Ghosts Again

Yet another dream of exorcism. These happen frequently, though I don't always write about them. In this dream it was in a new-to-us home, that we had to move into. It was haunted by the ghost of an Irish bartender (farmer? can't remember).

Attempts to remove any spirit by force usually don't work. They leave me weakened, or if I do succeed, left with a feeling of guilt. Instead: embracing the spirit, sending it love often has the best effect, albeit not always quickly. The icy touch of the spirit world is thrilling yet harrowing. Something within your soul is moved.

The final transformational moments before the spirit departs are quite moving. It is a very emotional process for everyone involved. I can't quite describe it, except as that moment in a movie where you've been rooting for a character the whole film and they finally have a breakthrough.

Equinox 2012 Miami

Ah its the equinox. Time for dreams. I hurt my back and have been very restless. I am trying to write this on my back. I am struggling with having to stay in bed.

Dream 1 I'm on an island that is set up very much like Jurassic Park... only there is a whole city of people living on it. At this time we are attempting to integrate the dinosaurs into daily living. And I mean that in the sense that they are becoming part of society... like int that tv show Dinosaurs, only less silly.
Cue scene with the frilled dinosaurs and the guy who gets spit in the face and then eaten on the stormy night. It's stormy here in Miami.
In this dream I'm fed up with my job. I have a sleek, low riding, convertible black car and I'm stuck in traffic at the end of the day in a parking garage. A crazy moment comes over me. I pull the car out of traffic and race sideways across the garage; hit a a water pipe and crack it and then slam through the side of the parking garage and out into the air... Next I'm in a a mall second floor. More elements of authority conflict and doing crazy things outside society norms then GTFO. Security, cops etc are all on m' ass.
I manage to get to secure place. Well, its peaceful and far from the city. A rural homestead where I feel safe and comfortable. I pull in at night, crawl out of my car and sleep on the grass. (I am sleeping on the floor these days) There are two houses here, one is more of a cabin but has a wrap around porch.
The next portion of the dream involves interactions with a young friend in an idyllic setting, only to have the "big bad" authority figure show up - knowing who I am and what I've done. I am subtly called out, then tricked into a corner where I must either admit guilt or blame someone I care about.
In the end, youth alcohol consumption and all, things turn out well. Somehow the authority figure has a heart of gold and lets us be.

Dream 2
Many interactions with friends. Secret love, unrequited, when you are in a relationship with another. How often this comes up as a theme. How much feeling returned and honesty with words does harm? Mostly running around a neutral yard as a setting.

Dream 3
Lana is waiting for a friend to come back - she left a jacket in their vehicle. But this vehicle is a spaceship! I am coming along to meet and I am so very excited. In a jungle grove we wait, and the actinic blue-white light of its thrusters throws everything into harsh relief. When it lands Lana opens a door and grabs out a bright orange vest and puts it on. (Its the one Marty wears in Back to the Future)
The pilot is more robot than life form. I give it a jar of some food, like sesame tahini or peanut butter - which it bites off the bottom of before I explain that the contents are edible, not the whole thing.

Gets me thinking that when we make contact with alien life - what will we do if it looks just like us?

Snow, Kittens, and Storms

1. It's a snowy day. I'm following a navy blue pickup truck and I'm driving a maroon and sporty Saturn (yeah, I know there really aren't sporty Saturns, but its a dream). The pickup has a piece of caution tape trailing off from a tie-down in the bed and I lazily reach out and grab it, thinking to pull it off, but it causes the truck to skid off the road to one side. I let go and it rides back on. I grab it again and the same effect. I'm concerned for their safety but also fascinated by the phenomenon, and I want to pull off the tape so they don't get caught on anything else. The next grab though, causes us both to spin out, them to the left, and myself to the right both into the snowbanks on the side of the road. This is on a little New England green reminiscent of my home town.

I dig my little car out of the snow and physically pick it up and put it on the road. In my mind Saturns are made of plastic and very light apparently. The pickup has four guys in it, some of mixed Native American blood, and there is a police officer pulling them over. He gets them all out and starts checking the truck for drugs. It's totally bogus, but you know he is looking for any excuse to arrest one or all of them. He does find a random excuse to bust them. I'm watching all this from another point of view and the dream ends.

2. Kittens. A mother long hair tortoise-shell is playing with each of her two kittens. They are rolling around in the mossy undergrowth. It is very cute.

3. A storm is rolling in, and everyone is very frightened. I am in my dad's garage, in the woodshop making something. Up in the rafters mice run around; the tortoise-shell cat is stalking. Thunder rumbles and vibrates the walls. The wind picks up and I move out of the garage to join friends and family in the house. There is a tension in the air - an anticipation of something. [reminds me of another dream where the sky opened up and space ships landed, or another with the coming of the apocalypse.]

Science, Violence, Kittens

Visiting an island research station where they need a certified diver with confined spaces to inspect intake pipes. I am talking to the woman in charge on a boulder-strewn shore. The sun is setting and the stone looks black against the orange sky. Inside is a team of young men and women scientists I know. W-- is among them, or at least the dream equivalent of W--. The second floor has the center cut out to look down balcony-like to the first floor. I am hanging out of there looking across to a table where they are all seated. W-- approaches and says she misses me.

transition

I am taking on a job/mission and must go. On another vessel (which resembles an old riverboat), this one with another cast of familiar characters. The mood is like a party, like a Labor Day barbeque / cruise. Half is family and half is graduated colleagues of mine. Mr. C-- is hitting up the booze and getting himself into trouble when he takes money from a classmate, digitally via the friend's phone. Which stars off on a hide-and-seek/ chase over the boat, in the stalls (where the friend's clothing and things were & where C-- got the phone), and over the docks.

