Dreamscape:

11/12/03:

I dreamt that I was at Tony's (Dad's) house with Tony and Shawn. Tony said it was time to leave, so we left. I thought I'd put my shoes on but I was barefoot when I stepped outside in the cold rain on the concrete steps. I kept walking barefoot. A little ways down the road, Tony said that this was goodbye. and I said for good? and he said for good. I started to cry and hugged him and said "but you're my friend" and he seemed disgusted with me and said he wasn't my friend. They left me behind.

<Impressions: This seems to be about feeling unprotected, vulnerable, and abandoned by my friends throughout the years.>

I had another dream that I was driving a car around in some parking lots and my Dad was following me in another car behind me. I slammed on my brakes but they wouldn't work and I kept hitting cars and hurting people. I was crying amd very upset. I tried to get my Dad's attention but he seemed unconcerned. I went into another less crowded parking lot and noticed that my left foot seemed to weak to press the brake pedal. I switched my right foot over to press it (the brake pedal seemed very far to the left) and crashed into some more stuff. (never stopping). I pulled out into the street. My Dad was in the parking lot across from me and I told him my brakes wouldn't work!!! He looked at me unemotionally and blankly, and I woke up in a sweat.

<Impressions:I think this might be my feeling out of control and panicked in my new life situation. My father has given me away and feels that I am no longer his responsiblity but that of my husband's. Perhaps I can't stop myself from saying hurtful things, perhaps I am just reckless and out of control in general. Left=analytical right = creative.. Perhaps I felt my analyitcal skills were lacking but found that my artistic skills weren't much better. I don't know.>

4/20/02:

I had a couple of weird dreams this morning while sort of dozing off and on.

In the first one, I was with Josh and we saw some company name where I should apply for a job (it started with a C) so I went next door to our store (which had no lock on it, so I felt vulnerable and I guess we intended to get the lock fixed sometime) to find a pen and paper to write it down on. Natalie came in at that point, saying that she needed to talk about her husband (Oddly, I got an e-mail from her this morning to this effect. Another thing to note is that Natalie and her husband M. actually do run their own store).I told her I would talk to her a little later but that I had my own things to attend to for the moment. From the second floor, a bunch of guys (some hoodlum looking types and frat boy types) came into the room I was in. They had candy with them and then went to the liquor counter. I asked in a calm voice if they were ready to make their purchases. One guy said that they weren't purchasing anything. I told them very calmly that I would get the manager to assist them. I began walking to the door so I could get Josh (although he was also somehow M., Natalie's husband, a shop keeper in real life). The frat boys ran for the door, pale with fright. I ended up grabbing 3 men (one dark-skinned man with dreadlocks and two cartoonish looking white men with green hats) who tried to steal from my store and holding them tightly in my arms and dragging them all around the block and then ended up back in the store where Josh was waiting for me. I opened my arms to allow Josh to kick their asses, but the men were scared enough of me. I could have killed them easily by myself. Josh didn't attempt to intervene.

<Impressions: Perhaps I feel that Josh is stronger than me and that I need his protection or perhaps decision-making, while in fact I am the stronger of the two of us and am capable of taking care of myself. Perhaps the men I assaulted represent things that have hurt my self esteem (mental blocks, perhaps) and the dream says that I have the power to overcome these problems by myself.>

The second dream was the end of a longer dream where I was at my parents' house and I was trying to get food but all of the food my mother made was gross and inedible (this may have had something to do with an actual dinner experience I had last night at a friends house'). Then my mother and I were in a bedroom with 2 younger girls. They were all asking me what cigarette smoke was and what it smelled like. I tried to explain to them that it was really hard for me to describe but it was hard for them to smell anymore because they were surrounded by it all the time and if they went outside and smelled their clothes they could smell what cigarette smoke smelled like. My mother then had a spider web-type thread hanging off of her index finger and at the end was a scorpion who actually looked like an earwig shaped like a scorpion. (In real life, scorpions are something I am terrified of. Additionally, my mother's Astrological sign is Scorpio). My mother kept swinging the thread with the scorpion around, trying to get it off of her. I went out into the hallway and then the thread came off of my mother and the scorpion stung me on my own index finger just as I heard my Mom exclaim that she'd finally gotten rid of the scorpion. I said something to the effect of the sad irony that the scorpion had gotten me instead. The scorpion had left it's stinger in my finger, but it was facing out, pointing away from my finger, and it was an earwig set of pinchers.

