Written on the Body

Once we have attained middle age Jung tells us that our job is to come to terms with our own mortality.

The Dream: Clark and I are at the airport with lots of baggage. We’ve taken some of this into the terminal but most of our carry on is still in our parked van, which has been painted black. We go for a walk. When we return the van is gone—a woman has taken it to search for her dog, which someone has kidnapped. We go in search of her.

I am anxious. There is increased security at the airports and we must check in an hour ahead. I don’t feel any sympathy for the woman searching for her dog, but I hope she finds the animal so we can get the rest of our things and get on with it. I worry we’ll lose our parking spot by the time she returns.
Finally we find her and re-park the van. I notice the lock to my door is on the outside of the window, which seems useless.

Part of our luggage consists of t-shirt fragments printed with genealogical information and punctuated with blocks of color.

Interpretation: The unconscious is struggling with the idea of mortality (the imminent airplane ride will take me off the planet). This makes the dream ego anxious and uncomfortable. The missing animal embodies the primal aspects of life: sex, birth, death. I want to put the vehicle of change (van) back into its parking place. When the woman returns the van its lock has moved to the outside: once we’ve gained the knowledge of life and death it’s impossible to lock out what we know. The t-shirts symbolize our DNA, which maps our reality. Our past and future is encoded there: written on the body (thank you, Jeanette Winterson).  But perhaps it’s not the whole story?