Last night God appeared in my dreams as a plumber to fix the drip under my kitchen sink.

Decades earlier I found God in a dream as a paraplegic on a raised cot in an old damp stone basement, dependent upon humans to do everything. Great mind and all that, but humans had to do all the work. It was revelatory, but God as plumber?

The question of the dream was not would there ever be world peace but would He use a mat to protect his elbows and shoulders as He scrunched under there to check the curved P-pipe. If you’re wondering what He looked like, He looked like a stockier version of His son as portrayed in popular movies, i.e. Jewish by way of Norway.

He wore white, but not a robe. It seemed to be a long smock over loose matching pants. Probably cotton, maybe linen.

We didn’t talk. It was about fixing the leak.

Later I dreamt of a large late-18 c. painting of commerce in Piazza San Marco in Venice as these words were said: New money buying out old money? Old money buying out old money? Old money buying out new money?

The painting could have been by Canaletto or Francesco Guardi, though I guess it was by me. No plot, only the painting and words. On the surface it has to do with the power struggle between entrenched long-term privilege and brash new energy, a topic that interests me both about money and society. (The painting looked most like this one by Canaletto, though mine had more people and was a diagonal view.)

Why Venice? I suppose the dynamic of old families with palatial houses on the sands of intrigue, upstarts, and betrayal. It is both established and collapsing, stratified and shifting. And, since money never means just money, this probably has something to do with my internal psyche.

Several times I woke giggling from dreams I don’t remember. They must have been doozies.

Point is: in the past two months, I lost my wonderful mother and I presided over her arrangements and estate, I swam with a sea lion and watched giant land turtles mate in the Galapagos, I was ill for nearly two weeks and am still physically depleted, I saw an exhibition of exquisite violent porcelains that nearly did me in, and I had a Valentine’s dinner for my adored women friends where we discussed the seeming conflict of privacy and transparency over good wine and truffles.

Alongside this, the world is erupting into new geographies of violence next to ongoing conflicts and brutalities. Our collective hearts are breaking.

Yet, we live and our souls claim their right to joy – and my mind seems to answer to that right by entertaining itself grandly.

I owe it to my mother. As she lay dying on the last day of 2013, I sat alone with her in her room at the nursing home. The room suddenly filled with the energy of a young woman whirling and laughing. She was free, celebrating, happy and wanting me to be happy. I was stunned, having never met that young woman before in all my life. And, yes, her energy was golden.

Her laughter cascaded into me as she whirled through the open spaces above me – a true trickle down effect.

And so I wake, laughing as God tends the leak, the tears, under the sink – ah, so that is the metaphor. Now I know.