Monday, October 11, 2010

Dream 10 October 2010
The Wild Ones
 I am in the middle of a passionate embrace with a young woman, whom I do not know by name, much less by sight.  Her arms grow tight around me and I can feel myself strangled around the waist. 
 I struggle to get free and can see now that the girl has a distorted look on her face, not of love but of malevolence.  Her front incisors  grow long and pointy like those of a vampire and I imagine that soon she will draw blood from me.
 We fight like animals.  We claw at one another.  I am desperate to break free.  The girl morphs into a series of monstrous creatures from fairy tales: from a female vampire, into a grey haired were wolf, into Beowulf’s Grendel.  The girl claws at my skin and it is as much as I can do to stay asleep. 
 I am desperate to wake from this dream and I shake myself repeatedly only to fall into another where I am travelling through some sort of seaside fair ground at night.  All the cafes and bars are filled with laughing, dancing, drinking and jostling people. 
 I know no one and search for a familiar face.  In the distance I see two old friends from my writing workshop days, but they rush on ahead of me.  They go into a crowded bar and I lose sight of them.  I fear they have avoided me deliberately.  They do not want to be with me.
 The weight of my sadness and loneliness is palpable.  I cannot enjoy myself on my own, not in this place designed for family fun.  Someone has thrown a long plastic sheet down a grassy embankment and I watch as a small group of boys slide down. 
 I fear that the ground might be uneven and dangerous as it is broken up with old tree trunks chopped off close to the surface, but I wake again and shift to the grade one classroom of my primary school.  There must be at least sixty children in this classroom and I am one of the bigger ones, taller too. 
 I take my place in the back at a low double desk with a slide in bench.  It is made of pale yellow wood and is shiny from age and use.  The nun in charge, whom I recognise from my primary school days, tells us to settle down and to write a story, any story in our brand new exercise books. 
 My story comes effortlessly.  I write longhand in grey lead, page after page about a farmer.  My story has an energetic flow and I find I can write for several pages, reach a turning point, and then come to a natural conclusion.  After no time at all, I have finished writing.  I put up my hand.
‘I’ve finished,’ I say to the nun in the front who looks over the top of her glasses.
‘You would,' she says.  ‘Begin another.’
 My second story does not flow so easily but it does not take me long to get page after page of handwritten narrative down into my book.  I feel proud of myself.  I know this nun thinks that I am a stupid ignorant girl, but at least I can write.
 A girl in the front asks the nun for help.
‘How old are you?’ the nun asks.
‘I’m three,’ the girl says, and I realise then that we are unevenly placed in this classroom.  I am five years old.  No wonder I can do much better than the littlies.

3 comments:

Elle said...

When I first found this site, I read quite a few posts and then read more deeply into some of the posters who had taken the time to share many multiples of their nighttime wanderings. I've found it all quite interesting, but am rather disappointed in the lack of sharing in the comment sections. I have such a sense of "who" the dreamers are (perhaps, erroneously) but without follow-up, am left a bit flat.

I'm curious. Do you interpret your dreams, Elisabeth? If so, how?

What do you make of this one?

pondering,

WD

Elisabeth said...

It's good to have a comment, Dream Weaver. I can understand your frustration that so few people engage in a dialogue about dreams here on the gazette.

I find dreams endlessly fascinating, not just from a literary perspective, but quite a few of my writerly friends hate them, because they do not trust them. They think dreams slow down narratives.

After a long analysis, i have learned to think of my dreams as indications about my state of mind. The give me clues about what might be going on for me in the deeper levels of my awareness.

I tend to think about my dreams and what they might mean for me. I consider that because they are my dreams- I created them from my unconscious, no one else put them there - then every aspect of each dream reflects different aspects of me.

So in this dream, for instance, I am both the lover and the wild one, I am loved one and I am under attack. I am also the attacker.

I'm going through a lot at the moment, working on a thesis that contains many difficult aspects including trauma and shame, from a psychoanalytic perspective, but also from a personal/autobiographical perspective.

At the same time I'm recovering from a broken leg. The dream I had last night, which I've just now sent to Lynn for the gazette terrifies me.

i have to take it as symbolic, hopefully not pre-cognitive, and not about what's immediately to come.

Often our dreams tell us as much about what has already gone on, long long ago, as they tell us about our fears. I do not think dreams have predictive value as such, but wait till you read my next dream and judge for yourself.

It's predictive alright, but hopefully not immediately so.

I'll check out your blog. Its good to meet someone whose also interested in dreams.

Elle said...

Thanks for such a thoughtful response, Elisabeth.

I had a laugh over your literary friends finding that dreams slow down the narrative, as I can't imagine that providing a flowing narrative is the purpose behind dreams.

We share similar thoughts in regards to interpretation. Though, it does interest me quite a bit to read of similar dreams occurring to different dreamers, at the same time. Then again, I believe in a shared consciousness, which leads to interpretation on multiple levels.

You certainly have been going through a lot. I hope your legs mends quickly and well.

Looking forward to reading your latest.

May all your dreams be interesting ones ~