at college

          I was at college and the school year was just starting, but I’d arrived late, and didn’t have a schedule. I found a man who was some sort of administrator and asked him for one, but he was annoyed with me for being late and didn’t give me much. I pointed out that I hadn’t gotten anything in the mail from them, but still he thought I was irresponsible, so he wasn’t going to help me much. I got two sheets of paper from him which had vague outlines of what I was supposed to do. I understood that there was a set of courses that all people in their junior year were to take. I set about looking for people I recognized from my class. I saw Jeff J. and two other people I remembered, so I sat with them.

          It turned out to be a class about an ancient text, and I and one other woman didn’t have it yet, so we couldn’t discuss it. The instructor was also a little miffed by our irresponsibility, but he dredged out three used copies of the text for us. We chose the ones we wanted, though I may have selected the one I wanted too quickly, not letting the other woman get a good look at it. I opened it up wide and cracked the spine so that it would stay open to the page I was reading, but then the spine gave way entirely and some of the pages came unglued, flying out over the desk. The teacher started to react, but I quickly set about collecting the pages and putting them back in order. I said “this is going to be a zen experience” meaning that I’d have to be very, very careful when handling the book. The pages around number 72 to 82 were out of order, and it seemed impossible to put them back in order without having to rip them apart even more, but I puzzled it out.

          It was time for the next class, so I got up and started wandering around. I walked past some other classes which were for freshmen. I walked past a series of doors with peoples’ names on them. I read them carefully, trying to memorize who they were and what they did. There was a series of rooms with sandboxes, bathtubs and other odd things, and I couldn’t quite figure out their purpose. In one there was a strange sound, and I looked in and around a corner and saw a cartoon parrot. I found a very ornate bathroom and went in. The toilet had lots of pee in it, and I remembered that this was in California, where people conserve water by not flushing every time. I sat down for a while, but didn’t have to pee. I left.

          I walked up some stairs which were very artfully designed with various types of brushed metal, glass blocks and other architectural flourishes. The section of campus I was in now was all very architecturally artistic. I realized that because this was an avante-guard school academically, they had to have architecture that also made you think. I reached a courtyard and sat down to puzzle out where to go next. It was chilly, and I looked up, seeing the fog. I said “I forgot how cold it is in California” to which someone asked me where I’d been. I told them I’d been in Montana. Another woman was also trying to figure out where to go, and we looked at my papers and the clock. It seemed to be after one, and that somehow we’d missed having a lunch hour, though it showed one on the schedule. It seemed that our entire day would be filled with classes, with no breaks and no study halls, which seemed odd to me. When would we read all the books we needed to read? We went off to our next class.

corpses

          I was riding my bike home, passing mile-marker 34 (which is actually some miles from home) when I saw a corpse by the side of the road. It was a bike rider, and I assumed he had been hit by a car. His bike was nearby. His head had been cut off and was lying nearby. His torso and limbs didn’t seem to be attached. I remembered that I’d seen it the day before, and maybe even the past few days, but I hadn’t wanted  to call the authorities. Today I decided I’d better. I did something with putting the body parts into plastic bags, but the parts were rotting and off-gassing such that the bags kept getting filled with green, slimy liquid. I’d pour the liquid out, and the stench was unbearable. When I got home I called the cops, and the detective asked how I knew he was dead, and I said he had been decapitated. Then he asked a lot more questions, and said he would be out. He asked how to find it. I told him it was on the right side of the road, right at mile marker 34.

          I continued riding my bike somewhere, and came to a turn-off in the road which led to a mill or plant of some sort. A tall, dark-haired man was walking purposefully out that road, looking around intently for something. The timing of events is confusing here, since some things happened both before and after something else. One thing was that a woman and a long baby carriage came shooting out that road, either propelled by the woman or by something else; flew across the main road and landed in some trees next to the road, bordering a steep cliff. They were dead. The man was looking for them, but also didn’t notice them shoot out, because I pointed them out to him, and he said yes, they were from the mill. He knew them, but he wasn’t interested in their deaths. The carriage was precariously teetering on the cliff, and I was very aware of the stillness all around me.

I rode back to mile marker 34 to tell the cop about the new corpses, but he had already left. He’d painted some symbols on the highway to indicate that he’d been there and taken the body.

 

Corpses certainly symbolize something which is no longer useful or is dead. Whatever they are, I don’t offer them much reverence. I ignore the man for days, and then, if you take the tall dark man to be my alter, I pretty much ignore the dead woman and baby. I have had some psychological breakthroughs in my waking life lately, and I take these corpses to be the emotional patterns I’ve given up on. Even though I didn’t feel distress at the deaths in my dream, I think its probably a good idea to recognize  and appreciate the emotional patterns which served me for so long; to sort of have a wake for them.

