no steering wheel

 

          I was driving my truck through a city I know a little bit.  I’ve dreamt in it before. I was coming up to an intersection where I needed to turn right. Tom walked into the street, into the right hand lane, pushing a snowmobile trailer. I only had a little room to pull into the lane in front of him, but he kept moving with the pace of traffic, blocking my way. Finally we were just about at the intersection and I slammed on my brakes, meaning to pull into that lane behind him, but just as I did the light turned yellow, and I hit a slick, snowy patch on which I skid, and then I hit dry pavement which pulled the vehicle so hard that it was as though we hit something, and it pulled the steering wheel off the steering column. I was furious with Tom. I yelled at him that he should have known that walking into the street like that other traffic would assume he wasn’t going to travel like that, he should know that! I was so angry I woke up.

          I went to sleep again and resumed the dream. The light turned, and we continued through the intersection. Now Tom was in the car with us – I had a passenger as well in the front seat. I told him he could have killed us back there! As soon as I said that I realized that he was an alter ego of mine, and when I said “us” I meant “me”. I understood the symbolism of having no way to steer the vehicle. I recognized that Tom is the part of me who is callous and self-absorbed, un-aware of how his selfishness causes others so much harm. Just like a Tom I know in waking life. Just like snowmobilers. I almost committed suicide. My vehicle kept moving, very slowly.

          The street we were on got narrower and narrower, with white-washed walls. As I needed to turn the wheel, I just sort of thought about it and pretended to, though there wasn’t a wheel to turn, but it seemed to work. I came to a T in the road, and was worried, but as it turns out, turning the imaginary wheel worked just fine. The only problem now was that the road was so narrow, and the white buildings so close, I couldn’t make the turn. It was so tight I couldn’t even make a three-point turn. There was a man in a doorway watching. I was frustrated to tears. I realized that I’d have to back up all the way up that narrow street with only an imaginary steering wheel. I pictured the local people talking about how only certain vehicles can drive up this street; they knew all about it. I felt very left out.

 

I wrote this just as I remembered it, but I wonder if I did that bit of analysis in that time when I was awake, not in the dream. I’m always surprised at how much logical thinking I can do when I’m dreaming, though. Certainly Tom is an alter, and the pattern of cluster-fucks when one thing after another goes wrong is one from my waking life. I’ve always felt that when I dream of driving my (actual) vehicles, it symbolizes the way I steer my way through life. My vehicles are also a source of anxiety, since they are expensive, and prone to break downs and accidents. I guess I became an auto mechanic in order to feel a little more emotional control, in addition to the practical benefits.

 

That the streets become ever narrower and finally un-passable is also emblematic of my waking life. The whitewashed walls are impenetrable, undemonstrative, closing in, closing me out. Its that sense of in-authenticity; that I’m just waiting for my real life to begin. Ugh. What a pile of anxiety.

waves in the snow

          I was both flying in an airplane and watching the airplane traffic in the sky. It was cloudy and snowing heavily in parts, and clear in other parts. When the airplanes passed over the snowy parts, the vibrations set up a sort of wave pattern in the falling snow which looked very interesting. I tried explaining the effect to a person next to me, and she added that it was like a wave of wind passing through tall grass. I thought about that and saw that she was both right and wrong. Then she asked if it was the vibrations from the motor or the vibrations of the air disturbance caused by the moving plane. I knew the answer and was going to explain it more thoroughly, but a man spoke up, saying that he was sure that today all the planes were violating the ordinance on sound; that they were flying too low or too close together or something. He indicated that in the name of expedience, on a busy day all the planes flouted the laws.

          When I had gotten on the plane, I was looking for my seat, and realized that this was a very, very crowded flight. The pilot sat in front like the driver of a bus. The seats were crammed in every which way. I came close to my section which was C or D and it looked like my seat was the aisle seat in a group of three. There were two children already sitting there, and I knew I didn’t want to sit with them. It would be trouble. Not only that, but one of them was sitting in the aisle seat. I said I think that’s my seat, and they asked what’s my seat number, and I told them, and they pointed out that my seat was across the aisle in that other section, I looked more carefully at the seat numbers and realized they were right. I sat down.