Back on the boat I meet the family daughter and bump into W-- and other women I know. They are also on a mission - but counter to my own! Some secret lab/place in the nearby wood where the boat is docked. Compelled a brunette tosses a puppy (brown dachshund) towards the canopy - which tries to get in to the lab - hidden - and with a glass elevator. I leap over the side to get the puppy. There's a ladder and I reprimand the woman (now hanging upside down from the boat railing) "What were you thinking?!" I collect the puppy and her, go inside and make an awkward farewell.

transition

Next mission in North Hill Country. I pull up in a motorcycle at a very nice white farmhouse, the kind with money. Park my motorcycle with the puppy. Inside is a red-brunette haired woman at a set, and elegant dark wood dining table sipping wine. On the table is a thin long sword.

A game of two cats begins between us. I am here to kill her. Slay may be more apropos as there is a dangerous air about her. We exchange sharp words, malevolence beneath civility. I am unarmed and so grab a goblet and break it for an object of sharp glass and turn it on her. The fight is fierce, tentative, and surprisingly brief as I slash, get the upper hand, and position, pin her and grab her hair in one hand, the sword in another. The tip is poised over her heart prepared to plunge. My heart is beating hard in my chest and throat. I start the thrust and she shrieks, NO!

There is a still moment. I hesitate. I cannot end her life. I turn away the sword, and hair already firmly in hand, I kiss her passionately. Which is surprisingly returned and just as fierce. Adrenaline rush.

I let her up and walk out - mission unaccomplished. But I do pick up a kitten, white with grey patches, and leave.

The kitten runs in another part of the farmhouse I have a weird & silly exchange of a family's baby for the kitten. I point in the window at the kitten, they come to the door with a baby in footy pajamas... I shake my head and point around the corner to the kitten scampering up their stairs.

I attempt to leave again. The rest is a silly attempt to ride a motorcycle with a puppy and kitten.

I get turned around, ask for directions from an older woman in a red pickup - one of those with the high wooden sides. I meet a black man and his family as I turn back around in his driveway. We talk motorcycles for a while and he shows me his garage - which the kitten escapes into and is frantically chasing mice, all tiny claws and teeth. She manages to catch a baby bunny - hurting but not killing it. Finally I catch the kitten and the dream ends with me settling kitten and dachshund on the bike.

Persecution, Judgment, Attack, Shame

1) Meeting with all of my professors but having nothing to show. Like a preliminary defense, but with nothing substantive to defend.

2)Argument with a man. We're in a university A big hall.Cheerlieading try-outs. Parking garage. A fight breaks out but he grabs me - literally - by the balls. I feel violated, outraged, ion pain, and helpless. I also seem to be wearing flimsy jogging shorts. I cannot shake him or fend him off. Every new attack is met with same as I try to get the upper hand.

3)I am visiting with L-- and family. Awkward family moments... they don't know that he two of us have broken up. S-- looks sad. I talk to her hoping to cheer her up; ask if she wants to go for a ride, a journey. Her response is happy and then unexpected.

We are in a living room. I'm on an air mattress - she on the couch - and she's then clinging to me, saying "you do love me" and she forces kisses on me... which is all very excitijng but I'm freaking out: 1) because we're in the living room and 2) because this would wreck both our relationships to L--. I try to get away, push her away - but she'd got her hand down my pants and L-- is right there hearing it all. We're toast. S-- is rejected and L-- is pissed.

No win.

Also of note, S-- is wearing a red ribbon. She is almost Nordic blonde and reminds me of [a friend]. The ribbon is the scarlet letter of the dream: a symbolic accusation of betrayal. S-- had the red ribbon like a sash draped over her shoulders. L-- was wearing a maroon scrunchie, which she threw at me.

I felt very judged, and guilty in some sense. but revealing of hidden emotion is exciting - and has consequences.

We carry our judgements into our dreams.

On Stage Again

Dream, January 2, 2012
A wonderful wooden set, circa mid to late 1970s. Performing a play about a royal family - Hamlet? But I have absolutely no knowledge of my lines or any plot and we're opening tonight, as in Now! and I'm in scene one and I don't even have my costume on.

No pleas or stalling: You're on!

Desperately pulling on my costume over my clothes and with my pants halfway up the curtains open: and I disappoint everyone.

Victorian Stage - Ideological Confrontation

Dreams 11/13

Stage theatre production in a Victorian building hosted by my friends.

Swordfight between two men in black robes and red vestments. Of eastern origin. It is an ideological confrontation, a difference in philosophy. One man is killed, my grandfather. Some significance of antlers and my disrespect: laughing at their assembly. Emergency flight tickets home for the funeral, but I miss it having read my email too late.

I must fight the last man and we brutalize each other, but do not kill. Nunchaku to bludgeon. Still, when the fight is over and the man leaves we say "Shalom" to each other and part not as enemies, still at odds.

So many dogs of all breeds and sizes running loose in the hayfields with cows. The dogs must come in, there is a rabid cow in the field. I call their names and bring all the dogs in the house. Fifteen or so. Cats come in too, as if all animals are responding to my call.

I lament missing my flight and I order a coffee at a bed and breakfast in New Hampshire (Vermont? It's always snowing or has snowed in my dreams of Vermont.) There is some trick to making this special brew of coffee and I chat with the barista and owner. She reminds me a bit of S. at the general store in N. Montpelier.