 

I’m not very good with numbers. 34 is pretty specific in this dream. The bicycle has two wheels, so there is that string of 2,3,4. Mile markers could be a symbol of age, so what happened to me when I was 34? I moved here. Actually, quite a lot happened to me psychologically then. Yes, I can see how a pattern began to be established then, which is not so useful for me any more. Hey, that was instructive!

a long journey

          I was driving on a long journey. It was night. I drove over a long covered bridge or through a long tunnel, in which construction was being done. I noticed that the workers had left tools on the scaffolding by the side of the road. There were handsaws and other assorted tools. I was absent-mindedly counting the number of red jugs of antifreeze or something, and wound up almost running over other things which had been left behind in the roadway. Chunks of wood started falling from above, and I paid strict attention to the road again, steering away from the side. We approached a toll booth.

          Now I was on the far left of the roadway, and couldn’t see well if I was in the correct lane. There were huge trucks coming toward me through the toll booth. As I neared it I saw that there was one lane going in my direction to the left of the trucks. When I got to the booth, I asked the man how much it cost. He indicated that I had a packet with me, and it had a chart on which you had to calculate your toll based on the zip code of your origination. It was in Canada, and I wasn’t clear on how the zip codes worked, so I said I’d come from Ontario, which was near to where I’d actually started. The man said “pfff… that’s a dollar” ,  shrugging his shoulders in disbelief at how uninformed I was and how easy it was to know that. I had four hundred dollar bills with me, in the shape of square slices of salami, along with a sandwich. I carefully bundled those together and stacked them on the dashboard, wedging them against the glass. It was difficult to do. Then I tried to get into my pockets for my small change, but had to undo the seatbelt and all sorts of other hassles.

          The men from the toll booth had me pull over. As I fumbled around they twice got disgusted and tried to just wave me on; to forgive the toll, but I wanted to pay. I finally got my money out, and it was in the form of glass objects. I pulled out a large light bulb – worth 50 cents. Then I found a small light bulb, worth 25 cents. I knew there was another small bulb in there, but couldn’t find it, so pulled out a tiny glass salt shaker and handed it to the man. He took it and another shaker as well. I said “oh, for salt and pepper!” I was happy to give him both. I prepared to drive away, and as I was backing up I saw that the blue van that had been parked next to me had already backed into the driving lane, and I was pulling in front of it. I had some trouble with the clutch and the brake because I hadn’t driven this van in a long time, so it took me a little time to get out of their way, but I thought they didn’t mind.

          I arrived at the airport and parked. I walked through the terminal for miles, feeling lost. There were lots of long hallways with little or no signs, but I just kept going, hoping I was going toward my destination. I suddenly came to a departure area, and found my friend Alisa there, camped out with a huge pile of luggage. I asked her if I was in the right place and she said ‘well, we’re just here by the men’s room…” and I noticed that indeed we were. It turned out that we were with a group of young people headed out on  a trip. I vaguely recognized some of them. One woman was lying on her stomach, wearing a kimono, which was spread out on the floor in a precise pattern. She had red hair. A man was ministering to her in some way – maybe giving her a back rub – and she tipped her head up to look at me. She asked if I remembered the time when she had just installed a fireplace, and there was a party at her house. She said that I drank a six pack of beer and then went out in the rain, which later froze. She was very worried about me, thinking I’d surely get a yeast infection. It made no sense to me. I couldn’t remember her, or the party, and didn’t understand how I’d get a yeast infection. I tried hard to remember, but couldn’t

          I went back to Alisa and realized that I’d left my money with the sandwich in my vehicle. I asked the group if one of them who had a good sense of direction would help me find my way back to the parking lot to get it. No one really wanted to, but then a man with a sandy beard said he would. An Asian woman asked if I’d take this small tool kit back to her car since I was going anyway, and I said ‘sure’. Our group leader showed up, and said that we’d be boarding at 3am, and she’d be back then, I looked at the clock and couldn’t understand if that was in a half an hour or in 11 ½ hours. Alisa didn’t know either. She thought that if it was going to be that long, we should find a place to sleep. The man who was going to help me had gone over to the ticket counter and was doing some business. I approached him cautiously, and asked if we were still going to get my money. He said no, since we were leaving in a half an hour, there wouldn’t be time. I said that I couldn’t go on an international journey without money! And he said that the leader would figure out a way to help me once we got there. I was worried about this, but couldn’t see an option. I asked Alisa to lend me some money for the journey; just $40 so I could buy some stuff in the duty-free shop and food and what not. She at first said no quite emphatically, but then I explained that the leader would help me get money when we got there, so I’d pay her right back. She pulled out her purse and mimed taking out only a few pennies, though I was pretty sure she was just joking.

 

The bizarre elements of this dream, like salami money, light bulbs, salt shakers, hand saws  and what not are comical in their frequency. Each element makes sense to me, or made sense to me when I was first recalling the dream because they symbolized one thing or another, or because they were holdovers from another part of the dream, but when I wrote it down, I just wrote “salami money” and by the time I got it all written out, I’d forgotten the meanings.

