Woman in the Pit

The Dream: An image of a circular pit, about the depth of the passé mid-20th century conversation pit. The inner façade of the pit is in the shape of a woman, and a snake circles in the middle.

Interpretation: This dream was inspired by a silent movie I had just seen: Woman of the World, staring Pola Negri. In the movie Pola plays a femme fatale, ensnaring all men who look at her. She is defined by her relationship to men. In my dream, the woman’s body forms an enclosing circle as she enfolds the phallic snake. This one dimensional version of womanhood was prevalent in the mid-20th century, a period of time the dream cleverly evokes with the conversation pit of that era. My unconscious tells me that being limited to one role (of the many we could play) is the pits.

The Incubi

Sometimes you’ll find that a dream invites you to revisit parts of yourself you once rejected.

The Dream: We are hunting for snails, which we are going to eat. We pull them out of a messy, amorphous background and put them in a red pail containing rocks. The snails climb up the pail, and I snatch them and throw them back down. They disgust me. They have soft shells which I am afraid of crushing. It occurs to me that we are not planning on cooking them, so how revolting will it be to eat them while they are crawling around on the plate?

I go over to a boarded up and rotten structure, looking for a trash area. I crank off the feeble and rotting wooden lid and see what I at first believe to be a pile of murdered babies. They are frozen. Their bodies look something like plucked turkeys; something about their faces looks girl-like, but they have no features. They look like flesh colored mummies, getting bird-like toward the bottom. Clark spots them and hollers, “Carla!” in shock, also thinking they are murdered babies.

Interpretation: At some very young age I made the determination that parts of me were disgusting. These undeveloped selves (babies) have been stored and frozen, apparently “murdered.” As an adult I might judge these incubi less harshly; my dream invites me to integrate them.