revitalized head

          I was at a summer camp of some sort. Someplace I’d been before a long time ago, which had been in disuse for some time. There was a bed that served as a gurney, and was used to treat trauma patients. I started cleaning it up. There was a great knot of blue strapping bunched up over the bed, attached to an instrument and as I reached for it to unknot it, I said to whoever was with me that the last patient must have been a really critical one. As I tugged the sheets and stuff off, I saw that there was a head still there. I said that the EMTs must have been in such a hurry that they forgot the head. I was dismayed to find it, but knew I’d have to take care of it. I was glad I hadn’t been one of the EMTs, who had had to deal with a decapitation.

          I pulled the sheets back further, and saw a torso of a man. I looked back at the head, and saw that one of the eyes was cracked open. I grabbed a pen light and shined it into his eyes, saying loudly – in the way EMTs do – directly to the patient “sir! Sir! Can you hear me?!” His eyes opened more, and I asked “What’s your name?! Do you know what day it is?!” I leaped into EMT mode and told my partner that he was alert and oriented times 2 as the patient answered my questions groggily.

          As time wore on, my patient got up and appeared to be pretty much okay. Somehow there was another patient then; a woman. The man had a fold-up bike and I deduced that he had been riding and had an accident, and that it had been last year, that he had been here all winter.  He prepared the bike to ride. I asked Linda, who had appeared from nowhere, if the ambulance crew had a jump kit in the barn since I’d have to take their vitals. She said something non-committal. The crew had closed up the shop, locked everything up to keep their tools safe. They had never imagined that someone might need them when they weren’t there.

          The man was now standing up on top of a table, and the woman was sitting on the bed. I fiddled around, finding my blood pressure cuff. The man said to just let us go, since he felt fine. He was wearing black clothes, with a black cloth wrapped around his head. I signaled for him to lean over to me, and I whispered to him that I had to know the woman’s blood pressure because if it was very high, and then she tried to exercise, she could blow a gasket, and that he needed to go along with it.

 

Could the man be my animus? A part of my psyche which was injured and disassociated from me a long time ago, which is now revitalized.

our group disbands

          A group of us was camping somewhere. There was a dispute amongst us and two of us ran away, becoming threats to the rest. B.R. had run away and hidden, waiting for the fray to subside. The two came back or were caught and we settled down. I then remembered that BR was missing. I stepped outside and shouted out into the night to him. He called back “what?” and I told him it was safe to come back. He had been hiding in a shed. I realized that he would not have had anything to drink in there, and that he must be happy to be able to come out. He came back to the cabin and began gathering his things together. He announced that he was going to quit us. He held up some photographs he’d taken – quite good ones – and said he was going back to publish a book of photographs. His clothes kept changing from one outfit to another.

          The volunteer ambulance service arrived for him, and he lay down on a gurney. The crew began undressing him, and treating him in various ways. They strapped him down and drove away. I was very sorry to see him go. He was one of the longest-standing members of our group. Another older man was also leaving, and I had a sense of sorrow that the group was no longer what it was. I didn’t feel abandoned, but just hyper-aware that an era was passing.

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.

staying in a guest house

                    I was not quite awake at 5 a.m., but found myself on the phone with the postmaster of a nearby town. She asked why I was calling and I told her I couldn’t quite remember; could she? We thought about it for a while and slowly pieced together that I had a key that one of her drivers needed, and he needed to sign a form to take it from me. I went over there. I asked the postmaster if she always opened the post office at 5 a.m., and she said she got here at 3. I said ‘oh, I see, you process the mail and then a clerk comes and mans the window after opening hours.’

           I felt a crack in my thumbnail, and then I realized that I had bit it the night before in a fit of anger. The crack didn’t hurt, but it ran from the end of the nail right across, to the nail bed, nearly splitting it in half. I kept putting the thumb in my mouth to … I don’t know… somehow I thought it would help it to heal or protect it. Eventually I felt the nail come off in my mouth, and I had a hard time spitting out the pieces, which I kept carefully in my other hand. I thought the tissue under the nail would be painful, but it wasn’t. It was only a little tingly. As I used it more, and it brushed against things, it felt sort of okay.

           I was staying in a house that was sort of a guest house. The people who lived there just let lots of needy people stay with them. I woke up in a room and the clock said 6:30, so I thought I had overslept. I got up and found that I had a bra on but no underwear. I went to the dresser to get dressed and people came in the room, wheeling a patient on a gurney. I was standing in a corner. Then Mike B. came in and he looked right at me, so I said ‘can’t you wait for a minute? Just give me a few minutes here!’ and he left, but Skip M. came in and just sat on a bed, facing away, looking at the patient, so I let him stay. I couldn’t find underwear or socks, and after looking for quite a while I finally found a really old, ratty pair. I finished getting dressed and left.

