Home
Previous
Next
April, 2021
4 7Am part of a small community, at night. Rain, rain, and more rain. The streets are full of water. Water keeps rising. People are doing the best they can, we can, to cope. Homes, offices, and apartments are flooded. People are doing their (our) best to get by, sleep, whatever, in parks. They must be at a little higher elevation. Sleeping with heads propped on tree roots instead of pillows, hoping the new spring leaves may give a little protection from the rain. Yet the water keeps rising. Women, men, kids, all of us together. In a big building, again, a lot of people are sheltering, hoping for the best, using a few flashlights for illumination. There are some sort of devices to accommodate the rising waters, maybe catch some of it, like empty plastic containers that will fill with the water when it comes up further, but there are not nearly enough of these devices. The immediate future is uncertain. It seems we may not be able to cope with the danger and devastation as the rains continue, and the waters keep rising. I am older (like my present age), on my own, and not understanding as well what is best to do. A couple of the younger women are giving me suggestions and encouragement.
[This dream is similar to the last one. Have little new understanding of its meaning. I assume the water, as before, suggests a lot of vulnerability to overwhelming emotion or input from my unconscious. My defenses (containers) against the strong feelings are insufficient to protect the ego from danger and a sense of devastation. The main difference from the just previous dream evidently is that in this one there are many other characters involved too, not just the small-self identity. Again there are diverse levels. There is likely constructive growth (big building) occurring. The "few flashlights for illumination" perhaps represent intuition or insight. So much rain suggests sadness, possibly grief.]
4/7/21 - Title: "Oops!"
I saw a coral snake moving across the floor near me, evidently heading for the open door just off to my right. I thought it cool and called Fran's attention to it. She was in her room but came to see it right away. I expressed my concern that she not interfere with it, just let it go on its way out of our place. However, apparently to show me how silly she thought my warning was, she put her hands under the snake and in a high-pitched voice began saying something like "whee!" over and over as she played with it, tossing it a few inches into the air, catching it, and repeating the tossing motions. To her surprise, it grabbed the tip of one of her fingers in its mouth, tried to bite her, and in fact did nick her a little bit before she got the finger free. She still did not take the snake or its nick seriously. I was rushing for a sharp knife with which to cut off her finger before any poison might get farther inside her, but she instead wanted to wait, feeling there was no danger, certainly not enough to warrant losing a finger. (I woke up not knowing if she were right to have poo-pood (pooh-poohed) my concerns.)
[Of Frances, my wife in real life, I'd say she is a naturalist, highly intelligent, and an excellent teacher. It is unlikely she would play with a coral snake in this fashion. She is, though, in the dream perhaps there to show by example or counter-example right feeling. In this instance, it appears more probable the character is showing by counter-example that being silly, risk-tolerant, and mocking are not appropriate. A couple things that stand out from the dream are the repeated calling of "whee" and the repetitions as well of the poo sound. Taken together, it seems there is in the dream at one rather basic, even childish level a preoccupation with excretion: "wee-wee" and "poo-poo." Urination in dreams can be a metaphor for self-expression and defecating for productivity. Venomous snakes in my dreams often seem to be about suppressed or unacknowledged emotion, such as anger. "To my right" likely is about rational, logical, or what are generally considered more masculine modes of thinking, so perhaps there is a transition occurring from the more unconscious, feeling side toward the more analytical. The concern to cut off the perhaps poisoned finger simply mirrors what as an Army basic training recruit I was told (in 1964) about how to respond immediately to a coral snake bite. These days the treatment is not nearly so radical, and in fact coral snake bites only rarely involve death. The dream meaning of that part of the dream eludes me at present. The open door might be about imminent new opportunities or something I am going through right now. Am puzzled what that might be, as consciously I do not see anything significant either in the near future or as a factor in my day-to-day situation of late.]