 

If I ignore the bizarre bits, I see: journey, uncertainty, toll, journey, uncertainty, uncertainty, fear, dependency, rejection. I can look back on my life and see how that string of elements is emblematic of my psychological development: relations with my family, feelings of inadequacy and etc, or I can petition the dream for more information. In the dream I’m at the mercy of others a lot – the toll men, the man with a sense of direction, Alisa, the leader – and money is always required. Perhaps the message is to find my own source of “money” or strength, rather than always scrabbling around for it, losing it, depending on others for it. Yeah, that’s what it means to me.

drilling wells and polar bears

          I was on a job site where a number or wells were being drilled. Most of the other workers had worked this type of job before, but I hadn’t there were only three women amongst all the men. The boss said that we should partner up, as one partner would drill in the mornings and the other in the afternoons. I didn’t know anyone and so I just waited to see who would be left out, to be my partner. A woman stood up on the far side of the group and said she would volunteer, as it made most sense for her to – and then went over to someone else. I was left with a guy near me, but then another guy came over to us and it was unclear whose partner was whose.

          The shift before us came off duty, and one guy was carrying the other over his shoulder. I started to wonder if I’d be strong enough. I was aware of the fact that I used to be in great shape, but wasn’t any more. Our group went to the drills. There was a central contraption, with smaller contraptions circled around it. We workers would go to the smaller contraptions and grab a set of handlebars and bang them down into the ground. I watched my partner very carefully to see how it was done.

          We went to the hotel and checked in. We were told that it would cost eight dollars per hour. I said to my partner that it would be a wash, then, since we were getting paid eight dollars per hour. I’d walk away with nothing except all the gas I’d used getting here. The others somehow made money since they didn’t drive there, and worked more days.

          I had another dream either just before or just after this, which was enormously important. It incorporated four exceptionally salient observations about my psyche or about the future or something incredibly illuminating. I wanted very much to remember it. When I next fell asleep – or deeper asleep, I guess – I dreamt that I reached into my briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper on which I’d written titles for three dreams: The Wizard of Silence, Drilling and one other. Later I woke here and there, and remembered that piece of paper.

          My last thread involved a cinematic scene in the Arctic. It was set at night, with very artful set lighting which added emotion to the visually simple backdrop of ice and sea. A group of men were fishing or hunting in a boat. One man stepped onto an ice floe and out of view. A huge ship then came by, and being unable to see the little boat, ran it right over. After it sailed away we saw the little boat with dead little men on it. The camera panned to the ice floe, where we see the remaining man on the edge of the floe, eating blubber with his knife. The sound of slurpy, squishy smacking was clear. Then the camera panned left, and we see that the floe is also occupied by a great number of polar bears. Big wave come along and push other ice floes into ours, and we get a sense of the danger. Waves break over the floes and wash around the bears, which seem unconcerned. The water glides over the ice creating a beautiful, glittering effect which is also lulling.

waiting for cigarettes

          I was traveling with some men on a big, dark, military-like vehicle. One of the men was my boyfriend, but for some reason I had to travel apart from him. I was disappointed because he didn’t think it was necessary or important for me to be with him. We came to a town where we stopped for gas or something. I went to where the boyfriend was traveling, to get my cigarettes. I had quit, but still had a few cigarettes left, and for some reason I thought that I could now smoke with impunity. I rifled through my things, and couldn’t find them, then realized that I may as well take it all with me, so I gathered it up. I then asked the boyfriend where my cigarettes were and he said they were in his pocket….back at home.

          I went to a store, and my friend Margie was in there, buying fancy foreign cigarettes and some other stuff. She paid with a hundred dollar bill, and the clerk counted out her change. She left. I felt in my pocket and found a hundred dollar bill plus a ten, a five and some ones. I folded the hundred carefully into a tiny square and hid it in the watch pocket of my jeans. I took out the rest of the money and smoothed it out and held it in my hands on the counter. When my turn came I asked for a packet of Camels. The clerk searched around in the store for Camels. She found some other types and put them away in the overhead cabinet. She found this and that, and served other customers and I kept waiting.

          Finally I went to sit down. One of the clerks came over to me and said that they were still looking. I was mad. She left. I was sitting in their house. I started to push objects around out of anger. I took their rug and wadded it up and shoved it away from where it was supposed to be. I was bristling with anger, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything really destructive. I checked at the counter again, but they hadn’t found the cigarettes. I went outside and waited in the garden. I waited and waited. The clerk came by and I asked her again and again. Finally I went in again and asked again, and she said, Oh, yeah, here they are” very casually, as if I hadn’t been waiting. I was furious. I started shouting at her that I’d been waiting for four hours!!!! She told me what the cigarettes cost and I said no, she owed me three dollars for the four hours I could have been working!!!! I took a pizza cutter from the counter and wanted to hurl it across the room and break something, but I couldn’t, so I stabbed the floor with it again and again.

          When I woke up I felt terrible. I was ashamed of myself, and surprised that my dreaming self hadn’t just gone to another store. I tried to forget the dream, but then realized that I remembered it in great detail, so decided to remember it and write it down.