Sheep

Our culturally defined roles play a big part in determining the way we are in the world. Sometimes (often?) our inner self isn't happy with the limitations these roles impose. This dreams demands I take a look at that.
The Dream: A woman is talking up her partner, as wives and mothers often talk up and praise their husbands and children. I think she's overdoing it.

She has beet juice on her face, and she wipes her face on the sleeve of her lovely red wool coat. It leaves a stain. She takes the coat to the dry cleaner and when it comes back there's a cloudy gray-white residue where the stain had been. I go to get a cloth in order to clean up the mark, dampening the cloth with water. But I'm not sure I can remove this stain.

Interpretation: What is this stain that won't be removed; does it come from being beet red with embarrassment? Could it be the stain of menstruation, symbolizing the “stain” and trials of being a woman? Have these challenges beaten me down?  In the dream a woman is self-effacing, making her partner more important than she is. The day before the dream I had  a conversation with a friend about discrimination against women the the art world: she told me that a famous man's work on the art market gets 30 times what a famous woman's work gets.

This stain is difficult to remove. It's embedded in the fabric. Is this “fabric” cultural or part of our DNA? In the dream it's embedded in a wool coat, a fitting symbol of feminine “sheepdom.” We women have put on the mantle of the easily led. How sheepish are we?

Can't Erase the Black Marks

The Dream: I'm in a contemporary style classroom, in a shopping mall, with Clark. I am looking for places to cover with black paint, and I find some along a wall that is organized for storage. Then I paint on the glass of some windows and an entrance door. I sling paint around and write some words that are inappropriate for the school age children who come to this place, like “damn.” I soon become aware that I've done something inappropriate and need to remove what I've written. I work at it but find the marks impossible to erase completely. Clark disapproves of my poor judgment in expressing myself in this uncensored way. When the marks I've made in the storage area prove impossible to remove, I move on to the glass door. I scrape with a single edge razor blade and can't understand why the paint won't neatly peel up as it does when I scape paint off my palette in the studio. Clark points to a window on the other side of the room and says I should have used that one instead of the door.

Interpretation: The black marks are things I've done that haunt me (stored in my unconscious), as well as my attempts at self-expression: in waking life I am a painter and the marks I'm making in the dream are with paint. I am unable to eradicate either these black marks or the content they express (damn!), even though I feel both are inappropriate. My laying down of paint in this self-expressive way makes a mess, and that's interesting because I find that's the result when I try to paint something without a plan in waking life. The dream has uncovered the genesis of my rigorous self-discipline, the strength that is also a weakness. Clark, my other half, tells me not that I shouldn't have done what I did, but that I should have found another place (a different way) to do it. He points out that the window (of opportunity) is still available.