Dreaming

A commonly repeated theme in my dream life is signing up for classes and then just not showing up.  For some reason, I don't take the trouble to drop the classes, I just stop going.  Sometimes (in my dream) I wonder if I should just show up for the final exam, but I've never read the materials.  It's very unsettling.  

Dream a little dream of me

I am in awe of the unconscious mind. I'm specifically thinking about dreams right now, but I could also be referring to unresolved emotional themes that drive me inelegantly through life. And, of course, there are the triggers that upset me, or those lovely gut feelings one gets when something feels right, or wrong.  

I am inclined to daydreams and wonder. I've often thought the creative imagination connects us to the divine. Whatever that is. 

Consequently, I admire the endless stream of dreams my unconscious mind (UM) provides each night. What a gifted storyteller it is, and it never runs out of ideas or new material.  

I had too much to dream last night

I had a disturbing dream, one wherein I was losing my short term memory.  I guess that must be a concern to me or my unconscious mind wouldn't torment me with it while I slept.  

In the dream I was talking to a friend.  I was supposed to meet Tom afterwards.  I once knew where I was to meet him, but as I talked to my friend a wall went up in my dream mind and I simply couldn't find that memory.  I knew I had to meet him, but I had absolutely no memory of where.  The memory was behind a wall.  

I wonder if that's what it is like to lose short term memory?  The insurmountable wall.  

Retirees dream of past workplaces

I had an unsettling dream last night. In it I was recalled from the comfortable peace of retirement to return to my old job to stage an important event for the department. I did a bad job of it. Yes, it was a nightmare.

The Associate Dean of Administration, my former mentor, showed up for this dream event. She angrily asked why I hadn't arranged for a specific faculty member to be there to hand out awards to graduate students. I replied, "I don't care." Sheesh. I was always defiant, but this reply takes the cake. Later in the dream I remembered that the particular professor she asked about died last weekend (in real life), but it was too late to undo the damage my flippant statement made. The AD of A was red-faced furious and ever so done with me. That still hurts.

My "dream" staff (consisting of co-workers from a couple of different actual real jobs) were disgusted with me.  I tried to apologize to them, and closed my eyes for a few moments as I spoke deep from my heart about all my faults. When I was done, I realized the staff members left. They never heard my apologies because they didn't care what I had to say.

My dear friend, the Director of Human Resources (D of HR) for the college, tried to intervene and save me. Bless her sweet heart, I do so love that woman. She lined up an interview with another department. I tried to tell her I was retired, and had earned the maximum work income Social Security would allow this year, but she insisted I must redeem myself. I was freaked out about losing Social Security income for the rest of this year AND had interview anxiety.  Aaack.

I forgot the exact time she had scheduled the interview for. My cell phone was dead. I had to call the D of HR on a public phone. Yes, there was still a public phone box in my dream reality, and it was free! I didn't have to dial. I simply screamed into the phone and she answered. It was also more of a perforated disk than any public phone I've ever seen, but I digress. She said the interview was in a half hour and I needed to get there right away. She would meet me and go through the interview with me (unheard of in reality, but much appreciated in dream-time). 

Unfortunately there was a flood I had to wade through on my way to the building. It slowed me down. I was afraid I wouldn't make it in time. When I finally arrived at the building I couldn't find the room. The D of HR found me wandering the halls and helped me find the room. 

Then I woke up.

I am thankful I didn't have to go through that interview.  I would have screwed that up, too.

This is an actual gargoyle from outside one of the buildings I used to work in

Waking up without a smile

I sort out a lot in that short period of time between waking and rising. 

I have said this before, being able to enjoy the morning is perhaps the greatest joy of retirement. I find the experience evolving as I become more comfortable being less productive. It is now less a stolen pleasure and more an important part of my day. 

If I can remember my dreams, I try and pay attention to what my unconscious mind was trying to tell me during the night. Unfortunately, I don't often remember my dreams. Too bad, because they can be quite informative. If only our unconscious minds could learn to speak English instead of Symbol, right?

I am now at my most mindful and self-aware in the morning. This is a huge change from my working years when mornings were spent on autopilot. It took me at least a year to figure out what to do with my mornings in retirement. I'm getting the hang of it, but for some reason I am still not "happy" once I get out of bed in the morning. Is this because of habit, guilt, or chemical imbalance? I don't understand. I am a reasonably happy person. I just can't get get rid of the morning blues. It takes a cup of coffee or three before I let my shoulders down.

