tarotrose
I had a very long dream last night. As far back as I can remember it, it started with my younger daughter and I trying to find our way out of a ROW OF GARDEN LOTS, each fenced in and each with doors opening onto the garden lots on either side of it. The trick, in most of them, was to try to get out without letting out any of the animals roaming there -- chickens, dogs, etc. Our mood was impatient. We were trying to make some headway, but we kept having to stop and figure out how to dodge the LITTLE ANIMALS. This was the second dream in two nights where not letting small animals get out of an enclosure was part.
In the last lot, there were a bunch of baby rabbits right up by the door, and as soon as we would push the rabbits out of the way, they would hop right back. Finally, I told Kate, “Just go! The stupid rabbits should not be in the doorway, anyway! I’ll try to catch any that escape and toss them back inside.” So, she ran out of the door into the open, very near the road we had been trying to get to, and I followed on her heels, brushing rabbits back into the enclosure with my foot. Kate stopped and turned back to wait for me. That is when we both noticed the big SNAKE. It was closer to Kate, but my coming out of the door had distracted it, so I told Kate, “Run!” She ran and it started to go after her, but quickly gave up. Then it turned back to me.
I ran. From this point forward for awhile, I was watching me and the snake as if from above them. I saw the snake follow me, but soon got distracted by movement off to the side, and for awhile I was running on the main path, and it was slithering along a path parallel to but slightly below the path I was on… until the two paths met up again and it caught me and swallowed me whole. Doctors had to cut me out of the snake.
Then the scene cut to me, a high school aged me, getting ready to enter a SCHOOL. I was once again in my body. I saw a woman standing on the school steps reading a tabloid story showing a picture of me having the snake cut away from me. I said to her, “That was me.” She said, “Really! What was it like?” I felt mischievous so I just told her, “I smelled like snake guts for weeks after that,” and I ran inside the school door.
I wasn’t in a school, though, I was on a BUS, and the only empty seat was with some of the LESS POPULAR HISPANIC AND POOR WHITE GUYS, so I sat, and they were very nice. There was an easy comradery between us. One of the good CATHOLIC hispanic boys admonished another about something in the name of JESUS. It was interesting to me to see how important their MACHO IMAGE was to them, but at the same time, how devout they were.
Then the bus stopped and we were all instructed to get off and stretch for a little while. I was walking with another girl and we saw that the dirt road ahead of us, a road flanked by buildings, was blocked by several cobras. We saw a couple of boys ahead of us who had STEAKS on cafeteria trays, and they got by the snakes and into a building by throwing the trays with the steaks out away from the door and waiting until the snakes had their fangs in the steaks so they could safely pass. At that point, someone shoved a cafeteria tray with a steak on it into my hands, so I threw it and pushed my friend ahead of me, saying, “Go!” We both got through the door, but I stopped to watch the snakes and one steak didn’t hold them as long as two steaks had, so they were looking at me through the screen door. That was when I noticed that there was a hole in the bottom of the screen, and the snakes were coming towards the door. I turned and ran. I was in a BARN/STORAGE SHED TYPE BUILDING and the only other exit was a door on the side of the barn. My friend was nowhere in sight. The side door was locked, and the snakes were slithering in through the hole in the screen door. I pounded on the door, shook and yanked on the lock, and finally the lock gave way and I ran out of the door and pulled it closed behind me.
I found myself in a very small lean-to in a very small fenced in courtyard. The only way out that I could see was to climb the chainlink fence and go over the roof of the lean-to to get to the street. I started to do just that when my friend appeared, attempting to climb into the courtyard from the street. She had a SOLDIER with her, and she held up a key saying, “I went to find someone with a key to help get you out of there!” I told her, somewhat irritated, “Well, I don’t need a key now.”
I was concerned, though, about dropping back down onto the street. Might there be other snakes waiting down there? The soldier pointed out that there was a two-foot wide PATH OF SNOW on our side of the street and that the snakes wouldn’t go into the snow, so to drop down there and walk along the snow path. We did and we got back to the bus in time to board it again for the trip.