          Our plane landed and we were on the water. I looked at the pretty wave patterns in the snow, and tried to explain the phenomenon to someone else. This time I used the example of a rowboat, which was drifting by us at the time. I pointed out how it traveled across the water just like the planes did, only there was no space between the boat and the water. We kept talking and I told her about the big-ass bowl I’d thrown on my potting wheel that day. I described how I’d worked and worked to mold that huge lump of clay; that I’d had to grind and grind at it to get it thrown. I pictured the bowl very clearly in my mind.

 

The children were alters of mine, and if I ‘sat’ with them, it would be re-visiting a time in my emotional development which wasn’t easy. I dream a lot about snow. Sometimes –usually – I feel that its an obstacle. This time I looked at a dream dictionary and the symbolism which made sense to me is feeling unable to express oneself emotionally. I guess that’s an obstacle. The plane represents an attempt to communicate with one’s higher self, so it’s interesting that that attempt causes a ripple effect in the snow – a bumpy journey. I’m always surprised when I use a lot of logic in my dreams or refer quite explicitly to things in my waking life; in this case, throwing a big-ass bowl. In dreams we are supposedly using our right brains, which are much more broadly connected, and more suited, neuronally, to insight than reason. Does using my logical left brain in dreams reflect that I do tend to use logic and reason to drown out my emotional self? Is it just habit? To analyze rather than reflect?

          In my analysis of the physics of the waves in the snow, comparing the plane to a boat on water, am I just slogging away with my left-braininess again, or is that, in itself an insight? Water is often a symbol for emotion, and I was pointing out that the boat has no space between it and the water. The snow in this dream, after all, has waves in it, just like water. Snow is frozen water. Hmmmn.

driving with mother

          I was in a small red car with my mother. She was driving down a snowy road, which was too deep for the little car. She started losing traction, and then rode up on the snowbank by the side of the road. We rose up and up, and then turned over. I was really angry at her for driving so stupidly, and I was grateful that we were both wearing seat belts. I was prepared to land on the top of the car, and was anticipating feeling the seat belt cut into my shoulder, but we turned all the way over and landed on the wheels. She just drove on, and again nearly skidded out of control.

          She turned into an un-plowed driveway, and I angrily told her to back up, since this was just someone’s driveway, and she’d get stuck. She ignored me and drove on, right up to someone’s house. It was impossible to see what was under the snow, but I could see that there was stuff. I told her to watch out, since she couldn’t see what was under the snow, but she just drove on, oblivious. She tried to turn around at the front door of the house, but got stuck. She backed into a sort of lanai, and since I was now sitting in the back – it was truck-like now – I reached out and took a post out from under the lanai to make more room.   A woman came out of the house and cheerily asked if we wanted to take out more posts; they didn’t matter at all to her. O.K. I said, and took out a few more. I had to hold up the lanai with my hand.

          We got to a hotel, where mother had checked into a shared room. The room number was 1A. I had stayed in that room before. We had to wander around the hotel for some reason, but finally got to her room. She was going to check out. As we approached the room I saw that other rooms were being cleaned already. I saw that her door was open, so assumed that it was being cleaned as well, but when we went in there was a circle of women sitting on the floor with their luggage and belongings strewn all around. I said hello to them, but they were silent, and didn’t look at us. Mother got her things, and I went to my room for mine. I then lost track of her, but this didn’t bother me at all. I just moved on.

          I went to a court yard or a building site where there was a tradesman I knew, working. He and his helper or partner had made a cozy little nook for themselves with a makeshift bed and other comforts. I was ranging around the site doing something or other, and encountered them here and there. Then it became time for me to leave and I couldn’t find my shoes. I had had a pair of mukluks and a pair of hand-made sandals, but neither could be found. I asked the man, and he hadn’t seen them. We looked at some videos he’d taken of the work site, and I had him slow it way down and back up, hoping to get a shot of the shoes where I’d left them on the deck. We couldn’t see them. His partner came up and, seeing the footage said that he had footage that obviously showed the shoes, which were no longer there. He said he was sure they were gone.