          In the kitchen there was one girl at the table, making sandwiches. The hosts left plates of cold cuts and bread so that the guests could find something to eat. I looked in the fridge and it was full of cartons of fancy juices or soy milk or something, and then there were half-finished glasses of milk. I thought these were not for us. I looked around the kitchen for drinking glasses and couldn’t find any. There were some men sitting around and finally one asked what I was looking for. I then saw what looked like a glass so I pointed to it and said that’. In the cupboard was a bunch of pottery pitchers with prices on them, and so I realized that it wasn’t a drinking glass. There were others, but they looked like good china so I didn’t want to use them. I went to the counter and looked at some of the left over food there. It all looked cold, clammy and unidentifiable. The woman came to put something away and said something about how it would be silly to have breakfast at night. I said ‘what?” and she said it was 6 o’clock at night, not in the morning.  She said I’d been in the hot tub in the afternoon, then went down for a nap. Smug. I thought about that, but I couldn’t quite remember if she was right.

          I sat down to eat or something and one of the guys started to get up, saying he had to get to work. There were clocks all around, all saying different things. I knew I had to be to work at 7:30. I asked the man if that clock was right and he said no. I pointed to his watch and asked what the time was and he said six o’clock. I looked outside to see if the light was fading or getting brighter. The guy got up and, in an effort to be nice he said I could come help him. Then he said that the girl had only been joking.

          I went downstairs to where there was a reception room. Sue M. was there with someone else. We chit-chatted about things, noting that she couldn’t leave knick-knacks on the counter because people stole them. She had some coffee and muffins on the counter, and I eagerly asked if I could have some since I hadn’t eaten. She very graciously and kindly found a plate and piled it with all sorts of good food and urged me to take it upstairs to eat, but I said ‘I’d rather stay here with you.’

          I went back to the room, and was joined by someone on the walk. She asked me which was my room, and I told her, and she said ‘oh, you’ve taken the whole hall?’ and I knew what she meant since my room was down a sort of private hall, but someone else had rented the whole thing and sublet to me. But my room was a very nice one. When we got there I saw that my door was open.  We slowed down and sort of peered around to see if there was a burglar around, but no one was there. My room had become a sort of shop, with lots of antique Bhutanese textiles in it. I looked around for my wallet and other valuables, but before I could complete my search the joking girl came in. She was wearing a cheap cotton and wool version of my textiles and was thrilled to see more of the same. She apologized for trying to fool me about the time and then admired my textiles and talked about how she had made the one she was wearing in her weaving class. Bits and pieces of the cloth were falling off it all over, littering the floor with yarn. I looked at hers, and it was coarse and not very well made, at least compared to the ones in my shop. I was showing someone how the discontinuous supplemental weft was used to achieve the patterns, and the joking girl started to explain it, too, wanting to be the one who knew.

          I woke up with Bonnie Raitt’s song that goes “I guess my love’s got no business, no business calling your name.” It took me a while to remember the lyrics, and part of the riff was definitely from a different Raitt song, but the strong, deep, funky, bouncy beat was strong in my head.

 

There’s a theme of separation and integration. It’s a guest house, so we were all there, and the hosts were caring for us, but we weren’t one group or one family. The joking girl was mean and then came to join me. The men around the kitchen were all separate, and then stepped in to help me. Sue M., who normally doesn’t like me very much at all, was all kindness. My room was part of the hall, but not of it, since the rest of the hall was someone else’s. The joking girl’s cloth was woven, but was falling apart. That Skip was being kind by turning his back on me. My thumbnail falling apart.

 

I’m not getting the nourishment I need. I’m looking, looking, looking. Eventually the things that seem difficult get resolved. I hope it is prescient.

free falling

          I was in a courtyard outside a building. There was a tall wall separating it from a parking lot. The cement wall had a series of railings on it’s top. I was walking along this wall, stepping carefully between the rails and balancing carefully. Suddenly I was joined by a lot of students. I asked the woman I was with where they all came from, but got no answer. Everyone was moving back and forth across the top of the wall aimlessly. I decided it was too crowded and maneuvered myself to the side of the wall bordering the courtyard. The soil sloped steeply up to the wall, and I planned to carefully angle my way down the slope, but the point I was at had very loose, friable soil which would avalanche if I tried it, so I grabbed at the wall, saying to someone that I’d wait until I got to firmer ground. The chunk of wall I had grabbed broke away, and I found myself falling, looking down about twenty feet to rocky ground.

          There were people below as well, and a man in a red shirt stepped forward to catch me. My fall was preternaturally slow, and I was still holding that chunk of wall. I came to a soft landing onto a small patch of grass, with the help of the man in red. On top of the wall I had seen a purple wool scarf. I went into the building and saw my friend who was wearing that scarf. Inside there was a conference or party going on. I walked through the dining room, and saw Neva, a three year old, dancing and jumping around. She knocked over a glass of wine and the entire floor was covered in broken glass. I grabbed Neva and held her to my chest while she kept wriggling. I was on one knee because I had glass in the bottom of that foot. I used my other foot to carefully scoot us across the floor and give Neva to her mother. I went to look for a broom, but got sidetracked.