I walked the length of the bus looking for my homies, but I couldn’t find them. Along the way, I was treated rudely by some popular girls talking about THEIR DJ and THEIR dance routine. The wouldn’t move to let me pass freely, and when I couldn’t help but bump into them, they bumped me back hard on purpose, nearly knocking me over several times. I was seething by the time I got through them, and when I passed by what looked like a DINER counter, the Hispanic cook stopped me and said, “Hey, I bet your friend Frank knows someone who can DJ. Wouldn’t it be great to give them (he nodded towards the popular group) some competition?” I acknowledged that that sounded like a great idea, and so I headed off to find FRANK who was the oldest and most mature of the Hispanic guys.
I finally found Frank and my female friend, and as soon as I told Frank about my idea, he pointed out a chubby white kid who was a really good DJ. I said to Frank, “I bet you could come up with a routine for us and be our coach?” He looked embarrassed that I knew he could dance, and irritated because he was on the baseball team and they were heading into tournament season. What he said was, “Baseball comes first! IF I have any spare time…” I jumped up and down and hugged him and said, “When can we have our first meeting?”
Then I kind of fast-forwarded through a bunch of scenes of me and the other misfit girls and the DJ and Frank all learning the routine and practicing and being heckled in a friendly way by the other guys. Somewhere in the process, I heard a guy playing guitar and singing. HIS SONG was full of passion and longing, and it was beautiful, but the choir director was dismissive of him because he was a skinny geek with big glasses.
Close to the date of the competition, my female friend and I got into a big argument because we were both in an art class, and I was excited about how a PROJECT was going for me, but when I showed it to her, she didn’t have anything good to say about it. I was saying, “It’s not finished yet!” She was complaining that she had put a lot more work into hers, and that I was being lazy and I should be the one who should have to put more work into it because I had been able to pay for the class myself where she had gotten public aid to pay for it. I was asking her, “What difference does that make? If anything, you should have to work harder to show your gratitude for being able to take the class!” She stormed off, and I went looking for Frank for some sympathy but I couldn’t find him.
Then I saw FRANK RUNNING PAST ME IN A MILITARY UNIFORM. I was shocked and I hollered at him, “Did you get called up (for the draft)?” He shrugged and avoided my eyes and kept running. I just fell down on the spot sobbing, and I WOULDN’T LET ANYONE CONSOLE ME. Finally, my female friend came up to me and pulled me to my feet and said, “Come on -- we have to get to class.” Because I was so upset, she had decided to forget about our fight.
So she drug me to choir class where we were getting our choir pictures taken that day. They were doing the pictures in groups and my group had awhile to wait, so SEVERAL GIRLS WERE PULLING ME OFF TO THE SIDE TRYING TO GET ME TO WASH MY FACE AND PUT ON MAKEUP AND STOP LOOKING SO GLUM. We were listening to a tape recording of us singing the song we were supposed to sing while getting our picture taken, and I realized that I was louder on the tape than the other girls, and I didn’t sound bad, but I was angry about it because it was a stupid happy-go-lucky song and I wasn’t feeling it at all. So I started singing the geeky guy’s song, letting all of my sadness and passion come through.
Oddly, the two songs worked together in a powerful way. I knew at that moment that I loved Frank, and I had to go and find him and tell him before he had to leave.
INTERPRETATION:
OK, some of the parts of the dream were like kitschy, formulaic movies about underprivileged kids having a dance competition against the popular, rich kids; and the “he’s my friend/no, wait, I just figured out that I LOVE him” movies. I’m a product of my culture, so sue me!
LITTLE ANIMALS can be children, literal or figurative, or psychopomps -- guides to the subconscious. I’m thinking that in my dreams recently they probably stand for psychopomps. In fact, the little piglet in my dream yesterday peed on me when I caught him and brought him back inside the barn. I think that was a very clear indication of what my psychopomps are thinking of me right now. They are being very active and I am just not spending time with them to find out what they are trying to tell me. I’m only concerned with keeping them from popping out inappropriately.
