v. odd [dream]
I had a very strange dream last night. Strange because it’s the first dream in a while that’s stayed with me. And strange because, like many of my ‘snooze button’ dreams, it was vivid, focused, and bizarre to the point of grotesque.
I don’t remember the back-story and maybe there wasn’t any. The primary event took place in a sparsely-furnished living room. The color palette was beige or sepia, rather like that dream I had last year, the one that took place at an old rundown motel. Both stories occurred during the nighttime, but the motel dream took place mostly outdoors so it was darker, the scene lit mostly by streetlights. And there were more textures, since the landscape involved old rusty chain link fences and like that.
This recent dream taking place solely indoors, the lighting was uniform, coming from overhead. (So really, I'm only assuming the action took place at night. If there were any windows in the room, they were well-covered and I couldn't see what things looked like outside.) There was a counter dividing the living room from the kitchen, but I think the kitchen was dark (or at least, I couldn't see into it). The primary piece of furniture was a really big bean bag chair. In both dreams, the textures in the scene were in contrast to the action taking place. Sharp objects/hard lighting in a dream where nothing terrible happened. Soft objects/soft lighting in a dream where something terrible happens.
And something I’m remembering now is that in the motel dream where nothing bad happens, I’m an actor. In the apartment dream where something bad happens, I’m an observer.
The characters in the recent dream were a Middle Eastern family: middle-aged husband and mother, two late teen or early twenty-something sons. The mother was a full-figured woman. My mental image of her body type probably comes from some pictures I saw of Princess Eugenie yesterday, cavorting on a beach in a stars and stripes bikini. The mother in the dream had Eugenie’s pear-shape, but with more weight added to it. The sons were taller than their mother, tall and strong. I don’t have a firm idea of what the father looked like but he was about as tall as his sons.
The father was upset. The mother had done something she wasn’t supposed to. He yelled at her. And then maybe he yelled a command; I’m not sure. The boys, standing on either side of their mom, grabbed her arms. They each hugged one of her arms to their chest and held her in place between them, her arms stretched out like a ‘t’.
The father walked forward. I thought he would slap the woman, but I’m not sure that he did. He did slap the boys’ faces. He stood in front of the boy on the left and slapped his face. Then moved over to stand in front of the boy on the right, and slapped him as well. Then he turned to the mother again. Since he’d slapped the boys, I thought he would give her a closed-fist punch. But he didn’t.
Instead, he dragged her out of the boys’ grasp, across the room, onto the bean bag chair, and then he raped her.
I was a bit puzzled at this point in the dream. Her facial expression and the sounds she was making didn’t seem to indicate that she was in pain. But obviously, he was doing something she hadn’t consented to. When the father finished, he got up and walked away. Then the mother’s facial expression changed; she started crying. And my confusion disappeared.
And now I’m remembering another dream I had, in college (lo those many moons ago). Basic events in that dream: a man and woman go on a date and then return to her apartment. The woman suggests that they’ve known each other long enough that they should now have sex. As they’re lying down together afterward (spoon position: woman facing me, man behind), the man pulls out a knife from somewhere and pushes it through her throat. No blood, just a jagged-edged hole.
The characters in that dream were folks from around campus. The girl I occasionally spoke to but mostly just liked looking at because she was so pretty [white girl, brown hair, friendly eyes, great alto singing voice, wonderful dancer, hippy and with a walk that seemed to deliberately exaggerate that fact]. The guy [white with long dark curly hair, fit the stereotype 'Jewish-looking'] I'd met once when he came to visit for an alumni weekend. He built a fire in our house's fireplace one cold night; I'd been freezing and didn't know how to fix it, so he earned hero status with that act. I’d never seen those two people interact with each other.)
So now I wonder:
1) Why these dreams usually have beige color schemes.
2) Why I am having dreams that involve me being a neutral observer to scenes of sexual violence.
By neutral, I mean that I’m untouched by the action. In the college dream, the characters expressed no emotion, so I didn’t relate to what happened as a bad thing (until I typed it up irl and someone else read it and simply said “this is… horrible.”). In this dream, I knew that a bad thing was happening, but didn’t really understand it until the woman started crying.