I'm curious, does anyone over 7 years old wake up feeling like a million dollars? I use 7 as the cut off point because that's when the Catholic Church decided a child reached the age of reason, and I suspect reason is what obliterates joy. Actually, I think 5 might be a better age. Kids grow up faster these days.

My Grandmother's Ghost

My mother saw her own mother’s ghost. I think that is why Mom was reluctant to speak of her mother. Grandma (Veronica from my post Enduring Love) died in November 1950. Mom was pregnant with me, about a year later, when she woke up in the middle of the night to see her mother standing in the doorway of the room. Veronica had on her favorite blue coat, and her ribbon hat (apparently a popular style of the late 1940’s). She was trying hard to communicate with Mom. Although her lips were moving and she was urgently trying to speak, Mom could not hear what Veronica was trying to say. She sat up in bed, leaned forward and said “What?” to her mother. At that point my father woke up and the apparition disappeared. 

Many years later (in the late 1980’s), I went to a Spiritualist church for an adventurous night out with a group of friends.  I am not a member of that church (or any church), but sometimes my friends and I would go to a meeting or two at the Spiritualist church each summer. Like many locals we would go for the fun of it when the church hosted open "spirit readings" for non-members. They were good at it, too; very spooky stuff.

In preparation, I concentrated hard all day on asking my dead grandmother to send me a message telling me what she had been trying to tell my Mom that night so long ago. It must have worked, because later that night the Spiritualist minister pointed me out in the crowd and told me that there was a grandmotherly spirit standing right behind me. He said the spirit wanted to give me her message herself rather than relate it through the psychic preacher. He instructed me to concentrate and meditate over the course of the next few weeks so that the “materialization” could take place. "Holy shit," I thought.

He must have seen the look of terror in my eyes, because he took great pains to reassure me there was nothing to be afraid of. Yeah, right. I was absolutely terrified at the thought of seeing a ghost. I thought, “OK, no problem – I won’t concentrate, I won’t meditate, and then nothing will happen.” I only wanted a freakin' message, I did NOT want to see a ghost.

I'm a big chicken about things that go bump in the night. Like a little kid, I was too afraid to sleep. I dozed fitfully, sparingly, and nervously for the next 2 nights. I was afraid to close my eyes because of what I might dream, and afraid to open my eyes because of what I might see! It's funny now, looking back on it. However, I was sincerely scared at the time.

By the third night I was exhausted. I fell deeply and peacefully asleep. I dreamed of my maternal grandmother. I clearly remember seeing her in that dream, and I know she took a long time to tell me many things. When I woke up I could not for the life of me remember anything she said, except for one message I was to give to my mother. She told me to tell my mother not to let her feelings get hurt so easily. 

I called to convey the message to my mother.  She seemed surprised and shocked with what I called to tell her, but she didn’t say much. It was a short phone call. Later I discovered that she had been fighting with her sisters for weeks because she had taken offense at something one of them had said to her, and she was nursing a serious case of hurt feelings.

I wonder if this is the ribbon hat?

Buddy the Cat

My shingles are almost gone.  However, when it rains it pours.

Buddy, our cat, died the other day. Although he had been really, really ill for a few days and was staying at the vet’s to be rehydrated and treated, it was still unexpected. Death always is for me. It catches me off guard every damn time and never fails to piss me off.

He was his sweet old self one night, begging for treats, waiting for us to get in bed, hissing and growling if T dared to put his arm outside the covers, etc. The next morning he was seriously ill, lying under our bed with the look of death about him. Even with our vet’s best efforts, he never rebounded. Based on his symptoms, it could have been any number of causes.

The night after he died I had a dream about change. First I dreamed I saw his dead body. Then suddenly Buddy the Cat was alive again and with my Mom, his original owner. We took him in 2008 when she went into assisted living where they did not allow pets. I remember we had to pull him out from under her bed and he clawed T’s arm open. Buddy was always a bit anxious and neurotic, as I am. We shared the same mother.

Then, in my dream of change, I was suddenly in my old workplace. There was no one there I knew. All had changed. All was different. I was alone and it was disconcerting. And like dreams always are, I remembered that dreams are about the dreamer. This was a message to me from my self. I had to think about it hard.

