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May, 2017
28 29Scene 1 - I have a small number of possessions in a shopping cart and, inside the cart, they are in a medium-sized cardboard box plus 2-3 other containers. I am looking, in a very urban, night setting (with high buildings all around, streets, narrow sidewalks, and no natural environments or landmarks), for a room where I can stay for the night. The situation feels overwhelming. I am alone. I feel lost. I do not know where I am or where in the midst of this to find and pay for a room, much less know just where it is again if I do (go) out again or where it would be in relation to any other place that I might want to go. I feel almost hopeless in this situation.
Scene 2 - I see a place that is like a combination of the University Co-op bookstore and Texas Rehab. - Disability Division (two then real places where I had worked, between the two of them for about 25 years). I go in and leave my cart and possessions near the entrance to (I believe) the Textbook Dept. (though it is also like the entrance to an assumed modern version of Disability Determination or even the break area for employees at an HEB supermarket.
I see a large, empty office and decide to rest there, sitting in a comfortable chair at a manager's desk. After a few minutes, though, a woman (presumably the manager) comes in and demands to know what I am doing there. I explain I used to work here for 14-15 years (sic), that it's nice to be back where things are sort of familiar and known, and that I am just resting for a few moments. She is neither angry nor kind but is firm that I must leave, which I do, feeling sad there could be no rapport between us and that she either does not believe or care that I had spent a good part of my life here. It makes no difference to here (her). I am not now part of the organization and get no credit for anything earlier.
When I go toward the entrance to retrieve my stuff, it has been removed and is nowhere to be found. I ask a tall younger man, evidently an employee, about it, and he tells me it must have been taken to a processing area for discarded or found stuff, etc. He shows me where this is. It is sort of like a drop-off area for stuff given to Goodwill, but on a huge, industrial scale. There are many long aisles. On either side of them are deep shelves in metal racks that rise 8-9 feet. Mostly these are full of other people's stuff, including cardboard boxes up to high over my head and others' heads. Kids are attempting to climb up these shelves in several places, evidently just playing on them as if they are grand jungle-jims, but maybe they are wanting to grab some of all this stuff. I try to climb up to look for my stuff, but cannot get a good hold. Some things I try to hold are boxes of others' stuff that threaten to come loose and fall off the shelves if I keep holding onto them. The tall, younger man helps me and, between the two of us, we see my stuff on top of one of the tall sets of shelves. I cannot reach it or climb up there, though, and, even with the other man's help, it remains inaccessible. I do something else to get help to retrieve my stuff, even complaining that it should not just be left to a 75-year-old's own devices (actual age, 73, and I knew in the dream this "75" age was a lie, but thought it might seem more convincing) to try to get back stuff of his that's been taken and put out of reach. When I next look where my stuff had last been seen, it is gone again. I have no idea where it is now. I am still left to my own devices, but then go looking for someone more in authority to help. I briefly explain the situation to a woman who seems to be one of the managers, and she and I are then going toward the warehouse-like area of aisles and high shelves with people's discarded or found stuff (but there is no resolution as I wake up.).
[At this time, the dream remains mostly a mystery to me except that it may reflect a certain frustration or anxiety with my conscious experience these days. I shall, however, make a few observations that have occurred to me.
The small-self identity or ego is feeling somewhat at a loss, how old he is, more alone (and, as such, left to his own devices) than he could wish, and that there is not so much in his life (stuff) to help him with a sense of who or where he is in this existence. Now even that is (at least for now) gone. Others who are still leading productive, purposeful lives give him little respect or regard. It is noteworthy perhaps that at one point in the dream's write-up there's a recognition that what went before makes to difference to "here," i.e. to the here and now.
A couple of possible catalysts for the dream include that 1. my wife tends as time goes on to find more and more interesting activities that involve her away from home, and hence leaving me alone, which on occasion leaves me feeling lonely, hurt, or neglected (though I do not want her to change her life to suit my preferences and I value our relationship enough to want her to feel fulfilled in it, instead of that she must cater to me at the expense of what comes more naturally for her), and 2. my duties as a volunteer at an elementary school library (where my efforts are appreciated and I receive positive feedback, a sense of accomplishment, and friendly interactions) has just come to an end for another term, not to resume till late August or the first week of September (months 8-9).
