Two Dreams I Had Before Waking Up Today

I dreamt I was both witnessing and going in and out of being a woman in Hawaii, or some other Pacific island, getting initiated into the indigenous culture’s shamanic swimming cult/association. This was a great honor. The woman appeared Caucasian and was a world renowned champion swimmer, or this was strongly implied. Her hair was long, thick, wavy, and blonde. She sported a tan and thick, excellent muscle tone. I was often beside her, but sometimes seemingly her. There were some fascinating underwater scenes which have already pretty much faded from my memory, as so often happens after I wake up from a dream. Somehow, I think this woman had a special round tattoo drawn on her skin, like the kind the Maori create, but I could be recalling this wrong. She/I had to swim to various places as part of her/my initiation. At one point, there was a row or group of swarthy native men in leaf or grass skirts. I think they were overseeing this rite, ensuring it was all going correctly. The overall feeling was that something of great importance was occurring. The earth would be healed with this great gesture and the woman’s/my life would never be the same. She/I would be part of something big, an old lineage of stewardship of the ocean and connection with mysterious spirits of this realm. Sometimes we/I were on land by the water, sometimes looking up a cliff edge while bobbing along in the waves. We/I saw seaweed covered rocks below the water. There may have been sea creatures, but I don’t remember.

I wake up but then go back to sleep.

II.

Later, shortly before I woke up for the day this morning, I dreamt I could fly, though awkwardly at first and not very far. Around and below me stretched a green field for miles in every direction, mountains in the distance. Some man was narrating the scene, explaining how if you shrink to a small size (about a foot in length or even smaller) and become wispy like the fairies, you can fly with ease and very high, up to ten thousand feet with no safety issues (re: atmospheric pressure, oxygen sufficiency, etc.). I began to see the sky fill with wisps, people venturing to fly high and free. I consciously made myself shrink, lighten, and promptly rise up on the wind currents. I stretched out my body and flew high with grace and confidence, the tips of tall evergreen trees growing increasingly far below me.

I awake and soon get up for the day.

Dream Fragment From This Morning (5/4/18)

I’d somehow taken possession of a female dog, still a puppy yet pregnant. She looked a lot like a large, short-haired Dachsund, brownish tan in color. I held her in my arms as I walked across a road, feeling an urgency to get the pup to safety. I was acutely aware of her fragility, but some of my movements as I held her were too abrupt. She didn’t protest in any way, but I think I hurt one of her front paws somehow. I felt little bones crack in my hand, even though I tried to be gentle, rushed as I was.

I wake up.

Interpretation/Discussion

My husband Ray had an infected, impacted wisdom tooth extracted by an oral surgeon yesterday. What’s scary is that I almost lost him. He had a bad reaction to the nitrous oxide, which he became unresponsive to shortly after first inhaling it. The attending nurses brought him back from the edge and the doctor used general anesthesia for the procedure instead. Life is fragile, be it my husband’s, a dog’s, anyone’s.

When I got home from work and hugged Ray, he reminded me to be careful not bump the left side of his face. Like the dog in my dream, he was fragile. He has told me on more than one occasion that, if he has to reincarnate, he would like to return in a next life as someone’s lap dog. And like a pet dog, he is a very domestic presence. He tends well to the home, including cooking delicious meals and desserts, and is very warm and affectionate. Ray is my anchor and true opener of my heart, a life companion. Of course, he is far more one than any dog can be.

There is another layer of meaning to this dream. I am embarking on attending more seriously to my inner muse, my creative writing. Like the pregnant puppy dog, this venture is gravid with possibilities of ideas and subsequent projects. However, it’s also new and fragile, easily subject to neglect and subsequent withering away before truly getting up and going. Like crossing the road with the tender dog, I need to gently hold my love of writing, including carving out more regular time for doing it, and this while keeping mindful of where I am going. At this time, my intention is to see where this creating leads, have that be enough of a “road” to take. It’s important I focus back on the efforts at hand, away from the rushing of my thoughts and fear. Parallel to my anxiously gripping the dog’s paw and harming it, rushing off into distraction can hurt motivation and focus with making art. Ultimately, I need to trust myself that I can strike an ongoing balance between writing far more often and adequately attending to the other pieces that make up this life, such as work and marriage. There is plenty of room for all of it.

A Dream Scene from Childhood

At seven or eight years old, I had this dream, a single scene of surely a longer dream, which periodically floats up in my mind to this day:

I’m standing alone in a lane on the edge of what appears to be a marketplace filled with people selling their wares. Each merchant’s booth or stall is an open, square structure composed of four tall wooden poles with a covering at the top, probably sewn together dried animal skins. Large cloths hang from the poles and along the coverings, like decorative banners, only they are all drab in color. None of these stand out in any way. The two rows of booths extend behind me before fading off into the background. The whole scene is cast in shades of brown-red, gray-tannish hues, as if we’re somewhere in a desert of the Middle East or North Africa in the late afternoon. People are wearing baggy clothing and many heads are either covered in long cloths or turbans, but this is vague and my mind may have embellished these details over the years. I can’t recall faces and I am too far away from anyone to see any clearly. The ground is a hard packed red and brown-gray soil. The spareness and Eastern feel of the scene harkens back to some time in antiquity.

I feel far away from anything familiar to me, like I am a visitor from somewhere else. But, as I stand sideways on the path, I see behind me, perhaps fifty feet or so, a wondrous site. A tan-yellow snake with ribbed, wing-like extensions unfolded outward from each side of it’s head and neck levitates a few feet from the ground. The creature is about as thick as both of my small arms combined, and at least ten feet long, but probably longer. I cannot accurately tell, given the distance between us. There is an unspoken understanding that this is my guardian. Following me, it hisses soothingly against the stillness and silence. Nobody goes anywhere near the hovering serpent or myself, for they are caught up in their own business of commerce and, very likely, would not dare to cross the path of this guardian being or the child it protects. I feel safe and secure. I am not alone. I also feel moved that this creature is looking after me wherever I go.

I wake up.

This dream piece is loaded with meaning, to say the least. Where I was at in my life when I had the dream leads to “making sense” of it even more. However, while I have personally analyzed and contextualized it a-plenty over the years– and many of you readers may naturally feel inclined to analyze it as well– what comes through most powerfully are the beauty and magic of the scene itself. That’s what ultimately matters. In the end, a painting is a painting. Some paintings leave one deeply moved and you never forget the overall sense of them, even if many details are certainly not recalled. This dream image is a favorite personal painting of mine produced by my mind, only it is three dimensional, given I was transported there during sleep. Briefly, I was in that ancient marketplace, but my serpent guardian still lives there. And every time I remember this mysterious scene, I feel I revisit an old friend.