          At one point I was sitting outside the dining hall, where all of my friends were preparing a fancy feast. I should be in there helping, but I’m sitting outside on a snowy path, next to a hedge. I sit there perfectly still, both physically and mentally. I see a woman I know peek out the window at me. I know she wants to know what I’m doing, and expects me to be in there helping. I just sit there. I can see from the corner of my eye that under the hedge is a chin-up bar. I pick it up and do something with it that at least looks useful. There is a purpose, and importance to that chin-up bar which I can’t identify now. I wanted to be inside, but I only felt peace outside, sitting still.

          The man loaned me a pair of socks and shoes, which I said I’d mail back to him when I got home. He seemed tired of me. Tired of my problems, tired of helping me.  We were walking around, here and there, and every step I took, every move I made resulted in another problem. I hoisted myself up on a wooden railing to swing my legs through the gateway, and got a splinter in my right palm. I was so tired of everything going from wrong to worse. I pulled the splinter out, and it turned into a four or five inch catheter, which seemed to have orange blood in it as I threw it to the ground. I was afraid that my hand would bleed a lot, so I pressed my left thumb to the wound tightly. It hurt a lot. I didn’t want anyone to see it so I wouldn’t cause them any more trouble.

         

A mother is supposed to be the driver in a parent-child relationship. There’s no denying that this is how my mother drove our relationship: recklessly, heedless of unseen, probably obstacles, oblivious to my concerns. The hotel represents our lives after our family life ceased: I have my room and she has hers, filled with hostile strangers. She is unable to get it together to meet my departure time, so I just move on. The place I move on to is, perhaps, not so much more “functional” than life in her world. I can’t find my sole/soul and have to borrow. I’m a thorn in everyone’s side.

 

From a particular vantage point, that could be a cogent, poignant description of my emotional place in the world a la my childhood relationship with my mother. From a different vantage point, its just a re-hashing of the uncommon number of stumbling blocks I’ve encountered in my waking life lately, and the fact that my friends are actually getting tired of having to rescue me!

entering heaven

          I was at the entrance of heaven. I was accompanied by an angel who was a regular man with wings. At the entrance there was a series of roads, and the angel told me to wait there for him. I waited and waited, but he didn’t show. There was some time pressure, so eventually I had to just go in without him. I followed one road and then another, and each one ended in a sheer drop-off or some other obstacle. I was also meeting with an entrance functionary for a college. My mother was with me. I had expected to only have to pay – or maybe it was how many credits I’d have to take – 500 of something, but the guy said this and that, and it turned out I’d have to take a full course load, including gym class (for 10), and the total would be 1008. I had eyed the list of classes and said, annoyed, geeze, it’s going to be over 1000, then the guy and my mother painstakingly counted and re-counted and came up with 1008.

          I went in heaven/college and looked around for my angel, who was supposed to help me find a room. He wasn’t there. I started wandering around and looked at various dorm rooms that looked best to me. On the top floor of one building was a sort of apartment, intended for several residents. The view from the window was beautiful. The room was sweet and comforting, with beautiful rugs, lovely wooden furniture and lots of windows. There were a number of women in there. I told them I was looking for a room, and I could see that this must be special housing, probably only for seniors, so I knew I couldn’t stay there, but could they tell me where to look for the best rooms? They all came together and started talking. And talking, and talking, and talking, all gesticulating and talking over one another and drifting from subject to subject.

          I finally wandered away, and then I woke up in a bed in a nice room with lots of windows. There was a stream running through it or next to it, which led to a waterfall. I looked at it, and saw that someone had re-arranged the rocks in the waterfall to change its course. I was annoyed and went to redirect the water so that there would be a pool toward the top, where I could sit and watch the stars. Whoever had redirected the stream had created a pool lower down. I told myself that the pool should be at the top to afford the best view and be convenient to my room, but I knew that I just wanted it to be my way. I went back into the room, and there were a few other women in there. They got in my way, invading my solitude, but I knew they were just being normal people whose mere presence was enough to annoy me. They had pulled all the shades down, and I worked assiduously to raise them, struggling with tangled draw-cords, and practicing telling them that it was because I needed it to be natural light for me to know when to get up. I knew that one of them had blandly asked the others; do you mind if I pull the shades down? And they would have said no, no, no problem and not cared one way or the other, but I cared a lot. Partly just because I wanted it to be my way. I was a little disappointed in myself.

