Sometimes I wonder if my life is just a passing dream and then I wake up with tubing attached to a catheter in my abdomen and a machine acting as my kidneys. Maybe this is the nightmare and I will wake up in a world with talking animals and walking trees.
Dream within a dream
I have always been interested in dream interpretation. I don’t believe dreams are garbage that needs to be scrubbed out of our brains. Maybe some of it could be, but the majority of my dreams mean something. I just have to wade through the layers and symbolism that the subconscious uses.
After reading several dream dictionaries and other people’s ideas of dream interpretation, I was drawn more to Carl Jung’s ideas. I was predisposed to like his ideas after I read about archetypes, and then used archetypal theory in my English literature classes. If you want to tear apart a story and glean meaning from it, his ideas are better than several of the English literary theories, which includs Marxist literary theory.
It’s only been the last couple of years that I really began to understand that if I wanted to look at literature from the lens of Marx, that I would have to look at it through the lens of power and where the power flowed.
Archetypal theory is more interesting to me because it uses archetypes like mother, father, and shadow. I wasn’t the first one to come up with this theory. Northrup Frye went before me. You can use his ideas to interpret literature as well as dreams.
And then there are my dreams.
Shall we dance
The most recent dream that I remember is the one where I am dancing. My partner is in a black tux and is wearing a half mask. I am in a red dress with a tight bodice and flowing skirt. We are dancing the tango. We dip and turn.
When we dip, an old lady tries to get between us. I kick, and she steps away. Although I am slightly annoyed with her, I am mostly exhilarated.
That morning I woke up happy. Before my life really started, I took ballroom dance at college. To be fair, I got interested in dance because of a boy. He had been dancing all of his life and in his teens he was with an exhibition dance group who competed in Las Vegas.
The boy drew me into dance, but I found that I loved it. I went to several dance classes– ballroom, latin, folk, and even square dance. It was dance that taught me to loosen up and be more— me.
No, I didn’t date that boy. Dare I say I had a crush on him for a few years? Without that interaction though, I may not have known how much I liked to dance.
The second part of this dream is that when my partner and I rotated I felt energy from both the earth and sky. It went into us and then out of us as we danced. I have felt this way a few times, usually when I am lying on my back, watching the clouds and feeling the earth spin beneath me.
The old lady was probably my conscious self, trying to stop or get between my partner and my inner self. Sometimes I forget that I am entering my later years. I still feel like that young twenty year old who loved to dance.
As for my partner, I have no idea who he is. In my head he is strong and able to lead me through the steps. Also I trust him to guide me and not to let me fall. It takes a strong man to be in that position.
The reason I knew it was a good dream is that I woke up happy and energized. I have thought of that dream a lot. Sometimes when I go to sleep, I hope I have this dream again.
Conclusion
Is it wish fulfillment? Yes. Does it have meaning? Yes, again. Have I deciphered it completely? Absolutely not. I’ve only skimmed the surface.
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”― William Shakespeare, The Tempest