"2-3" suggests dawning awareness of the issues involved in the dream as well as growth and transformation. "8-9" suggests, per the "I Ching," under the circumstances, good fortune if there is firmness of character and the animating energy is toward harmony (8), as well as progress and success after a small threat to peace and serenity (9).
"75" can be looked at as 3 x 5 x 5, i.e. transformation as well as amped up creativity and waiting. Similarly "25" or 5 x 5 can be about creativity and waiting.
"14-15" suggests either great progress and success or at least some progress and success.
High buildings suggest a great deal of building or growth is going on, in this case so much so that the small-self identity feels in unfamiliar territory. The idea of growth is also emphasized from the word "Co-op," short for cooperative, a step closer to inner integration.
The repetition of "entrance" not only suggests a way into inner realms of insight, experience, the unconscious, or intuition, but also a potentially different type of awareness: "in trance."
The female managers in the dream may represent my anima energy, there to show by example or counter-example right attitude or feeling. In this case, one is practical and not inclined to give attention to my associations with the past, while the other is helpful in my quest for retrieval in the now of what's left of my stuff.
A vast amount of stuff has been shelved: i.e. perhaps most all of what the individual egos might find to be of value has now been cast aside as no longer of particular relevance. Presumably some egos would like as much stuff as possible, maybe to give them a greater sense of self-importance, Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin being a couple of examples. For better or worse, this dream ego is reduced to having little or no stuff left. Since "you can't take it with you," it may be just as well for an ego, eventually at least, to become comfortable depending on not much extra, Francis of Assisi, Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Teresa perhaps being apt illustrations.
On the other hand, the not much stuff left, and even that now missing, could be a reference to concerns that my life itself is almost over, the "stuff" I had owned and which now is lost being all I have left to do or be in this existence.
"Goodwill" suggests a positive outlook.
"many long aisles" might be about "I'll" do this or that if this or if that or at some point in the future, when circumstances are right, good intentions, in other words, rather than taking decisive action now.
Since there seems to be no resolution by its conclusion of the basic problems of the dream, it may be further dream work is to be done later.]
5/29/17 - Title: "Kidnapping"
I am involved with a baby's mother, but not a friend of the father, and I am not married to her. The child is still an infant. The baby's father (and possibly the mother's husband, for that's not clear) is both abusive, violently so, and not very bright. There's also an older, smarter friend of the family who lives nearby, or even in the same house as the baby and its parents. He's a good guy, and I want him to think well of me, though this turns out to be challenging under the circumstances.
There is some kind of altercation. I think the father hurts the mother and threatens the baby. He is restrained. It is not clear in my memory of the dream if he is attacked in a fight or is shot or both. I remember he was shot and killed, but then later he is still alive, and his good guy friend at that point knew nothing of the killing, though I recalled he had been there when it happened (so maybe it is like that physics thought experiment in which a cat both dies and doesn't die, and we cannot tell which till we observe the cat or, in this case, the violent husband/father).
The mother and I have hatched a plan to take the baby, for its own safety, and not return. We'll do this while the injured (or dead) husband/father is incapacitated or unconscious (or dead). We are expecting to never come back. Yet because of wanting the good guy to think well of us, we tell him (and it is uncertain if we mean it or it is a lie), that we'll be back periodically so the husband/father can see the child and so his parents (the paternal grandparents) can too, and it seems everyone is acting like, and the good guy believes, that for some reason before he was hurt (or shot and killed) the husband/father understood about and approved our taking and raising the baby ourselves.
Nonetheless, now we are hurrying to try and leave in a normal, not suspicious way, before the husband/father comes to (or rises from the dead and lets the good guy know we really are kidnappers). As we are leaving with the baby, I still don't know if we really intend to return and visit periodically or hope to change our names and begin new lives and never come this way again.
So far, the real or acted scene is playing itself out alright, the good guy still thinks well of us, we are imminently going to be driving off, and the husband/father is still dead to the world (or just dead), so I'm thinking we might, against the odds, pull this off and get away with it.