Taking the Lid Off

Look at the language and the imagery of your dreams to figure out their meaning. Sometimes the real subject matter of a dream ends up being very different from its narrative.
The Dream: I'm in a convertible with my friend Polly. Although the car belongs to Clark and me, she is driving. She wants to take the roof down, and for a while we struggle to figure out how to get the mechanism to work. We are finally successful, as if by magic, and we're pleased and surprised. The car is an old-fashioned model from the 50s or 60s.

Polly is on her way, I become aware, to meet one of the other designers, Jean, from the time we worked for N.U.T.S. Jr. Sportswear in NYC. I think that if I tag along and we pick up Dona we can have a reunion. In some way I'm uncomfortable with this; I'm not sure that the others want me along.

Interpretation: I'm trying to get to something that's nuts (crazy). Polly, who went on to design children's clothes, represents my designing child. I was a child in the 50s and 60s, and the car's vintage reinforces the idea that I'm dealing with something from my childhood. This inner child wants some relationships, such as the one with the designer she's going to meet, kept to herself. However, the mechanism that opens things up (the convertible's roof) is working well, and we are pleased and somewhat surprised to see how easy it is when it finally happens.

That my inner child is going to meet Jean (something encoded in my genes), tells me that the dream is about getting closer to something that is very basic, or fundamental, for me. The month I had this dream was the same month that I lost two important people, my mother and my brother, to whom I am genetically linked. Of course those ties are very fundamental, particularly to a child. The lid is coming off my attempts to suppress the pain I feel at their loss. And yes, I feel left out, in a sense, because they are gone.

The Fossil

The Dream: I'm on a trip with some friends, in the mountains. We've just heard that a special and unusual geologic phenomenon is nearby, some sort of extruded fossil. The fossil is a stream of igneous rock. It's very rare and special. We've gone to the venue and are standing in line waiting to be admitted and very excited about it: it's something to see!

I get a phone call. I'm not sure who it is, I think it's Dona K. Since I'm not sure, I make conversation for a while hoping she'll say something that will confirm her identity. I ask how she's doing. She says something tragic has happened. When I try to figure out what, she says they've all gone back to college. This doesn't sound tragic to me; I try to figure out why she thinks so—does it cost too much? I don't know. She has some black sons.

Interpretation: Many of my interests, even my way of being in the world, is becoming outdated, fossilized. There are good things about these interests, they are rare and special, but the phone call I get suggests I need to look at some of their other aspects. My friend Dona, being very conservative, represents the part of me that is the same. I'm out of touch with this part of myself; I'm not even sure I can identify it (I'm not sure who's calling.) My inner conservative sees the quest for knowledge as “tragic.” The dream tells me that learning something new (getting a new insight or doing something in a new way) might be expensive (cost too much, be difficult), but it isn't tragic. Dona's black sons represent the part of me that is the opposite of conservative: my fertile imagination, the place where new growth can appear. The dream tells me to embrace the part of myself that loves the traditional, but to use what's old in new ways. This is where I will find my new growth.