Dream Interpretation

[Front-Ranger]

OK, this is starting to spook me. It seems like I've gone years on years with rarely having dreams I remember, and just as rarely dreaming about my mother. Now all of the sudden I'm remembering lots of dreams and from almost every night? What's up with that? 

It could be that you have just gotten "tuned in" to this method of communicating with yourself. Or it could be that you are searching in your dreams for something that your subconscious mind feels is very important.

I remember that I needed to make a drive to a bank and to a K-Mart ( ), and that somehow, without knowing it, I had driven around in a circle; I remember passing a particular landmark, an old stone house on a dirt road out in the country, and then coming past the house again and realizing that without realizing it I had driven in a circle.

Clearly this seems to speak to the fact that you are going about your everyday life, making money and spending it on consumer goods and you realize that you're going around in circles doing the same thing, day in, day out, year in, year out. But there is a landmark or milestone that stands out and makes you notice the repetitiveness of this behavior.

This time I stopped at the house and went inside to use the bathroom to take a leak ( ); the bathroom looked like the kind of restroom facility you might see in a park or some public place, with a concrete floor, a couple of urinals, and a stall or two. 

In my dreams I sometimes visit such a place that has a lot of stone and water and sometimes has a fetid odor. It's dark in there and maybe a bit mossy. I call it "the grotto." It's like going back to a more primitive time or to a more primordial state of existence. Being a wet place, you're visiting it to address feelings and deeply held beliefs.

[Jeff Wrangler]

It could be that you have just gotten "tuned in" to this method of communicating with yourself. Or it could be that you are searching in your dreams for something that your subconscious mind feels is very important.

Well, whatever it means, it's scaring me.    I'd rather not be dreaming about my dead mother so shortly before I have to get on an airplane. 

I just hope that restroom isn't another sex thing. That would be creepy.

[CellarDweller]

I just hope that restroom isn't another sex thing. That would be creepy.

[Jeff Wrangler]

 

[Jeff Wrangler]

Well, it seems to me there was something of an automobile theme at work in my dreams last night.

First, I still owned an automobile, and I was driving around my home town. I saw the two handsome young men who often sit behind me in church, and we all waved to each other. Then I parked the car on the street where I grew up and went into the house where I grew up. Later my mother (here we are with my mother again!) and I came out to go some place, and I could not find the car! We looked up and down the street, and then we even checked in a rented garage. In the garage there was a car covered with a tarp, but when we removed the tarp, it wasn't my car.    Again I do not remember my mother saying anything.  

Later, I was taking a cab from the airport to my destination on my ramble tomorrow. The cab ride was very expensive, but when we arrived, the driver refused to accept good ol' American currency!

[Front-Ranger]

I just can't resist a little more dream interpolation. It's interesting that in your earlier car, it works properly and gets you around to see key people and places. Later, there is a car in your garage but it isn't your car. Then, finally, you are in a cab and the price is too dear. This reminds me so much of the bucket imagery for Ennis in the BBM movie.

I think the car is your time machine but it's even more than that. It's the vehicle of your life's journey and it holds you and your choices in life and your hopes and dreams.

[Front-Ranger]

At this link is a fascinating discussion about dreams that includes a dramatization of my ancestor Robert Louis Stevenson's essay on how he used dreams to create his stories.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/91498-the-story-of-me/

[Jeff Wrangler]

I think the car is your time machine but it's even more than that. It's the vehicle of your life's journey and it holds you and your choices in life and your hopes and dreams.

If that's true, and that seems logical, then it's somewhat alarming that the car disappears and I can't find it. 

Meanwhile, it seems like my dreams are just getting stranger and stranger. I'm not going into what I remember from last night, which, in any case, isn't a whole lot, but what I do remember is kind of a mixture of sex and nostalgia.   

It might could just mean that I'm missing my youth. 

[Front-Ranger]

If that's true, and that seems logical, then it's somewhat alarming that the car disappears and I can't find it. 

Isn't that pretty much a universal truth though? In middle life, we lose track of the plans and dreams we had in our youth. In some of my dreams, I am searching for that lost thing, that gleam I once had in my eye. Perhaps in the story of Brokeback Mountain, Ennis was almost ready at the end to revive the dream of his youth to live true to his authentic self. Jack was robbed of that chance. One of the lessons to take from the movie, and from our searching dreams is to take every opportunity to revive our youth and pursue those dreams.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Seems to me that losing "the vehicle of [my] life's journey" could mean death.