pregnant

I was pregnant, and in the hospital. I was surprised because my stomach wasn’t very large, so it seemed early for me to be there. The ward was teeming with pregnant women. I wandered around the hospital, bored. I felt dampness between my legs and wondered if my waters were breaking. I looked around for a bathroom to go to; wanting a nice one, without a lot of people.

I wound up on the street, wandering around. The streets were really crowded with pedestrians. Ahead of me, about a football field away, there was a plume of dark smoke which emerged from a convenience store (I couldn’t see it, so I don’t know how I knew it was a convenience store). It shot up like a rocket (again, I’ve never seen a rocket take off, so how I knew is a question), and then flattened into a disc of dark smoke which traveled back to the ground like a UFO.  When it hit the ground it exploded sending multiple rounds of exploding objects into the air, like firecrackers but much, much more powerful. There was a series of orange beach balls which rained down on the crowd. It was unclear if people were hurt.  The crowd changed directions, and was now going against me as I approached the place where the fireworks had deployed. When I got there the police were turning everyone around. A female police officer caught me by the shoulder and with an overly kind, syrupy demeanor asked solicitously for me to go the other way, offering to get help for me. I just turned and followed her instructions, following the crowd down some side streets.

I was then in a hotel, at a meeting with my friends and others. Brenda kept asking me for my social security number and my last tax return. She was doing something for me that was a secret, and she needed these documents. Finally she said if I didn’t give them to her by the end of the meeting she couldn’t do whatever it was. I wanted to give them to her, I just kept forgetting, or the documents fell down into a space where I couldn’t see them. Finally I got them and gave them to her.

Back in the hotel room I awoke before my room mate, so I got up and prepared to go out and wander the streets. I had a little mp3 or tape player or something, and was listening to music. I was choosing the music very carefully, and when I was ready to leave, couldn’t bear to stop listening, and then realized I could take it with me. Out on the streets I was wearing an orange head scarf, a little awkwardly. I was aware of the fabric sort of falling off my head, and having to keep readjusting it. I looked for a liquor store, planning to buy cigarettes because earlier I was talking to some of the women and they told me that here cigarettes were much cheaper than where we were from, so I could take them back and sell them. Then I started thinking about bumming one of the room mate’s cigarettes and smoking it. I realized that I shouldn’t because it was too hard to quit in the first place.

I returned to the hotel room, cognizant of the exact time. I saw that it was 10:40, and I knew that we had to leave by two, so I had to be ready by one. I was exactly on time. When I entered the room I realized that I had left the door open, and the key on the night table. I was relieved when I found the room mate still sleeping, so I knew no one had come in the room. The room mate got up, and I started packing. I had laid a rugby shirt on the bed to dry, and found that it still wasn’t dry. I picked it up and found that there was another garment inside it, so I took it out, and it turned out to be an old gymnastics leotard, with “Olympics” written on it. It was really old, with an outdated style and some mold marks on it. I pointed it out to the room mate and she was impressed, thinking I’d been in the Olympics, but I hadn’t.  I’d gotten it some other way.

In hotel. Roommate sleeping. Wander around streets, come back, shirt still wet. Olympic leotard.