Well, it's just like watching a movie, I guess. Perhaps that's all there is to think about it.
I don’t remember the back-story and maybe there wasn’t any. The primary event took place in a sparsely-furnished living room. The color palette was beige or sepia, rather like that dream I had last year, the one that took place at an old rundown motel. Both stories occurred during the nighttime, but the motel dream took place mostly outdoors so it was darker, the scene lit mostly by streetlights. And there were more textures, since the landscape involved old rusty chain link fences and like that.
This recent dream taking place solely indoors, the lighting was uniform, coming from overhead. (So really, I'm only assuming the action took place at night. If there were any windows in the room, they were well-covered and I couldn't see what things looked like outside.) There was a counter dividing the living room from the kitchen, but I think the kitchen was dark (or at least, I couldn't see into it). The primary piece of furniture was a really big bean bag chair. In both dreams, the textures in the scene were in contrast to the action taking place. Sharp objects/hard lighting in a dream where nothing terrible happened. Soft objects/soft lighting in a dream where something terrible happens.
And something I’m remembering now is that in the motel dream where nothing bad happens, I’m an actor. In the apartment dream where something bad happens, I’m an observer.
The characters in the recent dream were a Middle Eastern family: middle-aged husband and mother, two late teen or early twenty-something sons. The mother was a full-figured woman. My mental image of her body type probably comes from some pictures I saw of Princess Eugenie yesterday, cavorting on a beach in a stars and stripes bikini. The mother in the dream had Eugenie’s pear-shape, but with more weight added to it. The sons were taller than their mother, tall and strong. I don’t have a firm idea of what the father looked like but he was about as tall as his sons.
The father was upset. The mother had done something she wasn’t supposed to. He yelled at her. And then maybe he yelled a command; I’m not sure. The boys, standing on either side of their mom, grabbed her arms. They each hugged one of her arms to their chest and held her in place between them, her arms stretched out like a ‘t’.
The father walked forward. I thought he would slap the woman, but I’m not sure that he did. He did slap the boys’ faces. He stood in front of the boy on the left and slapped his face. Then moved over to stand in front of the boy on the right, and slapped him as well. Then he turned to the mother again. Since he’d slapped the boys, I thought he would give her a closed-fist punch. But he didn’t.
Instead, he dragged her out of the boys’ grasp, across the room, onto the bean bag chair, and then he raped her.
I was a bit puzzled at this point in the dream. Her facial expression and the sounds she was making didn’t seem to indicate that she was in pain. But obviously, he was doing something she hadn’t consented to. When the father finished, he got up and walked away. Then the mother’s facial expression changed; she started crying. And my confusion disappeared.
And now I’m remembering another dream I had, in college (lo those many moons ago). Basic events in that dream: a man and woman go on a date and then return to her apartment. The woman suggests that they’ve known each other long enough that they should now have sex. As they’re lying down together afterward (spoon position: woman facing me, man behind), the man pulls out a knife from somewhere and pushes it through her throat. No blood, just a jagged-edged hole.
The characters in that dream were folks from around campus. The girl I occasionally spoke to but mostly just liked looking at because she was so pretty [white girl, brown hair, friendly eyes, great alto singing voice, wonderful dancer, hippy and with a walk that seemed to deliberately exaggerate that fact]. The guy [white with long dark curly hair, fit the stereotype 'Jewish-looking'] I'd met once when he came to visit for an alumni weekend. He built a fire in our house's fireplace one cold night; I'd been freezing and didn't know how to fix it, so he earned hero status with that act. I’d never seen those two people interact with each other.)
So now I wonder:
1) Why these dreams usually have beige color schemes.
2) Why I am having dreams that involve me being a neutral observer to scenes of sexual violence.
By neutral, I mean that I’m untouched by the action. In the college dream, the characters expressed no emotion, so I didn’t relate to what happened as a bad thing (until I typed it up irl and someone else read it and simply said “this is… horrible.”). In this dream, I knew that a bad thing was happening, but didn’t really understand it until the woman started crying.
Well, it's just like watching a movie, I guess. Perhaps that's all there is to think about it.