<Impressions: This could have some deeper symbolic meanings, but I think it definitely is also about my resentment of my mother for never quitting smoking and exposing me to smoke for all those years when it was so hard for me to breathe. I think the scorpion stinging me in the end may represent that although she is the one who smokes, I am the one who it hurts (now cigarette smoke bothers me so much that I don't go dancing or out to various places because of it and that really makes me angry). I think it's a positive sign that it was not actually a deadly scorpion but instead a painful but harmless earwig. Another interesting thing is that the pinchers stuck in me but pointed outwards, as if I now had the power to sting. Perhaps I am only hurting myself. Perhaps I can overcome this hypersensitivity to smoke, or at the very least the anger and resentment it has produced.>

2/17/02:

Lots of bits and pieces I remember:

A was trying to take a picture of a bumble bee (from behind) for a little girl. I think the bee was the girl's pet. We had to keep retaking the picture for some reason. The bee had a test tube & stopper and it was very small and strong and could remove the stopper and crawl in and out of the tube on its own.

<Impressions: At first I was afraid of the bee but I became more at ease, especially after seeing how intelligent and capable he was. I trusted the bee. Also, the little girl loved and trusted the bee, which made doing so easier. What could this bumble bee represent? Hmm..>

In another dream, my parents and brother and Emily were down visiting me and Josh (except we lived in a house). At one point my Mom and I were looking above us at some trees right next to a lake. There were roses hanging at a few places in the trees. Someone told us they were pineapples. They kind of looked like them at first but then I could see that they were definitely roses. (They were not attached to the tree. The roses' stems were visible and were sort of hanging over the tree branches). I believe I tried to tell her they were roses, but only after letting her believe that they were pineapples for a while.

<Impressions: Not sure. I know that pineapples would denote that where I am living now is much milder than it actually is. The roses were large, white and beautiful. Whatever illusion the pineapples held, the truth was much more beautiful. This might possibly be about my relationship with Josh and possibly her/my perception of it over time. >

In another part of a dream, my Dad was trying to make me get rid of all the bouquets of flowers I had where I was living. He was trying to "nicely" talk me into it. He said that the flowers make the house "smell of silk". Apparently my apartment was attached to their house (which was completely different from their real house). I went upstairs to their place. Uncle George showed up just as I was about to leave. I showed him in, and my Mom was smoking on the couch. I left. I was really upset that I couldn't have flowers.

<Impressions: The "smell of silk" part is what stuck with me the most from this dream. In the dream I sort of pictured silk worms making silk (a mysterious phenomenon) but as I am typing this it occurred to me that perhaps the flowers were silk flowers instead of real ones! Very strange. My Dad seemed afraid of the flowers, so much so that he was trying to lull me into compliance with a nervous niceness. Odd.>

1/17/02:

Some long, involved story I can't recall; but at one point I was walking with Josh down a spiral staircase, next to to Snoop Doggy Dogg and his girlfriend. We were all in very good spirits and behaving very lovingly.

<Impressions: Definitely something sexual here. Snoop might represent uninhibited sexual expression. In general he also represents disrespect and things like that, but he was treating his girlfriend really well and looked very happy. Maybe the marriage of carnal lust and deep love? Interesting. I think descending the staircase might represent both knowing each other more deeply on many levels as well as perhaps a peek at the subconscious desires being fulfilled in our relationship.?>

1/10/02:

I was at my parents' house, outside, and there was this old fashioned car going by. I flew over to it, hijacked it somehow and then I ended up killing everyone in the car <I felt like a vampire of some sort but I used a knife> and the car ended up in a small village in Italy. I ran through open, stone buildings and climbed up a tree all the way to the top and I noticed that the sky was actually a ceiling. I touched the ceiling with my hand, and then jumped down to another building. I heard a pack of dogs barking and I knew that they were police dogs and that they were after me. I ended up in an alley, where I forced myself to wake up by banging my head against some bricks so I wouldn't have to face the dogs.

