Home
Previous
Next
July, 2014
14 25 27 28It's the end of a big conference in Austin of men and women naturalists and nature photographers from all over. I'm not one myself but am interested. This is my first such conference. I'm enthusiastic and am easily making the acquaintance of several friendly scholars, photographers, teachers, and scientists, some very well thought of in these fields.
The conference is breaking up, and people are starting to leave. All the people, and they are mostly younger than I am (in reality) - though in the dream I seem much younger too - are highly knowledgeable, even brilliant. And they're mostly taller than I am. I've sought the phone numbers, names, and/or addresses of some of the new acquaintances so I can keep in touch.
One Austin man with a super reputation, named something Dutch, I think, is especially helpful and gives me some information. He writes his address on the back of my camera, but the felt pen ink immediately smears, and I cannot make it out.
He had also had me hold his camera (that looks like an instamatic), perhaps while he was putting the info on my camera. I discover later that I still have his camera in my backpack, but still don't have his name or phone number.
Just as things are seriously breaking up and people have started leaving, I go looking for him to return the camera and get a better name, address, and phone for him than I have so far. But he apparently, along with his wife or family or friends, has just left. I ask someone whom I don't know for help, and she immediately knows who I mean, this somebody Dutch, a famous Austin-based naturalist photographer who also travels to get cool new info and shots. She begins to write the contact info down for me (when I wake up).
7/25/14 - Title: "Life and Death Choice"
I'm in a rural, industrial area. There's a train stopped on tracks. I'm one of just a few trying to guard the area. We've just been told the enemy is on the move and may be here at any moment. I'm by myself in this part. I have a rifle, but it feels completely insufficient. A column of enemy soldiers appears. They are in uniform and are both men and women. Overall, they seem young, maybe in late teens, early twenties, typical ages for soldiers, but I'm surprised some are women. I think perhaps they are N. Koreans or Chinese. I hide under the train. The column is not moving toward me but in a direction up the embankment for the train tracks, across the tracks, and then on toward my left and out of view. It (If) I shoot, I just give away my position. I might hit one or two, but then I'd be shot with return fire. Most of the column has gone by, but then a young woman soldier, looking back, sees me. It is so stressful for her, she begins to cry. Just as I am hesitating to shoot, so is she. I might shoot her if she does not fire or I might raise the alarm, but she clearly does not want to kill me any more than I want to kill her. It is uncertain what will happen. At any moment some other soldier may see me lying here under the track (train), or she may overcome her scruples and either shoot me or tell the others where I am. (I wake up.)
7/27/14 - Title: "Black Mamba"
A woman (seems to be a blend of my wife, Fran, and an Alanon acquaintance, Maggie) has a pregnant pet poisonous black snake, very long and easily distressed and tending to go on the attack, with lethal biting or threats of some, if upset. I'm not certain the snake is really a pet, though it appears that way. It could just be that it must be treated as a pet to keep it calm until someone or something can rescue us, or at least try to, from the extremely dangerous and intelligent reptile. We even must be careful what we say around it, for it can understand us when we talk and knows what we mean when we discuss handling her.
The woman needs to leave for a few minutes, evidentally (evidently) to make arrangements for the safe, or relatively safe, movement of the snake to an isolated enclosure or nursery area, where the snake can feel safe from humans and vice versa.
However, this will leave me alone and in charge with the snake while Fran/Maggie will be away. The snake is quiet and apparently comfortable, calm, and resting. We very much hope she will remain that way till Fran/Maggie returns, especially as the serpent seems kind of bonded with her, and only sort of tolerant of me. Fran/Maggie and I have already spent about an hour or so getting the snake to her current level of calm, and she is as close to asleep as I've ever seen her. And from Fran/Maggie's conversation with me the snake knows that she's going to get the nursery ready, where the snake can safely give live birth to her little black mamba babies. She knows that I'm going to keep her company (resting next to the snake) while Fran/Maggie is away (and I'll pretend to nap when in fact I've seldom if ever in my life been as fully alert and awake as I am now).
In careful, coded phrases, just before Fran/Maggie slips away, I ask how long the snake is likely to stay calm and quiet after she leaves, and how long till she, Fran/Maggie, get(s) back.
"About twenty minutes," she says, and that she hopes to be back in that amount of time too. We both know that if the snake gets upset sooner or if she doesn't get back in time, I'll likely be fatally bitten, and others will then probably be greatly endangered too. She's slowly, carefully, with a false calm, getting up to leave, which the snake is noticing, and I am wondering if I now have less than twenty minutes left to live (when I wake up).
[Of Fran, I'd say she is intellectual, an excellent teacher, and good at being fully engaged in the moment. Of Maggie, she is emotional, co-dependent, and conscientious. This anima or female aspect of me, then, by example or counter-example is there to represent these qualities for me to follow. The reference to twenty could be "amped up" dawning awareness. In the past, dreams of snakes for me have been about repressed or suppressed feelings that may need greater expression. In this case, it seems there might now be or, if precognitive, soon will be a great deal of a emotion with which to deal, and that I see it as a substantial threat to me (my ego) as well as to others. Black could refer to things that are in shadow or that are parts of myself I do not normally acknowledge. There is also the idea of black as representing mourning. "Mamba" could be a pun, i.e. might equal "Mom bye," suggesting a worry that my mom, now almost 92, may be about to die, which were it to occur would likely elicit significant emotion. Snakes, though, can also be about wisdom, health (the medical Caduceus), Kundalini energy, becoming more enlightened, and the death of the current ego identity, to be replaced by another, more adaptive one. The idea of greater enlightenment is supported by "I've seldom if ever in my life been as fully alert and awake as I am now."]
7/28/14 - Title: "Too Big to Admit"
Scene one - I'm in a gloomy, isolated, dark landscape, distant from others, yet I also move around a lot between different centers of population. Sometimes I see others I know, and we briefly have good times. Then I return to my lonely post.
Scene two - I'm in the Army or working for the Army. I'm aware of a huge potential scandal. It is not that some real and terrible disaster has occurred, but things have been run in an informal way for a long time, and if everything that has occurred were known, so different than the official, politically correct version, many heads would roll, including those of the officers and non-coms of my unit. They are responsible for a big move that is imminent, including the posting of all the records.
I realize that if most of the records were to go missing there would be little the higher-ups could do about it. In fact, it would be too big a thing for them to admit. They'd cover it up themselves.
I do not hesitate, but tell my immediate superior officer, a young lieutenant, not to worry, that it will be taken care of. Then I pack things up in such a way that the most sensitive document files just disappear, while lots of non-essential stuff and trash, even old shoes and boots, gets sent on to the new location. The move is so brazen, occurring right under the noses of the higher-ups, that it is not detected at the time, and my officer is relieved to simply leave it all to me. We get away with it, and later he'll be able to deny having done it. There will be an investigation, but it will be a white-wash.