The space they are trying to pop out of is my mind, in this case a MULTI-FACETED GARDEN. Things like Freudian slips or exaggerated emotional responses can be subconscious critters slipping out sideways because they haven’t been allowed to manifest in any other way.
What they are trying to get me to pay attention to, I think, given this dream, is the SNAKES, and snakes can symbolize the spiritual. Like the KUNDALINI experience in YOGA where energy that lies coiled like a snake in the base chakra suddenly uncoils and launches itself upward through the other chakra in a burst of enlightenment/freed psychic energy. In Christian terms, the snake raised on the pole by Moses in the desert for the Israelites to look upon and be cured of their snake bites which also can be seen as a foreshadowing of JESUS on the Cross -- Jesus, wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove, Jesus who is the healer.
Right now elements of the philosophies of YOGA, CATHOLICISM and Wicca are all bubbling around in my mind as I try to find a way to maintain my integrity, or unity of belief, given the similarities and contradictions of the three. In this dream, apparently, the snake of spirituality was tired of being avoided and swallowed me up. I’m sure psychically, I must stink like snake guts sometimes.
So, what did I do when I was released? I entered the SCHOOL, or place of learning, and got on the BUS, the communal journey of life. I found my place among the poor. I embraced my own poverty (spiritual and otherwise), and valued the companionship of others the world doesn’t judge as being rich or highly valued. KINDNESS is a virtue in all three philosophies, even if SOLIDARITY WITH THE POOR isn’t.
And then the second encounter with snakes, I tried to distract them with something meaty that wasn’t me. The STEAK? I don’t know what that was. The BUILDING I was in -- my mind/self -- was DARK, maybe depressed, closed off or unenlightened. I had to get outside of myself to find the light again. Maybe I was avoiding the roiling spiritual issues, but at least I got myself out of the darkness and into the light, a new perspective. I didn’t wait for someone else, too little, too late, to bring me the key, I found the resources within myself (sounds like WICCA). The SOLDIERS, both the one who came with to rescue me, and FRANK, in the end, represent conformity and the imposition of order. Note, though, that the soldier did give me useful information about the snowy path (that was unadorned by colorful, lively, disorderly plants).
The SNOWY PATH -- the snakes wouldn’t go on the snowy path because it was cold and nothing could grow there. If I stick to the frigid, barren path, then I won’t be confronted by snakes.
But back on the bus, I did seek out again my compadres. At the DINER, the place of basic, simple nourishment, I was offered a PLAN OF ACTION, and I impulsively followed it, although it seems like it ended up being something of a MEANINGLESS DISTRACTION that in the end didn’t figure into the story. I often accept the quick and easy fix of distraction rather than waiting to find something truly nourishing and soul satisfying.
I did, along the way, find joy in soulful beauty in ART and MUSIC. These were symbolized by music and paintings in the dream. And I was drawn to FRANK, which makes me think of the comic strip FRANK & ERNST, and you could definitely call me the EARNEST type. Frank and earnest are a pretty good pair of attributes to have, I think.
And the part at the end where I am INCONSOLABLE, and where I couldn’t stomach the superficial sweetness of the song, I see that as a positive and maybe a note from my subconscious of what I need to do more of to be whole: acknowledge my shadow self or just even my less comfortable feelings rather than suppressing them or glossing them over, which I tend to do. In other words, I need to be FRANK about my feelings. Usually, I am the “up” person, the cheerleader, the even-tempered one who is calm under pressure. But I’m NOT JUST that. I have anger and anxiety and sadness and longing and irrational, passionate love. Whether the conformity of the MILITARY was being forced on FRANK or he voluntarily joined, I mourned the loss of him not only geographically but also emotionally because the orderliness of the military, I have experienced, also brings with it a certain intolerance of the emotional. Frank would not be able to be as frank anymore, especially if it might go against the party line.