 

In many ways, it’s the story of my life. I did go off to college without feeling that there was anyone supporting me. I’ve always just sort of jumped into new things without guidance. I’ve resented the fact that there was no one to ‘show me around’ or ‘have my back’ but I’ve also done it to myself. Not feeling that I had anyone behind me, I just charge on, since I’ve go to do something. This dream did occur earlier in the night, so if the researchers are correct (and Jung), it pertains to an earlier part of my life. I remember reading about a woman who had a recurring, bizarre dream, and when she had it interpreted by a group of dream people, they came up with an insight which helped her to understand what the dream was really about. Somehow that freed her from both the dream and the power of the underlying issue. I dream a lot about being an outsider, and I recognize where it comes from in my life, but I’m not yet freed.

The stream being redirected might seem like a mighty metaphor, but it only reflects a waking-life incident with a stream. Likewise the blinds…since the days have become so long I don’t bother drawing the blinds at night any more. As for the specific numbers – 500, 1008 and 10, they might just reflect that I’d talked with a new client yesterday, and she first asked if the job would be less than 1000, and after discussing it, we left it at an upper limit of 500.

wandering in Lhasa

           I was wandering in the streets of Lhasa. It was crowded with people. There were women lining up with sacks of barley, presumably to wait for someone to come buy them. It was the Chinese who were to buy them or do something for them at a special time. Some of the women were wearing pastel-colored burqas, and some were not. There was a craftsman with a table set up on the street. He had a bag full of bells, which he was going to attach to something, but he was disappointed with them, since they wouldn’t work for his purpose or they were defective, and he brushed them off his table in disgust. I watched them roll away, and thought I should pick one up to give to a kid, who would surely appreciate it. I had my eye on one, but was hesitant to pick it up because I was afraid people would think I was greedy, since I was a rich foreigner. I also realized I should just do it, and quit second-guessing and worrying about appearances.

          A tiny boy picked it up, and I stopped to talk to him. I played with him in some way, tinkling the bell. He laughed but was also scornful. He spoke little, but what he did say in English was very fluent. I said that his English was very good, and he said well, it should be, and he scampered off. There was a man just out of view who seemed to be telling the boy to lead me somewhere, so I followed him.

          He led me to a residential area. There were ramshackle houses bordering a lake. Even in my mind I thought of it by the Tibetan word for lake: Tso. It was turquoise. The houses were brown, made of wood, and bordered by a very narrow wooden ledge on which to walk, right above the water. We near enough to a doorway to hear what was going on inside. It was a party. I heard a man say that it wasn’t the kind of party he expected, so he was leaving. We turned around and headed back when we heard that. A man came along behind us, who was the boy’s father. He was quite westernized, wearing jeans and a tee shirt, and speaking fluent English. I said once again that the boy spoke great English and the dad said that he should since his mother is an Injie. We went to their house. We had to climb steep stairs in a dim corridor, and two more tiny children, both girls, were playing on the stairs. I thought the little one was too little to be allowed to play on such steep stairs, but the parents thought the older girl was capable of watching the little one, so I thought it must be fine.

          There were two American women, one the boy’s mother, who were wearing patched jeans. They had been cleaning the house. The father responded to something one of them said by saying ‘I know, I know, you’re saying how filthy the houses are in this old part of town’, but they weren’t. I could see that the women had been living abroad for a long time.

 

Victor the horse

          I was planning to go abroad for a short time. I purchased air tickets on line. My friend was also planning to buy tickets, and was aghast that I’d buy them online. When she said that I realized that my tickets had not arrived, and, in fact, I was supposed to have left on the seventh, and today was the eighth. I felt sheepish about this, and didn’t want to tell anyone. I checked the website where I’d bought the tickets, and checked my schedule to see if I’d really missed the flight or what, and never really found out.

