimes a challenge, because he used all of his low animal cunning to eat things like other people's Thanksgiving stuffing, other people's children's Halloween candy stashes, and slug bait.   Sometimes I think Pickles was practice for having a child.   And we still had Muriel, the world's crankiest, old-lady cat.


August 1, 2004.  I married Mark in a garden, in a ceremony not legally recognized by city, state, or federal governments, and overseen by the Rev. Caroline Colbert (the Unitarian Universalist minister at the local UU church).  Our friend, Lime-Green Larry From New York was the best man:  he compiled and presented all the statements about marriage and love that we'd asked everyone to write.  My sister, Julie, gave a very funny toast.   My friends in a recorder ensemble played Renaissance music.

The wedding was a huge affair -- a lot of our friends and both families gathered in our landladies' garden and cried as we exchanged vows.  Mark said his.  I was a wreck when I said mine.  Afterward, we had chocolate cake in white suits.  And I led folks in a round of "The Shark Song."

But since I couldn't exactly say, "Mark is my husband," without it being a political statement, I sometimes referred to him as my "husband out-law."


December 2004.  I started this blog on Blogspot, back before it was slurped up by Google.  Before this, I would send out e-mail missives to a long list of folks.  

At the beginning of the decade, I was interested in the spiritual lives of gay male Neo-Pagans and in the expression of deity as a gay male.  I was hoping that I'd find something like a gay Cernunnos,  or a gay male Isis.  Or maybe something like a spiritual minded sacred band of Thebes.   I'd even asked Starhawk if she knew who a gay male Starhawk could be, but she didn't know.

I put together the beginning of a e-newsletter called "Lavender Leaves" hoping to attract like-minded men, but it never amounted to anything -- and the musings, book reviews, and general thoughts on queer theory and theology were channeled into this blog.


I turned 40.  For the birthday celebration, we set up a throne for me to sit on, and guests were required to bring a Wonder of Science or sing a song.  Turning 40 was a breeze, especially compared to when I turned 30.  Mark teased me that I was middle-aged, which I denied -- claiming that I planned to live to a hundred, and I wouldn't be in the middle of my life until I turned 50.