Nowhere to Hide

The Dream: I'm on an iceberg in a frozen world. I am taking part in a documentary meant to demonstrate how a person can create an ice fortress for protection from roaming beasts.

I have my own patch of territory, a rectangle marked with an edge of shoveled snow. The beasts begin to appear. I demonstrate how to make a small mound to hide behind. After I make the mound I'm told to crouch behind it, cradling my head in my arms. Even as I do this I have doubts that it will work. In the first place, the mound is a pile of dark earth. It seems to me that against the white snow this will only call attention to my hiding place. Next, as I try to hide behind it and tuck my head down I realize I can't see what's going on, and I don't see how that's going to help me avoid a predator.

Interpretation: This dream shows me that my defenses are useless. I've tried to make myself safe by isolating myself on a frozen patch (a place free of emotion). Yet the only way the rectangular territory is cut off from its greater environment is visually; it's ridiculously simple for any threat to breach the boundary. And the threats do come, in the form of wild animals (my unacknowledged strong feelings). My attempts to hide from these are ludicrous and only make me more vulnerable.

It's interesting that I'm making a documentary, perhaps a symbol for my dream journal. I'm following the dictates of the “director” as I build my idiotic “fortress.” The message here is that I will not find my safe place—the place where I can live—by following the path laid out for me by others. In the final dream sequence the fact that I'm questioning what I've been told will keep me “safe” is a kind of progress.

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.

Criticism Resolved

The Dream: I am preparing the design for a square in a new city, putting in trees and plants along the border. I enjoy the project, which is part of a new and exciting cityscape: a beautiful urban place full of art and park-like features. There’s an accidental mound of soil in one of the planting areas.

The director of the project comes by, just as I feel the work is “coming together,” and he is very displeased because the design lacks one of his specifications. He wants a mound, partially covered in bark, with a tree at its center. I return his anger, very annoyed that he isn’t pleased and that he isn’t looking at the over-all design. “Well!” I storm “I’m not finished, am I?” As soon as I’ve said it I feel anxious about my blunt reaction. Then I notice the accidental mound already in the design and realize I can use that space to do what the director wants without having to change anything.

I am relieved. I pretend I had kept his brief in mind as I worked, but I realize it’s just luck that it has turned out to have the feature he had asked for.

Interpretation: Here I’m dealing with my internalized critical father. As a child I often felt he enjoyed pointing out my mistakes. My anger about this surfaces in the dream, but I also realize that I am able to accommodate his expectations without actually changing the way I do things.