          I was near an airport runway, and heard a plane taking off. I looked up and saw that it was a blue tractor-trailer speeding along and then actually taking off. It was airborne for a short while, then it started losing altitude. It landed on a highway below, which was covered in snow. The truck’s motor was very loud and sounded crippled. The truck slowed and veered off the highway, until it was scraping along a fence along the roadway. It was engulfed in blue smoke, and I was ready to report the accident; I was just waiting for the vehicle to come to a stop so I could see if there were any injuries. The truck kept moving, and limped its way back onto the roadway, where there were road workers working.

          The truck drove through the work area, and slowly turned around, heading back toward the airport. As it emerged, it was clear that it was towing a low platform or trailer behind it with some workers standing on it with a ladder. I supposed they were going back for help. Somewhere along the highway I met up with the truck driver and we talked. It turned out that what had happened was not an accident, but just the way they did the job. He talked on and on for a while about his role in the mafia. One time someone had asked him to kill a person with whom he regularly did business, and who was very important in the community. He was proud of the way he’d declined the job and maintained the status quo. I was starting to leave, but I looked back and asked “was that legal? Taking off on the runway like that?” He looked a little shocked and offended and said that that was the way they’d always done it. I deduced that it was not legal.

          I went back to the house, where it was time to get up and go to work or school. In the house hold was Bonnie and her husband, a horse named victor, a foal and Chris. I was gathering clothes and trying to plan my day. I saw outside that it was blizzarding, which surprised me. I tried to think hard about my schedule. I remembered the plane tickets, and wondered how to tell Bonnie, who was supposed to go with me. I wondered if I’d taken the day off work, or if that was yesterday. I walked around the house, and noticed that Victor wasn’t around. I turned the corner into the kitchen and saw the foal and Bonnie and her husband, who were both naked. I asked where Victor was and she raised her head from where she was lying on the floor. I was surprised because she was an adult mare, and adult horses rarely lie down. Then I realized that she was in foal, and maybe in labor. I asked Bonnie and she said yes. Bonnie was then sitting behind victor, who was lying on her back, with her round belly prominent, and her teats huge and bright red. Later I came by again and saw the front hooves and the head emerging from Victor, but the process of the birth was very slow. I knew Bonnie would not be traveling abroad with me.

          Chris and Chris (from college) approached me, diplomatically leading in to asking me for a favor. I was still trying to get my clothes together, and as they talked, I was pulling long johns out of my pants. It was no longer snowing out. Somehow this segued into me being in a sort of gallery, where all my pottery was on display. There were lots of people milling around, looking at the pieces. One man asked me why there were no prices on anything, and I couldn’t answer him. The reason was that I hadn’t really prepared for this sale…I had the stickers, and wanted to sell everything, but just hadn’t had an opportunity to put the stickers on. I said he could just ask me, but this answer disappointed him and he left in disgust.

Victor appeared as an antelope in a previous dream; one which I felt was very significant. Horses, like antelopes, are prey animals who survive by fleeing. In the antelope dream Victor was a young animal, very skittish, who came to me for protection and help. Victor the horse is not only bigger, but older and even giving birth. I think Victor is that skittish part of me who survived by fleeing, who is finally maturing. This Victor is being cared for, and calmly raised her head and said “I’m here”. She hadn’t fled.

 

I find it curious that the truck was blue, and it was engulfed in blue flames. Blue can be indicative of the seventh chakra (crown of the head, thought, connection to the divine, and the chakra which unifies the others), or the sixth, which is associated with the throat, speech and indigo. One could interpret blue either as a chakra, or as a symbol of feeling blue, down and depressed. Neither interpretation grabs me, yet it does seem significant that I noticed all that blue.

 

I keep having dreams about snow being on the ground. One could say snow is purity, white, cleansing and all that, and my waking self loves to play in the snow, but my feeling about it is that its obstructive; just another obstacle making everything all that much harder.

