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April, 2012
1 3 4 9 11 14 18 20 22 25 26 28 304/1/12 - Title: "The Right Color Emotion"
I am toward the front in a big amphitheater type classroom or place for services or proceedings (like a church or a courtroom). I have just had a disagreement with my father who wants me to be doing things differently. I am worried what he thinks but also, even though knowing it will upset him, since I was in the middle of getting the right solution liquid when our dispute occurred and now it is time to be here (in this amphitheater), I have brought some transparent plastic glasses, cups, or bottles in and have them on my (college student type) desk/chair in the classroom. There was already here a large plastic glass or transparent cup of yellow liquid on the desktop. It looks like orange juice. Now, with what I have brought in, there are at least five plastic containers arrayed on my desktop, all but one (the one that looks like it has orange juice) with varying light to dark shades of aqua-colored liquid. Perhaps because I am nervous about my dad's or the teacher's possible disapproval for my messing with all the containers of colored liquid, I get distracted and lose track of which container had the yellow liquid when I have begun pouring the liquids back and forth to get the right overall mix. Thus, the yellow disappears (mixed in with the other liquids), and now I have about five containers of liquid, each with a lighter bluish green color.
[Of my father, I think he did the best he could and intended the best for me, my sister, and our brothers, yet in general he was quite judgmental and rather lacking in empathy in how he related with all of us. He was also, however, intelligent and had a lot of practical good sense.
I have a periodic routine of mixing mouthwash with a hydrogen peroxide solution, roughly half and half, to give me a combination that does the good things of both. This was recommended by a physician after I had had a number of throat infections. They cleared up after I began using this mouthwash combination on a more or less daily basis. Supposedly, it also has some mild teeth whitening effects. Mixing the liquids changes the original color of the mouthwash from a deeper to a lighter aqua.]
4/3/12 - Title: "A Morbid Theme"
Something about death.
4/4/12 - Title: "Remus"
Something about Remus.
4/9/12 - Title: "Following One Who Knows the Way"
Night. I am following or chasing an older gentleman around a desolate cityscape. The cityscape is old, bizarre-looking. We stop at several locations. The older guy seems to be my teacher or mentor and wants to show me things at each place. Dust, smoke, or fog add to the dimness of the light, the desolation, and the difficulty of seeing one's way or making any progress. Yet the old guy does not appear to be affected and moves easily along from location to location.
4/11/12 - Title: "Dirty Old Man vs. Dirty Ice Cream"
I am with my wife and several teenage girls who are other customers here at an ice cream shop. It is not clear why Fran is here. I don't think she wants to get any ice cream. Maybe she just needs to shop for something else nearby. I get an ice cream cone with a scoop of vanilla. The teenagers get their ice cream cones as well. I'm not sure when Frances will be through.
While I'm waiting and starting on my ice cream cone, the young girls have been served and start to leave. I start to go out at the same time. One of the teenagers looks at me as if I'm weird and maybe some kind of threat. We walk down several concrete steps from inside the building to the ground level outside. I am a short distance behind the teenagers. The one who had looked at me suspiciously continues to cast glances back. I realize it will allay her concerns if I do not appear to be following them as they head off down a tree-lined park path, so I stop at the base of the steps to eat my ice cream cone and wait for Fran.
I see the suspicious young lady looking back at me from among the trees. She is talking about me with her friends, probably saying I am a dirty old man. The rest of my unfinished scoop falls out of my cone onto the ground. The suspicious girl sees this and giggles. I shrug my shoulders while looking at her and smile. She turns to her companions, relieved or pleased at my misfortune, and tells them what happened. It seems the joke is at my expense. I keep waiting for Frances.
[The steps in the dream likely have to do with Alanon and the 12-step program. Ice cream here probably is about sex, which, in turn, has to do with both spirituality and integration. My anima represented in the dream by my wife, Frances, is no longer interested (in sex, spirituality, or integration). Clearly the ego still is, as are the anima energy aspects represented in the dream by the teenage girls. There is not good integration, however, among these other parts of my larger Self either.
There is a tree-lined path, which seems to signify a positive life journey, yet it is in a park and so may symbolize issues that are "parked" instead of the potential for growth occurring. The anima teenagers may be emotional, intuitional, and largely unconscious aspects which are only at a younger stage of development or might be my creative projects with more emotional and intuitional dimensions.
Of the real Frances, to me she is excellent at expressing and fulfilling her needs, which are mainly intellectual but also musical, is no longer interested in sexuality (after menopause began a few years ago), and has a good sense of humor. This last is now our main way of connecting.]
4/14/12 - Title: "A Disabled Anima, Deaf to Our Wails"
I am at home (not my real home). A woman (my sister?) is here with me. There are various rooms, chambers, or tanks and two stories. The place is long and narrow. The woman is lamenting that we do not have whales, that there are not even whales and dolphins nearby. I am surprised. Her comment makes no sense, for in fact our house has whales already. They are in big chambers or tanks that take up more space in the house than the rooms we live in.