Change has always been a trigger for me. Even if I try to ignore my fear of change, my discomfort with loss, they are always there. They do not go away from refusing to feel. I know, I've tried.

Unresolved emotional themes have a life of their own. They come back to haunt us, to try and get our attention in the form of nameless anxiety, depression, and also in archetypal dream figures.

It is odd, this particular fear, since change is the stuff of life. Do we all ultimately fight the same fight? Is it the nature of being human to fear change?  Do I have to become a "*&!@#" zen master to achieve some peace of mind? 'Cause I don't think I have the stamina for it and I certainly do not have the attention span. 

Our lost boy, Buddy the Cat, on our deck in NYS overlooking one of our equally lost perennial beds

Dreaming and the unconscious mind

I had an interesting dream last night, wherein my unconscious mind sent me a very clear message about what to do next. I think that is almost always what dreams attempt to do, but this dream was actually clear enough for me to understand.

A little over a week ago one of my best friends, ShS, died of lung cancer. It was unexpected. She lives up North, so I have not seen her for almost two years, but we talked on the phone. She was an integral part of my group of friends, and has been since about 1993. She was also an amazing person, almost always positive and up for a laugh. We had such fun over the years. I am going to miss her terribly.

Her first marriage was difficult and ended in divorce, twice. Her second marriage (or maybe it is her third since she married that first husband, the raging asshole, twice?) was to a kindly man who loved her completely. They were together for 36 years. 

I have been concerned about her husband, K, since her death. At 70 years old, and with health issues of his own, I worry about him being alone. I know grief can be brutal. He is probably numb right now. How will he cope?

In my dream K sent me photographs he took of winter scenes via email attachments. There were at least a dozen of his lovely photographs, appearing almost black and white only because that is what winter looks like in Upstate New York. Perhaps also because that is what grief looks like? The subject matter was simple, stark, cold, and beautiful. He took pictures conveying his loneliness and sorrow. He did not turn away from his pain; instead, he made a picture of it and made it beautiful.

I was awestruck by those photos. When I awoke, at 3 a.m., I could not wait to send them to K so he could see what he needed to do. As I returned to my conscious state, I sadly realized I actually didn't have the photos. They were not in my email in real life. They were part of the dream.

It occurred to me that was what art therapy does for a person in crisis. It allows a suffering human being to plug into the creative imagination and find some relief from pain. It frees the symbolic to work on our damaged psyches, allowing that great archetypal world to soothe and begin to heal us. We experience the symbolic most purely without words, without language. I wonder if truth is easier to accept in that form?

I am going to share this dream with K. However, I know that the dream was also for me. Dreams are always for the dreamer.  Everyone who appears in a dream is a symbolic part of the dreamer. I am pretty sure that is true. So this message about managing grief with the visual arts, although universal, is one that I need to embrace and explore as well.  

Footprint and pansy in the snow

I Dream of Bagels

Last night I had a dream about bagels.  I did not dream about the frozen kind one might buy at a Publix Grocery Store in Florida, but the fresh ones pulled from the bin at a bagelry in Upstate New York.  I ate two plain toasted bagels in rapid succession.  In this dream we were at an outside picnic where bagels were being served, and they had only one toaster oven for the entire crowd.  I simply could not get enough.  I decided to have a third bagel.  I was embarrassed (there was a long line waiting for me to finish) but I knew it was my only chance to have a decent bagel again.  Let them wait!  They probably have bagels all the time.  I have not had one in over 6 months.  I split it open and baked it in the toaster oven, covered with NYS extra sharp cheddar cheese.  I used white cheddar – not the artificially orange colored, mild cheese that purveyors down here try to pass off as cheddar.  I wanted a bagel toasted crisp on the outside and soft in the middle.  In my dream world the cheese is not simply melted; it is transformed into a golden brown, bubbly mass of yum.  Of course it is best if baked long enough so the melted cheese oozes both down the middle hole of the bagel and down the sides to the bottom of the pan where it will fry up hard into a toasty, tasty mess.  Then you can pull that cheese off the bottom of the bagel and eat it first.   That is the best part as far as I am concerned.  Anyway the crowd was getting restless, so I woke up.  It was either wake up or pull the bagel out before it was ready.  I have certain standards.  I did not get to eat my perfect bagel.   Sad.  I could almost taste it.