I have had, over the years, a long standing relationship with Dust Bunnies. When I was a kid I was allergic to dust. That had just subsided when I developed an allergy to grain dust. Living on a farm, this particular allergy was not all that welcome. But at least I was no longer allergic to Dust Bunnies. So then I would be able to work with the Dust Bunnies. At about 10 years of age I began collecting dust bunnies. It was a bit of an obsession with me, most likely based in a subconscious desire to take control of something that had, for so long, made me its bitch. I would clump them into a masonry jar and seal them up. As the jar filled I would plan things to do with the Dust Bunnies. One of my favourite things that I did was to dump the entire jar into my older sister’s bed, between the sheets, towards the foot of the bed. When she got into bed that night she let out a blood curdling scream that would have made Medusa lose all her snake hair! It was great! I never told anyone about this because, well, my family can not only hold a long grudge but it is also very skilled in the art of revenge. So I just laughed myself to sleep, tears rolling down my face. When my mother came into my room and saw me I convinced her that I was crying because my sister scared me so much with her scream. Cheeky, I know, but it worked! I was such a cute and adorable little boy that I was actually able to pull that off!
After a while I would come up with other uses for Dust Bunnies. I rolled them into long strands of rope-like material and braided a bracelet for one of my little girlfriends at school. She wore that thing for weeks until her mother figured out what it was made of. Then she came at me the next day with an accusatory tone. I looked at her, blinking my long lashes at her, and said, “But I made that especially for you…out of what materials I could find…because my family is so poor that my parents couldn’t afford to buy me leather or string…and I so wanted to do something nice for you because I like you so much…” and the next thing I knew she was hugging me and kissing my cheek and telling me that I could make her another if I wanted to. I know, looking back on this whole Dust Bunny phase of my life, what is really standing out here is the makings of a con man….and a womanizer….ok, if you insist, a sociopath. But I got over that phase of my life and became more real. This is why I enjoy looking back on that phase and seeing how much I have come along in the task of being human! I figure that if I can do that, then anyone can….IF THEY WANT TO. But that wanting to is the key.
How often we waste our time hoping that someone will change. People can sometimes spend their entire lives hoping that a certain someone is going to change when that person has no intent to do so, not for us and not for themselves. That is when it is important to just face the reality that we have to find better people in our lives. This can be a painful process because we end up having to “shed our skin” so to speak. When we shed our skin we birth a new us from within. That can be difficult and challenging and painful, but so worth it. And it can sometimes include the aspect of needing to also shed certain relationships in order to be able to liberate ourselves from the prison-like confines of the old way of being. Once done, most often we feel such extreme joy at the ability to actually BREATHE again and actually be able to have freedom of choice again that we cannot believe it took us so long to take such an important step. Yet we can’t possibly make ourselves feel guilty for taking the time we needed to take. It all happens in its own time. No one can tell us that it is time for us to make an important self-development step inside ourselves. We are the only ones in charge of that. We might need to be told what it is called because we may not know the vocabulary for the process we are undergoing. Once we have that information, we need to build the courage up within to make it happen. That means taking personal responsibility for where we are at and where we wish to go in our lives.
These days, Dust Bunnies get sucked up into the vacuum cleaner. There is no longer any need for me to create anything with them or to torment my older sister or to make bracelets with them. It is called growing up. I have shed so much of what I have experienced in life that I can hardly recognize myself when looking at the two baby pictures that I still have left. I keep those to remind me of the innocence of childhood as well as to remind me that there was a time, before I discovered Dust Bunnies, that I was open and able to meet the world just as a perfect little child. It also reminds me that, sometime after the Dust Bunnies, or even before, something hardened me in life. Something made me want to control and manipulate those around me. Sometimes it was just for the sheer enjoyment of the entertainment value. Sometimes it was for survival. Either way, I had to let that go so that I could travel a more authentic path. Now I can authentically vacuum them up into the vacuum cleaner, then wash my floors and, while they dry, sit and do my second favourite activity in the entire world….sipping a great cup of coffee while watching an episode of a favourite series on TV. And when it is warm outside I sit on my patio and watch my favourite scene…that of NATURE.
I also am one who believes in house faeries. Yep. That is something that I was raised with. I call them the Deva of the House, or sometimes the Deva of the Land. Nonetheless, I have been aware of the presence of house faeries since I was around 8 or 9 years of age, when I first met the one that was residing in our house. She would ask me to place houseplants in certain locations because they would like that spot better than the one they were in. I began sensing the desires of the house plants as a result and now am quite well versed in communicating with house plants. Up until this, I would commune with plants of the outdoors, but had never really considered house plants to be something important enough to try communicating with them. The house faerie certainly opened my eyes on that!
To this day I have had a house faerie in my home in every location. Often they are attached to the building or land in some way, but some of them actually attach to the people and will move with them. I would not purchase a house that had a hostile house faerie. And the house faerie that I currently have is one that helped my partner and me find the house we currently occupy. And the day of possession, when I turned the key and walked into our new home, she blew through the house like a white tornado and cleared the space instantly for us. There was not a trace of energy imprints of the previous owners left! She still consults with me and makes suggestions about what to do with certain things in our home, how to improve the energy flow, what colors to paint the walls etc. It is a relationship that I value and trust. I know that some folks might find this to be, shall we say, eccentric. I don’t care. I am now in my mid 50’s and eccentricity is now my right. Before it would have been called “nutso” or something equally insulting. Now I get to be eccentric. I love that. But truly, the proof is in the pudding, so to speak. When people come into our home they are taken by the peaceful, serene feel of the place and the fact that it is filled chuck full of love.
It is worthwhile to connect with your own Deva of the home. You never know, it could end up being a relationship that lasts for years and years! They really do help you to place things for proper energy flow. And they also let you know when your houseplants need to be watered or repotted. They also let you know, before returning home, that your dog has left you a little gift on the kitchen floor!
Notes:
- I love sharing my childhood memories with my readers. It is always an exercise in self-reflection. And it lets my readers know that I am undoubtedly one of the most ridiculously messed up people walking the face of the planet, so they are immediately put at ease because they, by comparison, are not so bad.
- To this day I am still quite artistic. I can take a piece of anything and do something artsy with it.
- My oldest dog is actually house trained, but is struggling in her senior years and therefore leaves us gifts quite frequently. We choose to look at it as an expression of love more than an expression of senility. This began shortly before we adopted our second dog and so for a while we were cleaning up after one while house training another. At least the house training took effect well.
- I hope that when I am as old in human years as my dog is in dog years, someone will have the same compassion and humor if I happen to leave gifts on the floor.
- I hope that when I reincarnate, I will come back as one of my dogs. They got it good!
- I do not know where my childhood girlfriend is these days…because I am not stalkery like that.
- To this day my sisters have always thought that I was a model child. I thank my brother for that because he certainly was not. But what I did learn was that if I could encourage him to just be himself, I could certainly slip under the radar and do things that I enjoyed doing…such as planting dust bunnies at the foot of my sister’s bed.