It Can Be Flushed

The Dream: I go to use a public toilet and am concerned about its condition. It's not terribly clean, but also not impossibly dirty. The lid is down and I open it, concerned I'll see an over-flowing mess. Instead I see several, 3, large ball-shaped turds lying quietly at the bottom of the bowl. I am relieved, thinking that this is an amount I can flush.

Interpretation: I had been reading Tony Crisp's thoughts on the toilet image in dreams. He said that a full toilet indicates there are things that need to be dealt with, released, so to speak. In this dream I anticipate there will be more than I can flush--that the toilet is clogged--but in fact it is manageable. It's not a tidy place I've come to, and certainly not one where I want to spend time, but it's not as bad as I had anticipated, either. Once I lift the lid on my difficulty I find I can flush it. Perhaps some unremembered dream from the night dealt with this necessary process in terms of the particular issue that needs flushing; in any case I hope that the unconscious will go forward with its own sort of resolution, whether or not I'm aware of it.

Two Toilets

The Dream: I have to use the toilet. The first one I find is the height of a baby's highchair. The lid is down, covered with debris from an infant's diaper change. I remove the pieces of trash with distaste and find it's not as disgusting as I had anticipated. I keep expecting to come across a poop-filled diaper but never do.

I abandon this toilet and find myself next to another one, a typical adult model this time, with debris in the bowl. The discards are pharmacy boxes and other bathroom detritus. A box labeled with the drug name Napoxne catches my eye. What does it treat, I wonder? I awaken, saying the name over and over to myself, trying to remember it so I can do a google search in the morning.

Interpretation: I'm looking for some sort of release; there's something I need to let go of. (I need to use the toilet.) The appearance of the baby's highchair tells me that the first thing I must get out of my system dates to my early childhood. That the lid is down tells me that whatever lurks there is unconscious. Although it never reaches the level of consciousness, I symbolically deal with this mental trash by removing and accepting it (it's not as disgusting as I had anticipated). I haven't yet discovered the really shitty event—or possibly there isn't one. (I keep expecting to come across a poop-filled diaper but never do.)

In any case, I'm now ready to take on adult crap and again find the instrument of my release (the toilet) blocked. What's clogging it this time? The dream offers up the drug napoxne. When I searched for the meaning of the term I found a similar word, naproxen, that is a drug used to treat pain. The dream is telling me that my desire to avoid pain is blocking my ability to purge myself of it.

Guest Dreamer: Purification

Do you need a washing machine to take you through the complete cycle from contamination to purification? The homey images in this guest dream reveal a powerful transformation in progress.

The Dream: I am in my house, upstairs. There are guests in the house. I walk into the guest bathroom and decide to flush the toilet. When I do, watery shit bubbles out of the drain and rises to the top. It starts to overflow. I panic. The flowing stops before flooding the bathroom, but I run out of there to find a plunger so I can correct the problem. I look for the plunger downstairs in the laundry room.  A woman, my house guest, is sprawled sideways on top of the washing machine. She is clothed--at least I see she is wearing slacks, shoes and socks. The lid of the washer is up and her rear end is inside the barrel. She looks like she is just hanging out there, relaxed, with her arm over the lid.  

Carla’s interpretation: In my version of the guest dreamer’s dream, my mind (upstairs symbolizes the head) is engaged with some issues that feel alien to me (they are guests in my house rather than residents). There’s a lot of difficulty (shit) associated with these issues; repressing them has been draining me but now they are coming up with such force that they’ve risen to the top of my consciousness. In fact, they are so powerful they overflow and I panic. I run to find the device (the plunger) that can correct the problem. My unconscious is hinting here that the solution will be plunging into the difficulty rather than trying to avoid it. And, in fact, once I get to the place where I expect to find the plunger, I am in a place of purification, the laundry room. The lid is off, and I see that the problem is being addressed at its source: the rear end of my troublesome “guest.” We can guess that she is the one responsible for the excess shit in the guest bathroom. Having expelled the mess that was inside her, she is now relaxed while the washing machine completes the purge.

What is my Niche?

You might notice that your dreams tend to illustrate a point by going over the top. In this dream I get a message from my inner drama queen.

The Dream: I have been ill, and it is determined that it is time for me to die. I am in India, wearing a flowing costume, but the street looks like the one I live on. My “father,” who looks and acts nothing like my real life father, accompanies me on the journey to my burial. This father is very tall, relatively slender, with a fair complexion and close cropped hair. We are escorted by a large rabble of young children who are merrily running, frolicking, and occasionally falling down, scraping a knee, and crying. I note to myself that they are behaving exactly like children. This odd procession walks through streets now citified and comes at last to my gravesite.

The site contains an open tomb, a simple rectangular box with no lid. Inside the box are the do-whap songs of two early rock groups. The songs have been shredded and are being stirred, with the expectation that they will turn into a peanut-butter like goop. Father, holding a copy of one of Nietzsche’s works, becomes intellectual and starts to lecture about the writer. He tells me his name is properly pronounced Niche these days. I am exasperated. “Must they change everything?” I say.

I tear the binding off the back of the book so it can be shredded and added to the coffin with the songs. Father opens the partially destroyed book and shows me a list of questions Nietzsche thought people should ask themselves. I read the questions, which invite introspection, and realize I’ve never asked myself these things. “I want to live,” I exclaim, with a certain desperation. “I want to live!”

Interpretation: I had this dream seven years ago. At that time I was recording my dreams, but had little idea what to make of them. In a rather histrionic way, the dream tells me to find my niche (Nietzsche). It tells me that life without introspection is not life at all.