Guest Dream: Killing Gophers

Today's guest dream has been contributed by Emily, who often adds insightful comments to my dreams.

Emily's Dream: The overall scenario is the need to kill gophers. As I walk, I come across Phil Cooper, a member of my church, who is getting frustrated with trying to kill the gophers. The gophers made perfect circles in the mounds of brown dirt surrounding Phil. He tells me they have made over 300 holes in his yard! One way to kill gophers is to use raw pork with poison in it.. I only see one or two pieces of this raw pork, and I see that Phil has put perfectly circular cuts of poison in the thickest part of the meat. I know he didn't have to use such an expensive cut of meat, but I don't have the heart to tell him this. The size of the gopher holes and the poison pieces in the meat is the same.

Shift: A woodpecker, perhaps an acorn woodpecker, except larger, is eating bugs off a tree or a wooden side of a building which my husband has sprayed with gopher poison. I worry that bird will get traces of poison in his system by eating the bugs off the area sprayed. Suddenly, the bird reaches out and grabs a swallowtail butterfly which happens to fly by. I'm surprised he was able to do this - it was as if he reached out with arms to catch it, although I don't see anything like arms on him. As I look more closely at the bird, I see is he holding the butterfly somehow, perhaps how an insect would grab something with his forelegs to hold it and eat it. I see that this bird is eating the "meaty" or "body" part of the butterfly. Its yellow wings are drooping to the sides of his body.

Carla's thoughts: In reacting to Emily's dream I'll interpret it as if it were one of my own. There are many possible meanings in this (or any) dream. I'm going to write about the one that jumped out at me.

A slang expression for someone who performs tedious, low level tasks is a “gopher.” I am tired of these sorts of tasks, and I need to get them out of my life (kill them). I have some ambivalence about freeing myself from these unwelcome duties, which fill (Phil) my time and coop (Cooper) me up. The church represents the part of me that feels these imposed tasks are the right and good thing to do; the circles represent my being circumscribed, or contained, in a place where I don't want to be. The mounds of brown earth evoke excrement: I'm tired of being in the middle of all this shit! The poison in the middle of the circles of raw (me)at tell me just how strong my feelings about this situation are, and its expensive price tells me how much this is costing me.

When the dream shifts I, in the form of a bird, am pecking at this inflexible (wooden) problem. It's certainly bugging me, to the point that my attempt to solve it (by pecking away at it) endangers me. Even in my own home (the building my husband has sprayed) there's the threat of more “go for” poison. Then the dream shows me the path of my transformation: As a bird I am a winged creature (symbolic of the soul), and I reach out and ingest yet another creature that represents the soul, a butterfly. By swallowing the swallowtail the dream tells me my personal means of transformation (taking in the spiritual) is important, and it reminds me to nurture my soul.

Wicked

Do you have a dark side? Yes, you do.

The Dream: An image of a wicked woman; her hat is composed of a lampshade in yellow, green, and orange. A voice in the dream says that a lampshade both conceals and reveals illumination.

Interpretation: This dream attempts to bring my dark (wicked) side to some level of consciousness (illumination.) The dream hints that I won’t get it, at least not entirely. It tells me that what’s on top of my head (my current thoughts, symbolized by the lampshade) conceals as well as reveals insight (illumination). From the way I have drawn the wicked woman I can see that I find her attractive and powerful—she's not something I am likely to eradicate. That might be okay, as long as I can know her for what she really is.

Guest Dreamer: My New Life

Today’s guest dream leads the dreamer toward a glowing transformation. 

The Dream: I dreamed I was present at the birth of another woman's baby.  It was very large for a newborn, plump and mature looking.  The baby was big enough to weigh about 20 pounds but it was not at all heavy to hold. I held the baby close to my breast immediately; it wanted to nurse but of course I couldn't comply.  I covered both of us up with a sheer yellow fabric.  The baby sat quietly in my lap and we both looked toward the light that surrounded us. It didn't matter that we could not see beyond the fabric. Inside our glowing yellow light-weight tent, we were safe and warm without distractions.  We were both pacified.  