 Pregnancy symbolizes the start of a new project or cycle. A problem in my waking life which has been festering had a break through yesterday. The crowd symbolism that struck me is anonymity, being lost in the crowd.  I think that is because I feel like I don’t have a “team” or “family” which is there to help me through this hard time. I have friends who help, but I feel a little lost in a crowd of anonymous people. Being bored in the hospital, and wandering around is, I think, about feeling weary of all the turmoil in my life. Wanting to find the private bathroom relates to the fact that right now I’m beleaguered by people who are pestering me. I want them to just leave me alone. Bathrooms are private. The rocket represents both breaking free of constraints (that festering problem might be resolved soon) and a distress signal. I certainly feel distressed. I want that crowd to notice that I’m in distress! I want the police to take over my protection, thus the woman police officer. While I’ve always wanted people to love me and protect me, when they get too close I turn away.  Being in a hotel is about being in a transition phase in my life. The documents that Brenda wants represent a legal action that is pending. I’m just anxious about it, so I dream about it. Why Brenda, though? She shows up in a lot of my dreams, though we aren’t particularly close. I think of her as very capable, successful, beautiful and smart, though I don’t wish to emulate her. Hmmn. The head scarf is obviously about retaining my privacy, as it has been violated more than once recently. I’m not used to having to protect my privacy, as no one has ever been interested in what I have to say, so the awkwardness with the head scarf. The scarf is orange, as are the beach balls that rain down on the crowd: orange can represent creativity, and in this case I’m shrouding myself with it (true) as well as dropping “bombs” on people with it (also true).  Keeping track of the time is probably about me needing to stay in control of this complex, anxiety-ridden part of my life, and also about timing my next move. The pregnancy isn’t to term yet. Also the clothes aren’t yet dry. The Olympic suit which is both old and not mine probably has to do with feeling powerless and a fraud. Others think I have power which I do not. A dream without significant interaction with other people seems to me to be about current events rather than issues of the psyche. Pedestrian.

old people sing

          I was at a fair of some kind, and there were lots of canopies set up for people to picnic under. There was a maze of cords tied to stakes in the ground to hold up the canopies. I kept having to walk around one section of tents and repeatedly ran into the same red cords, almost garroting myself. Under one of them was a really old couple who were lounging. On one of my trips past them the had sat up and were singing Danny Boy in pure, clear, strong, beautiful voices. They sang all sorts of old songs. This time I decide to try a different route, and go over to a pasture with low wooden fences. I can see a young girl has shimmied under the fence, then hopped over the next fence and gotten to the place I want to go to, so I try.

          First I try lying on my back and pulling myself under, but I can’t quite make it. Some ponies come over to investigate. I try lying prone, and scooting under feet-first, but my hips get stuck. I try to get back out, but I’m pretty stuck. I panic a little bit, and consciously slow my breathing and try to relax to make myself smaller and it works.

          I get to the place I need to be, and go inside, into a bathroom. The bathtub is half full of cold water. The shower is leaking. I knew something about this and should have taken care of it or notified someone the day before but I didn’t, and I felt guilty. The floor was also filling with water because the floor drain was slow, which I also knew was a previous problem. The room was starkly white and bare of fixtures or things. People came in and there was a hubbub of activity trying to fix the problem. Someone turned off the main, which stopped the water, but also made everything silent.

          I went outside to look for my things. They were packed in a milk crate. Peoples possessions were strewn about carelessly, and I poked through them, looking for mine. I realized that my stuff was not all in one place any more and I was angry and frustrated. I said ‘why does everything have to be such a struggle?!’ to no one in particular. Someone said my stuff might be in the roof rack, so I set about looking for a key. I found one, but it wouldn’t open the lock…. It went on like that. Frustration.

 Obviously there is a lot of frustration, as there is in my waking life. I was really struck by the old couple in the dream, but can’t quite figure out what they represent. I have great respect for old people, and value what they have to say, which could be the pure singing voices, but why would that be important to me now?

I forgot my dog

          I had gone away for a week end and rented out my house while I was gone. I got back at night, and went to bed with a married man. I got up in the morning and wondered why he was still here, then realized that his wife was also out of town. I sat down and thought about all the things I’d have to do that day. My dog was staying somewhere and I’d have to go pick her up. There was a long list of other things. I got up to look at the clock and couldn’t read it. I held it this way and that but couldn’t make out the numbers. I went to the kitchen to look at the clock on the stove since it was illuminated, but I still couldn’t read it. Finally I figured out that it was ten past six or seven, but I couldn’t be sure what that meant. I started to make coffee, but found that my coffee maker had been stolen, and the kitchen was re-arranged and bare of food.