<Impressions: A general feeling of being trapped once I was in the Italian village (which seemed to be some sort of facade?) The sky being a ceiling.. very interesting. Hmm.>

1/9/02:

I had parked my car and left my keys at a neighbor or relative's house and I couldn't remember which one. (and I knew that the car and the keys were not necessarily at the same house). I was at my Auntie Colleen's house. No one seemed overly concerned about my car situation. I was talking with my Mom and she said she'd let me borrow her car until mine turned up but I said no, I needed to find my own car. My Dad walked in halfway through the conversation (as he is known to do in real life) and said something like what if he didn't approve? (he seemed to be trying to exert his authority over me without knowing what was going on at all).

In another scene, I was driving a car at night on a windy road with my cousin Sara in the passenger seat. Now that I think of it though, our seats seemed reversed, with her on the left and me on the right, like in Europe. I was driving fast and haphazardly and around a corner I didn't turn the wheel enough and we flew over a guardrail and into the air. I looked over at Sara and asked if this was really happening. She seemed pretty pissed off at me and climbed over me to try to get out (we were still in midair and my side was closer to the ground, so it seemed pretty stupid for her to try to get out on my side). When we landed, she was gone (?), but I was alive and I seemed fine. I went to get out of the car when an electric guitar that I'd forgotten about fell from the ceiling of the car right on my head (I may have been knocked unconscious at this point).

< Impressions: Cars are both an extension of the self/self identity and a symbol of control over one's life. Both dreams seem to show a fear of losing control in my life to some extent, as well as a warning about my family trying to make life decisions for me. The guitar might represent old dreams and goals and/or creativity. I'll have to think on this one. >

12/23/01:

I was sitting across a table from my Uncle Peter. He was commenting on my cream colored mitten and hat set, and then noticed that I was wearing a purple and cream colored snowflake pattern scarf, the cream mittens, and no hat. I got up to leave the table and put on a long, wool (I am allergic to wool) purplish tweed coat.

As I was walking away from the table, I put my hands into my pockets. I found an old gourd thumb musical instrument in my right pocket, as well as a broken glass/plastic resin hanging oriental ornament that looked kind of like a Chinese dragon with the tail sort of broken (it wouldn't hang right, and the hanger was where the tail met the rest of the dragon's body).

Em and my Dad helped fix the dragon's tail (although I'm not sure that I ever got to see the finished product) in this huge black bowl filled with water and some sort of "polymer machine" which was sort of off stage (I didn't actually see it). Em and I had to wet her black glove to help prepare to fix the ornament. Em spit on her glove, and then told me that I'd just been drinking (water) so why didn't I help? So I spit on her glove, and then poured some flavored seltzer water on it. Then, Em dipped her glove into the black bowl of water (which is where she was holding her gloved hand over anyway) and said to my Dad, "Oh, we can dip it in the water?" and he replied, "Of course."

< My impression at this point was that my Dad had always known that the glove could just be dipped into the water to wet it but he'd never told her that until she'd asked. He'd let her spit on her gloves to wet them instead. >

I also found my classical-electric guitar (the one with the broken strings that helped end my friendship with Don in real life). In my dream the guitar strings were still broken, and the body of the guitar was sanded down to bare wood and had the names of friends from my past carved on it and it said "I <heart> DON, DON" and other things.

< I had the impression at first that Adam (Lee's brother, the hippie) had carved it all without my knowing, but when I saw the "I <heart> DON, DON" thing, I knew I had at least contributed. >

I considered sanding down the (guitar) body down again to get rid of all the names and words but ended up putting the guitar in the corner of a dark closet instead.