Carla’s interpretation: In my version of your dream, I am experiencing the emergence of a new sense of who I am and what I do. That I refer to the baby as an “it” rather than a “her” or “him” tells me that the baby represents an abstract quality: some important aspect of myself is being born. This new me is not yet integrated into the self I know, so I see the person who is giving birth as another woman. My creativity is channeled through this newly emerging self (the woman's new baby). The baby looks good to me (good-sized, plump, and mature looking) and I want to nourish it. Although I take it to heart (my breast), I am not quite ready to feed this new self. I need to acknowledge that its mother and I are one and the same. I find a safe and beautiful place, the color of life and enlightenment (yellow, sunlight) for me and the new baby to be together while I wait until I can recognize that what seems like someone else (the mother of my most precious creative force) is me.

Picking the Right Complement

Dream image: Doors decorated with abstract patterns in complementary colors. The first is either yellow or orange and purple, but I decide it would look better with blue, even if it weren’t, strictly speaking, correct. A neighbor appears, playing the part of the idealistic man fighting intractable corruption.

Interpretation: Complementary colors are opposite each other on the color wheel, and adding one to the other has a graying effect. The dream hints I’m stuck between opposing forces in a pattern, a stand-in here for a pattern of behavior: two opposite tendencies are canceling each other out. Choosing a color that might not be correct signals my willingness to move in a new direction because if the color isn’t the proper complement it won’t cancel out the other color. But progress is short-lived: the idealistic man fighting intractable corruption brings me back to irreconcilable differences.

Remembrance of Things Past

The key to this dream is sisterhood.

The Dream: I see a stylish woman wearing a Kappa Kappa Gamma key as an ornament. I think this looks good, and I go to find my own sorority key. In looking for it I find information about the early Kappas, and I become interested in the history of the group and in the sorority itself, things I didn't care about as an active. I realize things have changed, but my own interest in the group, and my feeling of attachment for it, is greater than I remember its being.

A woman appears who is an official of Kappa Kappa Gamma. I tell her that I’ve written a biography of the founder. She asks to see it, and I realize—if I didn’t know it when I spoke—that I made that up. I say I’ve misplaced it, and in the meantime I plan to go to the library and see what I can discover. I tell myself not plagiarize; I hope to find more than one source of information.

I find records of my past Kappa Kappa Gamma activities. There’s a light yellow silk blouse with a v-neck and ruffled collar that seems important. I find an old play that I thought I’d written in New York, but it turns out I wrote it shortly after I was married. It has a large cast of just about everyone Clark and I knew at the time. I think it must not have been too embarrassing a venture, since I don’t remember anything about it.

Interpretation: I’m dealing with my past here, re-evaluating the worth of some of my activities. My participation in a college sorority seems more valuable in the dream than it did at the time. The dream tells me it’s time to look at things differently (I realize things have changed): the history I’ve say I’ve written (the woman’s biography) doesn’t exist. I need to do some research and find some new sources of information. And, what’s more, what I discover must be unique to me: I’m not to plagiarize someone else’s version of the woman’s (my) life.

“Sisterhood” represents my early family life, when I was the “sister.” Looking back, I see I wore a beautiful, well-made silk blouse; I see the experiences I had and the bonds I developed are more positive, and that the gifts of the organization (my family) are greater, than I realized at the time. 

The tie-in between sisterhood and my subsequent life (the play in New York) hints that my awkward feeling that everything I did as a young person was awful and embarrassing might not reflect reality. (Maybe it wasn’t too embarrassing a venture.)  The dream symbolically points out that the sinking feeling I get when thinking about my own past—partially feelings of loss, partially feelings of embarrassment—might not be accurate. It’s time to take a second look so I can find a more comfortable way to integrate the past with the present. 

It’s Really Coming Down

I had forgotten this dream, until I noticed the rain and said, “It’s really coming down.”