[Of my sister, I find her to be narcissistic, an alcoholic, and sensitive, "into" her complaints, problems, and grievances. Yet, she is resourceful in dealing with her many problems.]
4/18/12 - Title: "Who's There!?"
I am home in bed (in the dream and in reality) when I hear something massive crash into the house two or three times in succession. It sounds like someone or something knocking to be let in, yet is too loud and large for that to be the case. I wake up, alarmed, thinking I have to investigate who or what is so massively hitting the house (it having sounded like an elephant or bigger) or what damage has already been done, when I realize it was a dream.
4/20/12 - Title: "A Bruised Writing Finger"
I'm at home. In an earlier scene, there was something about my bruised left index finger (which also in reality has a small indentation in one bone digit, due to a lifetime of pressing there with pen or pencil when I write, and lately has been sore).
In this (second) scene, I am in bed. It seems to be morning. (It's not my real bedroom, but...) My head and the head of the bed are just below a window (above) through which soft light is coming. There is a cluttered, "doorless" closed (closet) to my left. It has one upper shelf. Suddenly, I see my brother's (Ron's) face among the things in there at the top shelf (not clear if he was standing in the closet, and the other stuff kind of camouflaged him, or if he was just on the top shelf, kind of hidden except for his face). In any case, he sees that I've noticed him and smiles, and now I see more of him, his head and torso, as he leans toward me and says something like he thought he'd surprise me, which he did. (Then I woke up.)
[Of Ron, I'd say: recovering alcoholic, sober about 17 years, depressed, lonely, obese, but basically a good guy.]
4/22/12 - Title: "Having You Pegged: Ruffled Feelings"
Something about needing or wanting to smooth something out on or for someone(s), perhaps their feelings, though I saw it physically, like pegs pushed up too high, that needed to be pushed or hammered down, so the surface would then be even, smoothed out again.
Title: "Needing to Learn to Keep Things Simple, While Chairing, etc."
It is toward dusk in both the following scenes.
Scene one - I am working with a couple Mexicans, trying to learn from them how to do some "simple" things, things that, once learned, I can use the rest of my life. There is a veranda on an old building, and on the veranda is an old chair made of straw, wooden pegs, boards, and slats. It reminds me of a chair painted by Van Gogh, except this one is less colorful, more tan, as if the color has been bleached out with age. It also has screw-in hooks (eye-hooks) in places, so something else can be fastened on, like a simple tray, for instance. They (the Mexican men) show me and let me practice how to get the simple (primitive) tray on and off of the chair and its eye-hooks.
Scene two - Later we have the chair out in a lot away from (in front of) the veranda. Nothing else is around for miles, just us, the veranda, and this chair out front, in a scene that looks like Mexican or Arizonan desert.
Now one of the Mexicans is sitting in the chair. The other one, in jeans and an old shirt - like the sitting one, both with old cowboy hats too - is commenting on and watching my getting thorns or stickers out of the palms of my hands. They are all around on the ground and I've gotten several in my hands, and they hurt a lot to get out, but I must do it, gingerly, carefully, but definitely. They can work without getting their hands full of painful stickers - one of the simple things they need to teach me, but are sympathetic with my learning pains.
4/25/12 - Title: "Too Left, Too Right, or To Write"
I am in a van heading down a multi-lane one-way thoroughfare in a big city, buildings rising high on either side. In the van with me is a girl, maybe ten years old and the driver. We are in the left hand lane when we pass a big tractor-trailer truck, maybe an 18-wheeler, that is then on the right side of the road. I am seeing it out a right van window as we pass. Relative to that view, we are driving to my left.
Something is wrong with the truck's driver. He is now disabled in some way. His vehicle is moving, but he loses control of it and cannot regain control. It is moving forward, slowly weaving from one side to the other of the thoroughfare, and picking up speed. The driver of the van in which I am is unaware of this hazard. I see through the rear window that the out-of-control truck is now quickly heading toward us, veering toward the left where we still are.
My driver becomes more aware and takes us over to the right, but there we are blocked in at the right hand lane by parked cars. Meanwhile the truck has continued to pick up speed and now is careening quickly back toward us, a dead-on impact imminent. At the last split-second, the truck veers back a little toward the left just before it plows into our van. For some reason it does not cause a terrible crash involving the whole van but instead sheers off the left third of the van. Our driver had moved to the right, and all three of us in the van are OK, excited but relieved by the close call, though the van is wrecked, and we shall obviously have to get new transportation.
[None of the characters in the dream are recognizable, but the girl reminds me of Violet, aged about ten and a half, my niece up in WI. Violet is very smart, a good violinist for her age, also a very good wrestler for her weight class, intellectually quite curious, playful, likes a wide variety of hobbies, including horse riding, but is a little overly sensitive to criticism or to not winning her competitions.