          There was something about my friend and I getting muddy hands and feet and getting our clothes wet and subsequently freezing. We tumbled into a room, smearing the walls with muddy handprints and lay down. I fell asleep, and then woke up in my bed in this reality. I looked around and then went back to sleep, which had me waking up in the dream again. My father and step mother were at the door of the room with the muddy walls. I had trouble ‘waking up’. Dad handed me a wet cloth which he said I had brought in with me. I thanked him, and said it seems I had just lay down for a nap. I was still groggy, and had trouble getting my long hair out of my eyes. I got up.

          Then I woke up to a sharp sound of a door shutting. I wasn’t sure where I was, and if I should be alarmed by the noise. I guessed that I was in the school building or whatever it was. A man sat softly on my bed and put his hand on my shoulder, whispering “are you awake?” and “you need to wake up”. I turned my head and saw that he was ghostly. I tried to push his hand away, but still didn’t have control over my muscles. I knew he was shaking my shoulder as he continued to tell me to wake up, but I felt no movement. I kept trying to move until I finally woke up and swung my arm through the air. I realized I was in bed at home, and concluded that the sound was definitely not something I should have heard as no one should be here but me. I heard my dog snorting softly on the floor. As I drifted off again I heard some more sharp sounds, but I was sure that they were part of a dream, so they didn’t bother me.

 

Falling in dreams is usually interpreted as feeling out of control. Here I’m only a little out of control. Last night I woke up repeatedly, and I think the cloths that keep appearing in the dream are just crossover awareness of my bedclothes. The broken glass segment is probably about danger; a dangerous state of being, being out of control, being injured. So is the segment about the wall. Danger, caution, and care needed. I use the word ‘carefully’ over and over. 

feeding the horse

          I was walking in a wooded area. I went through a gate and there was a horse tethered nearby. It seemed to be very high-strung, and came toward me. I had to cross the area which the horse could reach, but I decided to walk around, staying out of her range. As I was doing this two women came along the road on which I had come and asked who I was going to see. They were a little accusing in their tone and I was a little defensive or evasive when I said brightly: everyone. I saw a yellow breasted bird alight on the fence post. As I looked at it the crest of the bird turned a bright red. The two women came closer and I said to them that I thought it best to stay out of the range of the horse.

          The women joined me and the horse was anxiously trying to reach us. It had to clamber over boulders and around trees. As we watched, a group of men approached from the opposite direction. They seemed to be ranchers. One was a man I had seen in a picture earlier. Scott had shown me an old picture of a man and asked me if I recognized him. He had white hair and dark rimmed glasses. I couldn’t see him well. I dropped the picture and looked through some others, but the first one was the clearest. I picked it up and looked carefully but I didn’t recognize him. Now here he was.

          Something happened with the gates, and the horse got out, chasing after one of the women. She swiftly went back into the corral (the tether was now a corral) and the horse followed. She adroitly climbed through the bars of the corral, while someone closed the gate. The ranchers said we should feed the horse some special feed. There was an oil, a white substance like yogurt, and we were to add a few horse feed pellets to that. I went into the corral and prepared the feed. I asked one of the women to go get the pellets, and she came back with green gummy candy instead of pellets. It was a special treat that the horse would like, so I added them and gave it to the horse.

          At the place we were going to, workmen were installing a septic tank for me. They had dug the hole for it and trenches for the pipes, which were slowly filling up with water. A sink hole developed beneath a road and I could see there was water just below the surface of the road. I could see through the water to the foundation of the house. The water had filled the hole for the septic tank almost to the top, and it was flowing out the outlet hole, but not very fast. I was worried that the tank would float. I was going to bring it up to the workmen, but somehow I couldn’t.

 

I dream about horses or antelopes pretty regularly. I’ve always thought that they represent the part of my psyche which responds to threats with flight. Here, that part of me is so frantic it has to be contained, and no one can come close until the end when I and some of the other alters have compassion for her. While writing the dream out I kept wanting to refer to the horse as ‘her’, but kept not doing it. I guess I felt that there was no reason to believe it was a filly.

 

The old man from the picture might be another alter with whom I’m not it touch. He seems very capable, so I’d like him to come forward! Scott is someone who is a “fixer”; capable and ready to help me. He figured more in the part about the septic tank, but I can only remember little bits and pieces. Water is often interpreted as a symbol for emotion, and the state of the water indicative of your emotional state. Here, the water is clear enough to see through, but my thinking mind sees that it could be problematic.