Clothes shopping and boots

Just remembered that I've been having a lot of dreams lately about clothes shopping and boots.  Shopping in expensive places (although sometimes places like Kohls or Sears).  Looking at exotic wear, especially boots.  Very fancy ones, platform boots. 

Odd, since I don't much enjoy clothes shopping.

Strange Hotel

This post is part of an ongoing effort to make sense of my dreams:

I was in a strange city, staying in a beautiful hotel.  My room was beautiful, but suddenly I had two roommates.  They were young women, and talkative.  I left the room to get some peace.  I went outside.  My husband and youngest son, Brian were there.  Brian was about twelve.  We all decided to go for a walk to a playground.  The playground was down a long gravel road.  We stopped short because we saw a baby crocodile walking up the road.  There was another animal in the bushes, very large.  In the dream we called it a badger, but I don't know what it was.  To the right were homes, and I heard a mother calling a young child.  I thought, what a dangerous place for children. 

The part that I left out:  When I first entered the room, there was a beautiful young African-American woman on my bed.  She was masturbating.  I shouldn't have left this part out, because I think it says something about vitality.  I was talking about vitality in one of my classes that day.  And, symbolically, sex is vitality. 

Also, I had shown The Power of Myth to my Imaginative Writing class.  Afterwards, my friend Sally and I had talked about mothering by example, showing children how to be compassionate in a world that is sometimes dangerous and cruel.  Sally and I had also talked about vitality.  About participating fully in the world, as Joseph Campbell discusses in Power of Myth. 

Packing to Go Home

I was very amused by one of my recent dreams. The meaning of the dream is obvious in the context of my activities in the days prior. I'd been working hard on my second Floreta story, and it was getting too big and complicated. It had lost its narrative drive, its ability to make a powerful, clear point. I was frustrated because I couldn't fit everything into the story that I wanted to.

So I dreamed that I was in a strange city--Paris--and I was trying to pack my luggage in time to get on my plane. But I found I had too much stuff, and it was all disorganized: it was everywhere! I was stuffing my bags but then I'd find more stuff under chairs, heaped in piles along the walls. And time was running out to catch my plane. I was afraid I'd never get home.

So obvious, right? Needless to say, the next day I dismantled the story in its overblown form, realizing that I had at least three good stories in that one manuscript. I laughed about that dream all day.

And I finished a story I'm proud of with lots of stuff to spare for more stories!

Bathtub Dream

I had a strange dream last night. I was living in a huge house, a very old house with several storeys, rooftop statues. It was in a city. It was a dream about a haunting. Somehow I was on the roof and knocked over several stone statues. Inside the house was a black bathtub in which my youngest child was bathing. It was a huge marble tub, and I had lined it with a sheet so that he wouldn't slide in the tub and hurt himself. Suddenly I got a bad feeling concerning the haunting and went to check on my child. He had disappeared. The dream ended with me frantically searching for him. This dream is similar to the one I had earlier about the lost child on the beach, except this dream had a more domestic setting. As I write this I know that this house is similar to one we lived in in the 1990s, a duplex we rented in Bowling Green. It was a huge, crumbling mansion with a large tub (although not a black one). I have been dreaming of versions of this house for some time, including dreams in which I purchase the house but must move it to a rural setting.

Dreams II: Our Thoughts Are Hooks

Ever since the other night when I had so many beautiful dreams, I've wanted to repeat the experience. But the subconscious does what it wants, and last night I dreamed of the beach again, but it was not a pleasant dream--no snow falling like flower petals into the sea.

Instead, the dream was discomfiting, although it has been hard for me to say why. Tonight as I was going through a poetry anthology, I found a poem that felt familiar, though it was only a familiarity-in-strangeness. I don't recall ever having read the poem before, and the event described in the poem is not exactly like that of my dream. Still, the poem captures the eeriness of my dream.

"Head of a Doll" by Charles Simic:

Whose demon are you,
Whose god? I asked
Of the painted mouth
Half buried in the sand.

A brooding gull
Made a brief assessment,
And tiptoed away
Nodding to himself.

At dusk a firefly or two
Dowsed its eye pits.
And later, toward midnight,
I even heard mice.

