More Dream Talk

Dreams sometimes yield information immediately. I drew meaning from my "bird and cat" dream almost as soon as I woke from it. The bird and the cat personify aspects of myself that are neglected and at odds. My "self" of the dream is my ego, reclaiming the neglected parts (the bird) and wrestling with the self-destructive parts (the cat).

Dreams yield more information when contrasted and compared to other dreams in a series. When one records dreams, and reads them together after time, a theme, or themes, emerge that do not necessarily present in any single dream.

This dream of mine-- the "bird and the cat"-- fits into a series of dreams I've had that suggest a sense of being attacked without fault. Other dreams with other characters, other plots, other settings, also suggest the same sort of personal attack that I suffered from the cat, an attack that I did not deserve.

I have had many series of dreams over the years. I've had many dreams in which I try to travel to Italy, but I miss the plane, get on a wrong plane, forget my passport, etc. These dreams are vivid and varied, but the theme is always the same. I never get to Italy, but Franco and Rosa are waiting there for me. This series does not allude to any profound spiritual or psychological turmoil; I've had these dreams since my passport expired several years ago. I need to renew my passport.

I've had "elevator dreams" for years, in which I get on an elevator and it falls, or shoots out the roof, or rotates in circles, or tilts back and forth. Those dreams are terrifying. I don't have them often any more.

Most of my current dreams are about driving my car, or losing my car, or having it stolen. These dreams are the grown-up version of my recurring childhood nightmare, "Highway in the Sky," in which Mom was driving on a highway that looped into the sky, like a roller-coaster, and my sister and I sat in the back seat scared. At the apex of the loop, and of our fear, I would lean over to ask my Mom if she knew where we were going, and I'd find that she was no longer sitting in the driver's seat. In fact, she was no longer in the car. My sister and I were in the car hurtling faster and higher into the sky on a highway from which we then fell, and I would wake up trying to scream.

I used to record my dreams religiously, but I have fallen away from the habit, just as I've fallen away from this blog. I swing back and forth, in a widening loop of a figure eight, where the center is the center, balanced, content, free of pressures, urges and prickly emotions, and the loop is like the top of a roller coaster, promising thrill, intensity, captivated by centrifugal force.

The center remains the goal, the place of peace, where I want to throw off my shoes and stay awhile. Sometimes I do. Mostly, I am caught by the wind of some passion, and fling myself towards the outer loop of another circle. Maybe I'm not yet old enough to know how to sit in the center. I am not certainly not wise enough to do so, but someday... maybe...

The center draws me, thankfully. It draws me today, and every day that I sit in front of a keyboard. Writing is the magnet that pulls me in.  Where do dreams lay on the figure-eight continuum? I think they lay mostly on the outer edges or even beyond, but I'm not sure. It doesn't matter, at least for tonight. It's bedtime. Good-night.