What does this dwelling dream say about my consciousness?
A recent dream from inside betty's giant head,
Taking a class about art from an overly serious but laid-back hippie kind of guy. There are only two students, myself and a another, younger woman. It's not clear whether we are supposed to draw or paint, or what the subject should be, but we're supposed to come in with something on Monday. I think the course description mentioned cartooning, but I get the feeling our first assignment is supposed to be very illustrative and not cartoonish at all.
Deciding what to draw, I am looking out the window of where i live in Madison, but it's way higher off the ground than my current place, and the window and furniture i am on is much more like my Douglas street apartment in the hometown. Also the scene outside the window keeps changing as i look toward the ground, sometimes to streets that look familiar, and other times to new suburban streets where the buildings slide around a lot. Then i am having coffee with my mom and sister and they are going to take me back to my building. I tell Laurie that other than the reflexology class in 1999, i haven't taken a class in twenty years. I am kind of excited to be back in school again, and slightly apprehensive about having homework, although i am confident about the art. There is some other class i am supposed to prepare for, involving statistics but not a stats class. I am vague about when the classes are, but i am glad to have the rest of the weekend to get assignments done. We are on Lawrence Avenue, in the hometown, but i know that it's only a short walk of a few blocks to get back to my Madison residence. My mom was going to move stuff around in the backseat so that i could ride back to my building, but i am like, no no it's a short walk, don't trouble yourself. Then Laurie is going to sit in the middle of the front seat so that i can join them up front, but then suddenly we are in our parents' driveway and laurie is wearing a similar outfit to this
, although in the dream she is about twice as old as when that picture was taken. and making a weird face to try to make me laugh, which i do. It is the present day, 2007, but my mom looks about forty and Laurie looks about fourteen.
It seems like i suddenly then returned to where i live in Madison, and now the entrance to my building is also sort of like a hospital ER entrance but it's got a back-pain clinic on one side and a pharmacy and some signs that say "SAMe" I am not in any pain but i sit down on one of the benches outside the clinic and it's really comfortable. I wonder to myself if one of these places has studies where they study the effects of a beneficial supplement on ya, and if I’m not eligible to be studies, maybe they'll hire me to interview the participants or something. Even though I’m in school, i seem to have a lot of time on my hands so i want a part time job. A little employee of one of these places throws something way across the hallway and it lands in a garbage can someone else is wheeling away. I say "good shot!" and she is all proud and says something funny that i can't remember or didn’t' really hear, and we laugh. When she walks away, a family with little babies in their arms and in strollers, and one baby walking around, this family is coming out of a clinic or something and going into a pharmacy sort of room, and one of the infants is intently aware of me watching them from the bench, and very amused. He has that happy wise look that some babies have, of being old souls in young bodies, and sharing joy with you for no reason except that they saw you. The baby is very young but he can walk and stand around in the hallway grinning at me and waiting for his parents to do their transaction inside. He has on a purple footie jumpsuit with little blue stars and yellow moons and stuff like that all over it. I feel really happy with him and me smiling at each other, and this delights him greatly. He probably shares that with everyone he meets, but he makes me feel like it's an extra special delight to share this moment with me in particular. He's unbelievably happy and I am really tickled that we got to spend a little time being delighted in each other's presence.
Then I go into this large restroom that has two different entrances and a big common area. Separate doors and rooms for the men and women to use toilets and showers, and a big common area with lockers and tables. I am aware that i could use the bathroom and shower upstairs in my apartment, but for some reason just walking around watching the people in this place i hadn't really ever noticed on the ground floor of my building (and procrastinating about doing my homework upstairs) for a while longer appeals to me.
A weird loud family is there with giant containers of cereal, Metamucil, and other foods. The mom and dad are trying to figure out if the Metamucil is a ripoff or not. The mom shows me the ingredient list to me, and i point out that the "hypoallergenic cocoa" implies that people who are allergic to chocolate can eat it, and we all laugh, although it's clear that no one there has a chocolate allergy. We conclude that a product marketed simply as psyllium husks would be the way to go, although it's clear they have never heard of psyllium husks, they are excitedly agreeing with me. There are some big black pieces of poster board, presumably for the kids to make school projects out of, and i put the poster boards on a side table because the big table has water on the middle of it. When I move them the dad starts drying the table and one of the kids offers me a few flakes of cereal that the kid had some how dug out from a giant plastic jar of cereal and placed in the lid of the jar. The jars were as big as the kids so it had to be difficult to get anything out of them. While i am trying to determine how to decline the flakes, without hurting the kid's feelings, the mom starts screaming at the kids and the dad a bunch of unclear stuff about how they are doing everything wrong and she is tired of it, etc. and i decide there was no reason for me to interact with these annoying strangers anyway, and I should get out of there before she starts yelling at me also.
Walking into another part of the giant restroom/locker room, I become aware that I don't have my clothes on and can't find them. Evidently i have just showered, but i can't figure out where I left my clothes, and the restroom/locker area now seems even larger, full of mirrors at strange angles which makes walking from room to room confusing, almost labyrinthine. None of the men and women in the room even notice or care that i got no clothing on, since it's the kind of place where some people might be naked, and most of them are busy primping in the mirrors anyway, so i am not self-conscious i am just frustrated because now i want to go upstairs and do my art assignment, but i think i should find my clothes first. Then suddenly I am clad in my black sweats and a green t-shirt, without having realized that i found my clothes and put them on. It seems that although it was definitely not an epic dream, that surely there must have been much more to the dream but that's the last part that I recall.
Hard to tell without hearing her sing, but i guess the younger of the two girls
in this nightmare sequence is supposed to be Geri Reishl. Rieschl. Ra-SHELL. Which is it?
Click to viewWhatever, it's way 70s-horrory, so it fits in with our important research here at the SRI.