There is a sense of menace in this poem. The doll is no mere toy but a talisman which carries the speaker into a realm of deep mystery.

For centuries dolls have housed powerful spirits. Kachinas, for instance, are an important part of Pueblo cosmology. In the fairy tale, "Baba Yaga," Vasilissa carries a doll which is animated with the spirit of her dead mother. The speaker recognizes that the doll--whether god or demon, is representative of an unassuageable fear.

It doesn't take the "brooding gull" long to size up the situation. He nods and tiptoes away, quite the way anyone might act when encountering a deep, inevitable, and perhaps uncomfortable truth.

In the Baba Yaga tale, the doll's eyes shine like fireflies with the spirit of the girl's mother. In Simic's poem, however, the fireflies do not animate the doll but call attention only to its dilapidation. The mice, nocturnal creatures associated with wastage and death, complete the thought: This is a poem of change and disintegration, about the ravages of time.

My dream was also about change: loss and disintegration. In the dream, I was younger. I was married to a man whom I did not recognize, a man much different than my husband in real life. The dream-husband was selfish and vain. He couldn't love me because he only loved himself. We had a child. The child and I went for a swim and then came back onto the sand.

I left a child on the beach alone. When I returned, the child was gone. I called and called, but nothing answered. A little ways into the surf was a broken statue of a mother with child.

I believe I dreamed this at least partly in response to the death of John Travolta's son, which happened in the Bahamas. Upon hearing of the death, I felt the loss myself, though I could not situate the feeling exactly.

Simic's poem identifies the origin of the pain as somewhere ancient, as part of my genetic memory. In another poem, Simic explains further. He writes of how we may come to our understanding of life.

He says it's like fishing in the dark: our thoughts are hooks, our hearts the raw bait.

Dreams: seascapes and wishing wells

I had a lot of unusual but pleasurable dreams last night. One took place near a frigid seascape. All I really remember is that somebody wanted to walk on the beach with me to "watch the snowflakes fall like flower petals into the sea."

Another dream was about three young elementary school teachers. One was a handsome young man whose life was falling apart. He confided in two women who taught on his same hall. The most memorable part of the dream is that the young man went into one of the women's classrooms and asked her to show him the children's art projects. There had been a contest, and he wanted to see the first place winner.

It was a clay wishing well. Upon seeing it, the young man began to cry. He bent over so that his tears dropped into the well.

Running with the Wolves

I had a dream last night about feeling the fullness of my creative power. It all came about as a result of having:
1. a good writing session before going to sleep
I had my laptop in front of the fire, and I was working on Chapter One of the novel. I had a clear breakthough as how I wanted this chapter to be written. It is quite different from what I had, and now the new writing is much more exciting in terms of language and depth of characterization. I entered that state where the magic happens.
2. recently discussed "Beauty and the Beast" with my students
We had discussed how "Beauty and the Beast" is about confronting our attitudes about what constitutes Beauty and Beastliness. I am a big fan of what Angela Carter did with her rewrites of fairy tales. She often allowed the wildness of animals and beasts to be manifested in women as sexual and creative energy.
3. stepped across a stack of books with Women Who Run With the Wolves on top.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The dream was about traveling. Allen and I stopped at a beautiful hotel to stay the night. The only room available for us was in a mansion far away from the main hotel. The mansion was cluttered and part of the curtains had been torn down. I think this means that my thoughts about how to organize the novel are still disorganized but that the curtains have been ripped away, exposing the light that I need to find my way. The curtains were fancy, perhaps representing the socially acceptable "barrier" I have erected between myself and the good part of my creativity.

To get to the room, we had to walk a wild path. Then for some reason I was walking alone on the path. Soon I noticed two huge, vicious wolves ahead of me. They were snarling and growling at me.

Then I did something I don't usually do in dreams (I am usually frightened and run from danger). I snarled and growled back, and the wolves retreated and let me pass.

Flying

I had a flying dream last night. I hadn't had one of those in a long while.

I think the dream was instigated by watching Peter and the Wolf on PBS last night. In the tale, a delightful little bird has trouble flying and Peter ties a helium balloon around its breast. The bird hopped, bounced, and sometimes soared. That is exactly what my flying dreams are like: I hop and bounce like I'm attached to a balloon that isn't quite large enough to get me off the ground. But after a few false starts, I soar. Sometimes I just float; other times, like in last night's dream, I hold my arms out like airplane wings.

