dream-talk overdrive
When I was in DC my mother agreed to pay for an additional session with Dr. Jung every week for the next several months. That's two times a week I'll be going, which seems just over the top and beyond self-indulgent, especially for someone who until a few years ago was completely suspicious and distrustful of anything that smacked of therapy and therapists. It seems I had reason to be as such, in that there was/is a great deal from my past that would certainly be easier unexamined and left alone. Too late now, so it's twice a week until August.
Because I'll be spending so much time with my 80-something year old Jungian shrink, I've recommitted myself to trying to capture and document my dreams in greater detail. Too often I awaken from a powerful dream, one that I think there is NO WAY I'll forget, only to find that in the morning I'm left with only the barest memory, and sometimes none at all other than that I had a dream that I was supposed to remember. What that means is that yinz are going to be hearing much more dream-talk from me, like it or not.
Monday night -- a typical long, involved dream from which I only remember a small portion. I am driving with my children in the car, we are on a trip or journey of some sort, and I'm trying to find my friend L's house. In real life, L. is more of an acquaintance than anything else, and she and I have little if any interaction on a regular basis.
I park the car in front of two large, old houses on a tree-lined urban street. They remind me of the houses I used to admire in the Squirrel HIll and Shadyside neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, though perhaps older and more run-down (East Liberty?). We walk towards one of the houses and I ask the woman where L. can be found. She points me toward the second house, and the kids walk with me around the back of that house and into the kitchen.
It seems that there is a party going on, as the house is crowded with adults and children. I find L., who isn't really L. in the dream, and ask her about staying for a few days. She is agreeable, says there is space for us, and leaves momentarily to go get something for me to fill out. As I wait for her to return, I look around with a certain amount of contentment, thinking that the kids will be very happy -- so many other children, and a good yard for playing.
L. returns with the form that I need to fill out, and I start to do so. It looks a lot like a rental application, except that most of the blanks have already been filled in -- not with words, but with dark lines, as if someone had taken a fat magic marker and blacked out all of the spaces. I held the form in my hands, unsure how to proceed, as the conversations swirled around me.
Because I'll be spending so much time with my 80-something year old Jungian shrink, I've recommitted myself to trying to capture and document my dreams in greater detail. Too often I awaken from a powerful dream, one that I think there is NO WAY I'll forget, only to find that in the morning I'm left with only the barest memory, and sometimes none at all other than that I had a dream that I was supposed to remember. What that means is that yinz are going to be hearing much more dream-talk from me, like it or not.
Monday night -- a typical long, involved dream from which I only remember a small portion. I am driving with my children in the car, we are on a trip or journey of some sort, and I'm trying to find my friend L's house. In real life, L. is more of an acquaintance than anything else, and she and I have little if any interaction on a regular basis.
I park the car in front of two large, old houses on a tree-lined urban street. They remind me of the houses I used to admire in the Squirrel HIll and Shadyside neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, though perhaps older and more run-down (East Liberty?). We walk towards one of the houses and I ask the woman where L. can be found. She points me toward the second house, and the kids walk with me around the back of that house and into the kitchen.
It seems that there is a party going on, as the house is crowded with adults and children. I find L., who isn't really L. in the dream, and ask her about staying for a few days. She is agreeable, says there is space for us, and leaves momentarily to go get something for me to fill out. As I wait for her to return, I look around with a certain amount of contentment, thinking that the kids will be very happy -- so many other children, and a good yard for playing.
L. returns with the form that I need to fill out, and I start to do so. It looks a lot like a rental application, except that most of the blanks have already been filled in -- not with words, but with dark lines, as if someone had taken a fat magic marker and blacked out all of the spaces. I held the form in my hands, unsure how to proceed, as the conversations swirled around me.