So, I think the dream was about dealing with the spiritual issues that are jostling around in my brain, and with them, the implications for my life choices (solidarity with the poor on some level). Also about taking the time to find what is truly nourishing, and to embrace my whole range of emotions from the giddily optimistic to the sorrowful and angry, and not allow myself to be pressured by the people around me to hide the “unacceptable” parts of my emotional life. Maybe I need to balance my need to maintain a MACHO IMAGE with the ability to be vulnerable and open spiritually and emotionally.
In the last lot, there were a bunch of baby rabbits right up by the door, and as soon as we would push the rabbits out of the way, they would hop right back. Finally, I told Kate, “Just go! The stupid rabbits should not be in the doorway, anyway! I’ll try to catch any that escape and toss them back inside.” So, she ran out of the door into the open, very near the road we had been trying to get to, and I followed on her heels, brushing rabbits back into the enclosure with my foot. Kate stopped and turned back to wait for me. That is when we both noticed the big SNAKE. It was closer to Kate, but my coming out of the door had distracted it, so I told Kate, “Run!” She ran and it started to go after her, but quickly gave up. Then it turned back to me.
I ran. From this point forward for awhile, I was watching me and the snake as if from above them. I saw the snake follow me, but soon got distracted by movement off to the side, and for awhile I was running on the main path, and it was slithering along a path parallel to but slightly below the path I was on… until the two paths met up again and it caught me and swallowed me whole. Doctors had to cut me out of the snake.
Then the scene cut to me, a high school aged me, getting ready to enter a SCHOOL. I was once again in my body. I saw a woman standing on the school steps reading a tabloid story showing a picture of me having the snake cut away from me. I said to her, “That was me.” She said, “Really! What was it like?” I felt mischievous so I just told her, “I smelled like snake guts for weeks after that,” and I ran inside the school door.
I wasn’t in a school, though, I was on a BUS, and the only empty seat was with some of the LESS POPULAR HISPANIC AND POOR WHITE GUYS, so I sat, and they were very nice. There was an easy comradery between us. One of the good CATHOLIC hispanic boys admonished another about something in the name of JESUS. It was interesting to me to see how important their MACHO IMAGE was to them, but at the same time, how devout they were.
Then the bus stopped and we were all instructed to get off and stretch for a little while. I was walking with another girl and we saw that the dirt road ahead of us, a road flanked by buildings, was blocked by several cobras. We saw a couple of boys ahead of us who had STEAKS on cafeteria trays, and they got by the snakes and into a building by throwing the trays with the steaks out away from the door and waiting until the snakes had their fangs in the steaks so they could safely pass. At that point, someone shoved a cafeteria tray with a steak on it into my hands, so I threw it and pushed my friend ahead of me, saying, “Go!” We both got through the door, but I stopped to watch the snakes and one steak didn’t hold them as long as two steaks had, so they were looking at me through the screen door. That was when I noticed that there was a hole in the bottom of the screen, and the snakes were coming towards the door. I turned and ran. I was in a BARN/STORAGE SHED TYPE BUILDING and the only other exit was a door on the side of the barn. My friend was nowhere in sight. The side door was locked, and the snakes were slithering in through the hole in the screen door. I pounded on the door, shook and yanked on the lock, and finally the lock gave way and I ran out of the door and pulled it closed behind me.
I found myself in a very small lean-to in a very small fenced in courtyard. The only way out that I could see was to climb the chainlink fence and go over the roof of the lean-to to get to the street. I started to do just that when my friend appeared, attempting to climb into the courtyard from the street. She had a SOLDIER with her, and she held up a key saying, “I went to find someone with a key to help get you out of there!” I told her, somewhat irritated, “Well, I don’t need a key now.”
I was concerned, though, about dropping back down onto the street. Might there be other snakes waiting down there? The soldier pointed out that there was a two-foot wide PATH OF SNOW on our side of the street and that the snakes wouldn’t go into the snow, so to drop down there and walk along the snow path. We did and we got back to the bus in time to board it again for the trip.