In last night's dream, the air was filled with people flying.

Library Dreams

I've been having a lot of dreams lately about libraries. Last night I had such a dream. The library was very old. It had wooden elevators and walls stained from rain leaking through the roof. But the books this library had! Tall, never-ending shelves of books, beautiful old editions of art books.

Allen was with me. There was also a child, a baby, that was ours. It was not yet a year old but he could talk and recited beautiful poetry, quite to my surprise. Surprising, too, was the fact that we even had a child--at our age!

Provincetown / 5

I meditated on another Theodore Roethke poem before I went to bed last night. The poem is "Memory."

Then during the night I dreamed that I was in Provincetown asking many strangers what was wrong with my "new" book, asking them to help me right it.

Memory
by Theodore Roethke

In the slow world of dream,
We breathe in unison.
The outside dies within,
And she knows all I am.

She turns, as if to go,
Half-bird, half-animal.
The wind dies on the hill.
Love's all. Love's all I know.

A doe drinks by a stream,
A doe and its fawn.
When I follow after them,
The grass changes to stone.

38/50

Yesterday, I accidentally read the wrong student stories for my workshop, so I wasn't prepared. That's never happened before and I don't know what I was thinking.

In addition, one student also asked if we could have workshop outside, and I declined, and she pouted in a good-natured kind of way.

So last night I dreamed I was a workshop student, and I was unprepared. I had not read all the stories under discussion. The teacher was a former professor of mine, a thin, enigmatic, intense man with curly hair. It was night, and we all sat around a huge wooden table in the middle of some woods. The trees were black-barked and bare. The sky was clear. A big full moon shone through lacy branches.

I had several thick, unread manuscripts before me.

I thought to myself, How weird, this situation, this place.

34/50

Dream

Last night I dreamed I was doing some research on Emily Dickinson and I found some artwork she had done, specifically a "needlepoint" that she had made for D. H. Lawrence. The subject matter was the nude female human form. That Emily, who knew?

31/50

I had the best experience with my fiction workshop today.

Last night, I read the two stories that would be up for discussion. One story was about a young woman whose father is in the hospital dying of cancer. The other was about a young woman who is living with a group of friends who are deadening themselves with cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, sex, and even school. Both stories were very richly detailed.

So last night, I had a dream that embodied both.

I dreamed about my own father's death at home, from cancer. I dreamed I was much younger than I am now. I returned home from school to find my father out of his bed and lying on the floor. I helped him back into his bed. He immediately turned into a piece of firewood and the bed turned into a smoldering "bed of coals." I thought how the fire was going to purge my father's pain, and, selfishly, my own grief, for I was tired of sickness and waiting for the end. Then I felt guilty and used a poker to separate the wood (my father) from the coals. This dream portrayed the conflict in the student's story, the conflict between loving her father and hating death.

The other story involved a bear. Now, there are erotic overtones in women's stories about bears. In a wonderful book by Marian Engel called Bear, a female character actually has sex with a bear. I thought my student's story also sexually charged. The story was about characters who were all essentially "dead." Spirituall dead. The story involved the narrator's moment of awarness. This moment came through a special interaction (not sex) that she had with the bear.

So the other part of my dream had erotic overtones. But that part of the dream, I will keep to myself!

Anyway, the discussion in class today was a lot of fun. Two strong stories. A great day in workshop.

26/50

Yet another dream

Last night I had a dream about men. There were no women in the dream. Even I was a man. The setting was in a distant past. I, along with many other men, was being buried into an underground tomb, a sacrifice to some god. I was both participant and observer. I could see my own terrified eyes as the tomb was covered. I was a handsome man, muscular, tanned, bearded. Several of us decided we would dig ourselves out. We walked from the burial chamber to a vast underground room, beautifully decorated with gold. We dug and dug. We dug until we got out. But we were discovered and hunted down. Our strategy was to don the clothes or our captors and hide among them. And this worked. We lay down with our enemies to sleep at night, and they never even knew we were there.