I think the dream is partly about issues of right vs. left, i.e. perhaps of self-expression through writing (which I do left-handed, though I am right-handed or ambidextrous in everything else) and/or of emotional, intuitional, unconscious material issues vs. rational, analytical, logical issues. Also, since I am left-handed in writing but not in other things, there is some ambiguity about my own left vs. right Jungian psychology (and gender?) identity meanings.
Nonetheless, in the dream it appears that, so far as the ego is concerned, I begin relatively too far into the emotional side, but wind up relieved to be OK and relatively on the analytical side with, at least for the time being, the more extreme (far left) emotional capacity having been removed.]
4/26/12 - Title: "Attack!"
A desert valley, on the floor of which there is unit of at least 10-20 combat tanks advancing in widely dispersed formation, apparently toward and to be part of a much larger and more complex battle.
[The dream reminds me of a scene in the movie, "Patton," in which that general defeated Rommel's Africa Corps.]
4/28/12 - Title: "Control"
Scene one - I am in a place that is dangerous, but I am a reporter and have a camera case shaped device with me. With it, I can interact with the dangerous environment in ways that keep me safe. The device has controls on top of the back (or inside) part. There are multiple ways to go, but all lead to places where there is or recently has been violence. There are large animals about, loose from their pens, for instance unleashed dogs which may attack. At one point, I come to where Obama is lying, apparently dead, possibly mauled to death. His flesh looks ripped open. There is blood all around. Many other reporters or idly curious people come by and see his body there, lose interest quickly, and leave. I am then alone with his body, possibly recording the scene with my device, when I become aware he is not dead. The scene looks terrible, but maybe it was a fake death. Faked by him? It appears so. Obama and I know the secret, that he remains alive.
Scene two - I have been walking on labyrinthine paths though old world city settings, past many women sitting beside the path, and also walk close to a royal family taking a nearby path in single file. In one place, there are at least three paths on several levels weaving in, out, up, down, amongst one another, all so narrow that at most one person at a time can fit. Sometimes the paths becomes so narrow that one can see through the rocky opening , but it is too small for one to fit through, and one must turn back and try another way. I have been carrying a device shaped like my camera in its case. The device has a set or series of push-button controls in a rectangle on the top of the part that normally goes next to me on my belt (strapped onto my belt or strapped over my shoulder, so this part is toward me).
I notice that the control panel is missing. It must have come loose and fallen off at some point in my labyrinthine paths of walking. I must try to retrieve it and so retrace my steps, yet this is nearly impossible, or is in fact impossible, because I cannot recall exactly how I had gone before. Some of the paths I thought I had traveled are now too narrow in places for me to get through, and there are so many little places a small panel like that might have fallen, where one could not see it anymore, way too many to look for completely. I ask others if they had seen it, but nobody had. I do not know how I shall find the missing controls. Maybe I can buy a new device which still has its controls intact.
[Clearly this is partly about a sense of being somewhat in control, which can make life's dangers seem more manageable, vs. having no control. There is also transformation (the reference to three). And there is a spiritual element, the large dogs which are not penned and may maul also being "gods." The complicated, often hazardous ways to go or paths with only room for one seem like each person's path through life. The word "loose" appears in both scenes. There is much about what is missing (lost) in the second scene and, with Obama in the first scene, initially a sense that all is lost, for he is apparently dead. Loose or lost may have not only the obvious meanings but also could be about losing control or about what has been lost and cannot be retrieved, for which one can but grieve, adapt, and move on.
Of Obama, I see him as a brilliant but weak president, savaged by his political opponents and by the terribly weak economy he inherited, a man not skilled at negotiation, having little stomach for the kinds of fight he needs to be making, sort of resigned to playing a game with the poor hand he has been dealt, and hence of being a victim. Yet, if he can somehow prevail in the current election year, he is our nation's best hope. "Push-button" likely refers to the many ways I can get hooked (or have my buttons pushed), giving rise to negative emotions, as I deal with others or with adverse circumstances. "Retrace my steps" may refer to the Al-Anon 12-step program.]
4/30/12 - Title: "Ego Man to Shadow Man"
Something about Russell and the coming Man-to-Man Al-Anon/AA conference I expect both of us to attend in a little less than three weeks.
[Of Russell, I see him as smart, introverted, somewhat nervous, compulsive, spiritual, a conscientious dad, significantly focused on working his Al-Anon program, basically a good guy. He also worked in the educational side (state teachers' claims) of the disability program, like I worked on the federal side (Texas Rehabilitation's management of Social Security claims) of the same program. Except that he is relatively tall and thin while I am shorter and a bit overweight, that I am a would-be dad, while he is a real dad as well as a step-dad, and that much of his disability program career he was in the equivalent of the Inquiries Department, while I spent my whole disability program career as a caseworker (adjudicator), in a number of ways we could be twins.]