 

There seems to be anxiety about accomplishing things: the plane tickets didn’t pan out, and I even missed the departure date. I didn’t get the pottery priced. I couldn’t get my clothes together. Other people, however, even when engulfed in flames and crashing to the ground and appearing to utterly fail, wind up being highly successful, and even smug (the truck driver). Could that guy be an alter? Nah; he succeeded. None of my alters succeed.

 

biking in a foreign country

          I was in a foreign country, on a bicycle. I got to a large building and brought my bike into it. There was something wrong with it or … anyway a tech-support man came by and looked at it, then went to get a part for it. I went over to the receptionist’s desk and talked to her. We talked about a lot of things, and then I asked her about the road I had ridden in on. Did it go anywhere interesting? Where around here should I go see? She said this road goes through beautiful rolling hills. I went back to my bike and realized that I hadn’t locked it, but there it was, safe and sound. The techie came back with something fixed, but there was also another part in a bag by my stuff. It was a pair of binoculars and also a spotlight. I pointed it out to the techie and he hesitated for a while, then said it must be so-and-so’s and took it away. I fussed with my gear, then left.

          The road recommended by the receptionist went immediately downhill, and was covered with snow. I dragged my feet on the ground and had the brakes on full bore, but still was going faster than I was comfortable with. The road stretched on and on, down and down. As I rounded a bend I could see far in the distance where it flattened out, but I could barely see the road for the snow. Knowing that it would be no fun to go all the way back up, and in the snow at that, I skidded to a halt and headed back up the way I came. As I walked up to the top of the hill I saw my dog sitting on the lip of the road; she had decided long before I did that it was too steep and snowy.

          When I got back to the building I asked the receptionist what the building was about, and what the structure on top of the building, made of interwoven wire was. She didn’t know. I was suddenly traveling with a female friend, and we were joined by a group of local men. The receptionist had gone to lunch. The men came with guitars, and they were all musicians. One started singing a song he’d written, then another recited poetry. They went around the circle, with each one reciting an original poem. It got to my friend, and she managed to tell a poetic story. Then it was my turn, and I could only think of the ditty that goes “whether the weather is hot, or whether the weather is cold….” But I knew it was inappropriate, so I just stayed quiet and avoided looking at anyone.

          A servant came with two large trays of food and put them before my friend and I. There was fish, vegetables, fresh bread and other things, plus water. I expected the servant to come with food for everyone else, so I didn’t start eating; only sipping the water. My friend was picking at hers. The men began talking to each other in Pashto, and they became quite tribal looking. I was just about to ask them about the various languages they spoke, and how they decided which to speak when, but one of the men started to say something about just that topic, but then he veered off to talk about how he’s naturally left-handed but as a child they forced him to be right-handed.

 

          I recently was in a strange city, and explored it by bicycle. There I went to a local bike shop for a lock, and had to return a few times. Snow to me right now represents an obstacle – as it was in the dream. Many dream dictionaries indicate that snow means purity and cleanliness, but to me it is something that thwarts me. In previous periods of my life it has meant joy and fun, but not now. I was careening almost out of control. That refers to a habit which is almost out of control.

           A building could be symbolic of the body, but to me the building in this dream had a strong feeling about it which I can’t quite pin down. It was significant; as a museum or an historic building would be. It was public. I didn’t know even in the dream what it was, and the receptionist couldn’t tell me. I guess its symbolic of my perennial confusion about society – I’ve always felt that there was some secret about “how to be” in the world that no one was telling me. I’ve always felt a bit on the outside. My dog has always been smarter than I, and patiently waits for me to get over my delusions.

          Likewise, the tribal men spoke languages I didn’t understand, but was interested in, and wanted to ask about. They also were tight with poetry, which has always been a mystery to me. I’ve found exactly one poet whose work I found accessible, and he died young, leaving behind just a slim volume of poems. The man who spoke about being forced into right-handedness could be my alter who was forced to conform. All this interpretation makes sense and feels right, but why the heck am I dealing with such ancient issues now? The female friend seems to be A., with whom I went to college. We traveled to Nepal together, which time-stamps this dream to those college days. What was I dealing with then, and is it now time to give it up?