I can't be sure, but I think the dream has something to do with a quote I added last night to my Facebook profile before I went to bed:

Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Chapter V: Energy

25/50

More Dreams

Last night I dreamed I got out of the hospital after an extended stay. I had almost died, and I walked out of the hospital, hobbling on a cane. I looked at the bright sun, the sidewalks, the people, and I was so thankful to be alive.

The dream came from some things that have been happening in real life:

1. I was talking about "freaks" in my workshop class because a student had written about sideshow freaks in a story. I was talking about how many literary authors had written about freaks, including Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor. The outward strangeness stands for the inner strangeness we all feel at times. (In the dream I walked with a cane and it felt unusual to me; I felt different, a bit like an outsider).

2. My father-in-law, a terminal cancer patient, recently went into the hospital because of breathing problems.

3. I saw a show on PBS about how people in wheelchairs live. A doctor gave wheelchair bound people a camera. They filmed their challenges. One woman had to stay in a convalescent home for several days because her wheelchair needed repairs. Since she had no way of getting along without her chair, she had to turn herself in to this home. In the home, they would not help her to the bathroom but told her to defecate into her diaper. Once her chair was fixed, the convalescent home drove her home in their van. When the driver set her outside her home, the driver left. The chair stalled and the woman was stuck in the immobile chair for several hours. It started getting dark, and she was crying from the humiliation and boredom. I was very moved by this program.

24/50

Dreams: Houses

I've done a lot of research into literary symbolism through the years. I've also researched dream symbolism. And while I don't believe symbols are a one size fits all proposition, I do believe in certain universal truths.

I have read that a woman often associates a "house" with her own "body." One literary example that comes to mind right away is Cisneros's The House on Mango Street.

I have also read that "houses" or "rooms" represent "possibility" in dreams. Indeed, I have recurring dreams of hidden rooms, often with richly decorated bathrooms.

So I thought it was interesting that in last night's dream, I was walking back to "my apartment" (I now live in a house) with my husband, two of my sons (younger than now), and my brother (now deceased). The apartment complex resembled the complex we moved into when we first came to Ohio so I could get my MFA in fiction writing.

We were going back to the apartment to get some food to take with us to a ball game we were going to watch.

When I stepped into my apartment, I was surprised to see it had been nearly gutted. Many things were missing or broken. The mirror above the bathroom sink had been smashed and had fallen to pieces on the floor. The carpet had been ripped up and the floor was scarred. Not one of us mentioned any of this to each other.

I gathered the food and we all set out on foot to the ball field. At first the ground was flat, but then it started to get hilly. I found myself having to struggle over big mounds of earth.

Many of the elements in this dream are recurring. The only new thing was the ball field.

If the "apartment" is my own "body," then I wonder what the dream means? Perhaps that elements of an "old" self must be sacrificed and wounds (the scarred floor) must be acknowledged, examined.

18/50

Two Dreams:

1. I dreamed I was riding a bicycle with some friends. We were riding a long way. We came to a river trail that was very wet. We found ourselves riding next to a bridge. The trail was narrow and slippery next to this bridge. The friend on the bike ahead of me was suddenly swallowed deep into the earth, bicycle and all.

2. I dreamed that Allen and I were at the ocean. We were having a good time, picking up seashells. Then a huge wall of water rose up before us and froze momentarily. We ran away. We ran through a cave which was open at both ends. The wall of water broke and rushed toward us. This is a recurring dream.

A Dream

Last night I dreamed I went to a grave yard. It was huge. There was also a huge barn that was full of graves. I dreamed that Erin came to meet me at the barn. She brought me roses and a chocolate cake.

Being a mattress

Allen said that last night he dreamed he was an old mattress with broken springs and that the dogs were jumping on him and he couldn't move or do anything about it.

I said, "You did not!"

He said, "I did, too!"

So apparently he did dream it.

A dream

Last night I had the nicest dream about a rugged, wind-swept, and lonely beach. Allen and I were walking along this beach, looking for the best place to put our tent for the night. It was evening and I carried a lantern, which was not lit. We used only the stars for light. We set up the tent and then I turned on the lantern. It was only then that I saw little pockets of snow on the ground. The effect of the snow on the rocky shore, along with the ocean sounds just beyond, was beautiful.