I walked the length of the bus looking for my homies, but I couldn’t find them. Along the way, I was treated rudely by some popular girls talking about THEIR DJ and THEIR dance routine. The wouldn’t move to let me pass freely, and when I couldn’t help but bump into them, they bumped me back hard on purpose, nearly knocking me over several times. I was seething by the time I got through them, and when I passed by what looked like a DINER counter, the Hispanic cook stopped me and said, “Hey, I bet your friend Frank knows someone who can DJ. Wouldn’t it be great to give them (he nodded towards the popular group) some competition?” I acknowledged that that sounded like a great idea, and so I headed off to find FRANK who was the oldest and most mature of the Hispanic guys.
I finally found Frank and my female friend, and as soon as I told Frank about my idea, he pointed out a chubby white kid who was a really good DJ. I said to Frank, “I bet you could come up with a routine for us and be our coach?” He looked embarrassed that I knew he could dance, and irritated because he was on the baseball team and they were heading into tournament season. What he said was, “Baseball comes first! IF I have any spare time…” I jumped up and down and hugged him and said, “When can we have our first meeting?”
Then I kind of fast-forwarded through a bunch of scenes of me and the other misfit girls and the DJ and Frank all learning the routine and practicing and being heckled in a friendly way by the other guys. Somewhere in the process, I heard a guy playing guitar and singing. HIS SONG was full of passion and longing, and it was beautiful, but the choir director was dismissive of him because he was a skinny geek with big glasses.
Close to the date of the competition, my female friend and I got into a big argument because we were both in an art class, and I was excited about how a PROJECT was going for me, but when I showed it to her, she didn’t have anything good to say about it. I was saying, “It’s not finished yet!” She was complaining that she had put a lot more work into hers, and that I was being lazy and I should be the one who should have to put more work into it because I had been able to pay for the class myself where she had gotten public aid to pay for it. I was asking her, “What difference does that make? If anything, you should have to work harder to show your gratitude for being able to take the class!” She stormed off, and I went looking for Frank for some sympathy but I couldn’t find him.
Then I saw FRANK RUNNING PAST ME IN A MILITARY UNIFORM. I was shocked and I hollered at him, “Did you get called up (for the draft)?” He shrugged and avoided my eyes and kept running. I just fell down on the spot sobbing, and I WOULDN’T LET ANYONE CONSOLE ME. Finally, my female friend came up to me and pulled me to my feet and said, “Come on -- we have to get to class.” Because I was so upset, she had decided to forget about our fight.
So she drug me to choir class where we were getting our choir pictures taken that day. They were doing the pictures in groups and my group had awhile to wait, so SEVERAL GIRLS WERE PULLING ME OFF TO THE SIDE TRYING TO GET ME TO WASH MY FACE AND PUT ON MAKEUP AND STOP LOOKING SO GLUM. We were listening to a tape recording of us singing the song we were supposed to sing while getting our picture taken, and I realized that I was louder on the tape than the other girls, and I didn’t sound bad, but I was angry about it because it was a stupid happy-go-lucky song and I wasn’t feeling it at all. So I started singing the geeky guy’s song, letting all of my sadness and passion come through.
Oddly, the two songs worked together in a powerful way. I knew at that moment that I loved Frank, and I had to go and find him and tell him before he had to leave.
INTERPRETATION:
OK, some of the parts of the dream were like kitschy, formulaic movies about underprivileged kids having a dance competition against the popular, rich kids; and the “he’s my friend/no, wait, I just figured out that I LOVE him” movies. I’m a product of my culture, so sue me!
LITTLE ANIMALS can be children, literal or figurative, or psychopomps -- guides to the subconscious. I’m thinking that in my dreams recently they probably stand for psychopomps. In fact, the little piglet in my dream yesterday peed on me when I caught him and brought him back inside the barn. I think that was a very clear indication of what my psychopomps are thinking of me right now. They are being very active and I am just not spending time with them to find out what they are trying to tell me. I’m only concerned with keeping them from popping out inappropriately.
The space they are trying to pop out of is my mind, in this case a MULTI-FACETED GARDEN. Things like Freudian slips or exaggerated emotional responses can be subconscious critters slipping out sideways because they haven’t been allowed to manifest in any other way.