The Dream: Clark and I are in a car; he’s driving. Behind us a car goes over a very steep precipice; some guy has pushed an unoccupied vehicle over the edge. A moment or two later I see the guy follow. He’s wearing a yellow polo shirt and tan trousers. His outfit reminds me uncomfortably of Clark. I feel helpless, watching this event and being unable to do anything about it. It seems clear it’s a suicide. I can’t watch the jump to its inevitable conclusion. I recount what I’ve seen to Clark and say, “We’ll see this on the evening news.”

Interpretation: My husband Clark represents my animus, the part of me that deals with the demands of work and business. That he is driving tells me that the dream is about issues in that part of my life. I’m on edge (the cliff). I’m clearly frustrated with the direction I’m going in, so I push the car (the thing that gets me where I’m going) off the cliff.

Jung called our mentally healthy, integrated psyche the Self. The fact that I stupidly follow the car tells me that if I don’t change direction I’m going to kill my Self, thus losing what I had apparently gained in the previous dream.

The Yellow Blanket

The Dream: There is a cheerful yellow blanket with trapunto ducks that I want to put on the bed.

Interpretation: A bed is a place to rest, and a blanket symbolizes warmth and comfort. The yellow ducks imply the homey sort of contentment a well-cared for child experiences. The dream is pointing out that I want to rest and be comforted.

The Lampshade

Have you ever had a dream that interpreted itself for you? I haven’t had many, but this one did.

The Dream: A lampshade features prominently. It is colorful, made of translucent geometric forms in shades of yellow, green and orange. The dream explains its own symbolism: it tells me that the lampshade’s significance is that it both conceals and reveals illumination.

On(e) Stage

Have you ever noticed that you’re not quite yourself in dreams? The lead character in your nightly drama is called the dream ego.

The Dream: I’m in an odd-shaped structure, something like a tent except that it’s solid. It has various entrances, some of them in surprising places. I get up on a stage which has been set up inside this very large, yellow-ochre structure and begin to give a speech. I’m full of self-confidence as I begin. “Girls inherit their lungs from their mothers . . . .” I trail off as I begin to realize I have no idea where boys get their lungs. I try to find a way to retreat, to get off the stage. I escape through a back exit I hadn’t known was there. The “I” in the dream (dream ego) has dark brown curly hair and a perky demeanor. She doesn’t actually look like me.

Interpretation: The part of me that internalized the opinions of my mother and the female culture of my youth is beginning to realize she doesn’t know everything. She is in retreat. Her domain, the half circle of the tent, shows itself to be incomplete. She is missing what Jung calls the animus, the part of a woman--symbolized by her inner man--that enables her to take on the world.

Snowy Owl

Jung teaches us that we create what he calls “imagos” of the people around us, and that these imagos are what we interact with. They might line up with the object (the actual person) or they might be way off base. (That explains a lot of unhappy relationships, doesn’t it?) In the following dream I interact with the imago of my dead mother, trying to warm her up and bring her back to life.

The Dream: I meet a woman I like at a convention. She mentions how much she likes a beautiful shade of light yellow, Alaskan Ivory. I want to give her a gift: a large comforter.  I know she is staying in a very cold place in the mountains and might need it. The only color comforter I can find is blue on one side and green on the other. The blanket is stitched in white running stitches, not too professionally executed. I’m not happy with the color but feel the pragmatic concern is more important.

The place where this woman is staying in the mountains is very beautiful and obscure. It can be reached by only one winding road. It’s dramatic and snow-covered—the image of a wintry owl comes to mind. The colors are moonlike. This is an isolated spot for serious nature enthusiasts: cold, lonely, beautiful, dramatic.

Interpretation: I am trying to come to terms with my mother’s death—I want to warm her up, but I realize she’s living is a cool, distant remote place. I want to comfort her (give her a comforter), and I am not happy that the only one I can come up with is in the cool colors of blue and green (it’s cold comfort). My dream offers me a transformed image of my mother:  a snowy owl, a beautiful spirit (bird) that is where she is meant to be in her own spiritual space (mountain top, moonlike colors).