          I then saw the clock clearer and realized that I was supposed to be leaving for work right then. I started to go up to where my clothes were, but the floor tilted up, making it a struggle…like swimming through soup. I realized that I felt horny. I tried to remember if the sex had been good then night before, but couldn’t recall a single detail. I thought about having sex again, and, realizing that the man was married, dropped the idea.

          I couldn’t find my socks. Then I found one sock had a little sheepskin mitten in it, and I knew I’d seen its partner in another dream, but couldn’t remember what it meant. I couldn’t find a shirt. I was going back and forth through the house looking for things. The house filled up with people. There were two women who were buying the old house, but the deal hadn’t gone through so I couldn’t offer them… something. I didn’t trust them. I remembered having a dream about one of those women in which I’d pinched off the end of her thumb, which became a slimy, mud-dwelling insect. She wouldn’t let me show her; wouldn’t let me see her thumbs.

          I told them all about the coffee maker being stolen, and they were all aghast. I said that the man who arranged the rental had the checks they had written, so we could find their addresses and this was yet another thing I’d have to do this day. A big man said he wanted to take the whole world out to a movie on Wednesday, and he followed me around, explaining and suggesting movies. I said I knew nothing about movies. I went to get my shoes, and found my dog tied in the closet with a blue wire. She was panting pathetically. It was clear she was left there over night, and never whined. I took the chain off and petted her, and then she got up and was dribbling pee, so I took her outside right away, saying oh, you poor thing, you’re dribbling. I felt terrible.

 An overwhelming cluster-fuck. Too much to do, and everything is unreasonably difficult. I wonder if the clock is significant, or if its just another thing which should be easy but turns out to be difficult. The clocks and some of the features of the house are really my own house. I’ve had that one clock for years and years. The stolen coffee maker also isn’t a generic one, but my own. In the dream I looked at the empty place where it had been, and pictured it very clearly, in great detail. Socks – needing to pull up my socks and get moving. Mittens- a protective tool. The mitten is only one of a pair, small and misplaced. The suggestion from the dream dictionary that resonates best for me about thumbs is “losing a thumb may indicate feeling unassertive, being incapacitated, being unable to express yourself”. I never would have thought of that without the dictionary, but it makes sense. She’s an aspect of me that I don’t particularly like (I mistrust her in the dream), an my relationship with her is so convoluted that she resists me demonstrating what is going on in our psyche.  There’s a sense of peripheral things being out of control, with my core being the guilt at having forgotten my dog. I’ll take as the message of this dream that its time to let go of peripheral concerns and turn my attention to core issues.  Certainly there are trust issues – I don’t trust the women, the stolen item, and the married man, who is abusing his wife’s trust. The emptied kitchen. In waking life I recently inadvertently allowed strangers to know things that probably should have remained private, and they unexpectedly became quite angry at me. In the dream that was the renters, who invade my home and steal my things.

heavy medicine

I was carrying a huge sack of medicines upstairs to A.J.B who was an elderly man who died a few years ago. They had come in the mail. The sack was so heavy the woman I was working with had to help me hoist the bag over my shoulder. I lugged it upstairs and into a room, where I dropped it on a bed. Then I noticed that there were a lot of bras and underwear strewn across the bed, hanging on the walls and etc. A woman came out of the bathroom, and I realized it was B.R.W. It was Ken and Shirley’s room. I said ‘oh, no wonder there’s so many bras around.’ B. helped me to re-heft the sack and I left. On the way out I noticed that there were a lot of matching, primary-colored dishes stacked around the room. I wondered about the expense of buying all that matching décor.

 I’m dreaming about elderly people a lot lately. Certainly elderly people represent wisdom, endurance and perseverance, but none of that particularly resonates with me. The heaviness, and the fact that the load is medicine are pretty clear symbols of the difficulties I’m having in waking life. In contrast stands the brightly colored things, and the bras (they weren’t old-lady bras).  Perhaps the old people are my wiser aspects, one of whom needs some medication! Actually, that resonates. I also dreamed about neglecting my dog, and feeling very sorry for that. I’m neglecting my inner wisdom.