What they are trying to get me to pay attention to, I think, given this dream, is the SNAKES, and snakes can symbolize the spiritual. Like the KUNDALINI experience in YOGA where energy that lies coiled like a snake in the base chakra suddenly uncoils and launches itself upward through the other chakra in a burst of enlightenment/freed psychic energy. In Christian terms, the snake raised on the pole by Moses in the desert for the Israelites to look upon and be cured of their snake bites which also can be seen as a foreshadowing of JESUS on the Cross -- Jesus, wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove, Jesus who is the healer.
Right now elements of the philosophies of YOGA, CATHOLICISM and Wicca are all bubbling around in my mind as I try to find a way to maintain my integrity, or unity of belief, given the similarities and contradictions of the three. In this dream, apparently, the snake of spirituality was tired of being avoided and swallowed me up. I’m sure psychically, I must stink like snake guts sometimes.
So, what did I do when I was released? I entered the SCHOOL, or place of learning, and got on the BUS, the communal journey of life. I found my place among the poor. I embraced my own poverty (spiritual and otherwise), and valued the companionship of others the world doesn’t judge as being rich or highly valued. KINDNESS is a virtue in all three philosophies, even if SOLIDARITY WITH THE POOR isn’t.
And then the second encounter with snakes, I tried to distract them with something meaty that wasn’t me. The STEAK? I don’t know what that was. The BUILDING I was in -- my mind/self -- was DARK, maybe depressed, closed off or unenlightened. I had to get outside of myself to find the light again. Maybe I was avoiding the roiling spiritual issues, but at least I got myself out of the darkness and into the light, a new perspective. I didn’t wait for someone else, too little, too late, to bring me the key, I found the resources within myself (sounds like WICCA). The SOLDIERS, both the one who came with to rescue me, and FRANK, in the end, represent conformity and the imposition of order. Note, though, that the soldier did give me useful information about the snowy path (that was unadorned by colorful, lively, disorderly plants).
The SNOWY PATH -- the snakes wouldn’t go on the snowy path because it was cold and nothing could grow there. If I stick to the frigid, barren path, then I won’t be confronted by snakes.
But back on the bus, I did seek out again my compadres. At the DINER, the place of basic, simple nourishment, I was offered a PLAN OF ACTION, and I impulsively followed it, although it seems like it ended up being something of a MEANINGLESS DISTRACTION that in the end didn’t figure into the story. I often accept the quick and easy fix of distraction rather than waiting to find something truly nourishing and soul satisfying.
I did, along the way, find joy in soulful beauty in ART and MUSIC. These were symbolized by music and paintings in the dream. And I was drawn to FRANK, which makes me think of the comic strip FRANK & ERNST, and you could definitely call me the EARNEST type. Frank and earnest are a pretty good pair of attributes to have, I think.
And the part at the end where I am INCONSOLABLE, and where I couldn’t stomach the superficial sweetness of the song, I see that as a positive and maybe a note from my subconscious of what I need to do more of to be whole: acknowledge my shadow self or just even my less comfortable feelings rather than suppressing them or glossing them over, which I tend to do. In other words, I need to be FRANK about my feelings. Usually, I am the “up” person, the cheerleader, the even-tempered one who is calm under pressure. But I’m NOT JUST that. I have anger and anxiety and sadness and longing and irrational, passionate love. Whether the conformity of the MILITARY was being forced on FRANK or he voluntarily joined, I mourned the loss of him not only geographically but also emotionally because the orderliness of the military, I have experienced, also brings with it a certain intolerance of the emotional. Frank would not be able to be as frank anymore, especially if it might go against the party line.
So, I think the dream was about dealing with the spiritual issues that are jostling around in my brain, and with them, the implications for my life choices (solidarity with the poor on some level). Also about taking the time to find what is truly nourishing, and to embrace my whole range of emotions from the giddily optimistic to the sorrowful and angry, and not allow myself to be pressured by the people around me to hide the “unacceptable” parts of my emotional life. Maybe I need to balance my need to maintain a MACHO IMAGE with the ability to be vulnerable and open spiritually and emotionally.
