Fishes

Last night I dreamt that I stopped off at Whole Foods before church. I don't generally go to church, but in the dream this seemed like a normal thing to do. At Whole Foods I bought a bag of already-cooked whole perch. I arrived in the church and I sat in a pew listening to the sermon, digging my hands into the bag and pulling out chunks of fish flesh to eat.

Dogs and Children

My mother has had a falling out with her sister, and so her sister's grandchildren see us, but only in secret.

In my dream, we weren't allowed to see the children at all, so my best friend arranged to baby sit them, and we came and visited. I had to climb up a steep ladder on the side of an elevator shaft, and I wasn't able to pull myself up with the strength of my arms, so I had to be lifted. When I was there the children were as adorable as ever, and my best friend agreed. They crawled in my lap and sat and cuddled, and then, one after the other, they turned into small black dogs.

Vacation

Last night I dreamt about vacation.

I was taking a rich people's vacation. Rich people vacationed on a deserted beach, with sand dunes and no electricity. The luxury was in knowing you could afford anything and had chosen this. I had only been on the beach a little while when Celia Weston pulled up, looked us all over disdainfully, and told us a hurricane was coming--we had best find shelter. All the best families were going to the Four Seasons, but I didn't have any money, so I rounded up my group and headed to the nearest Hampton Inn. As we were checking in I was terrified my card would be refused, and the wind howled, and Celia drove around and around on a motorcycle in the storm.

Up and Down

Last night was the first night in almost a week that I did not dream about trains. Instead, I was in the elevator of my high school with a girl I have not been friends with in 10 years. I have the feeling that we were to some degree playing the parts of Serena and Blair from Gossip Girl, although I am not sure which one of us was which girl. We're both blonde.

We were arguing, and riding the elevator up to the top of the school. I got frustrated with her, and pressed the button for the 10th floor. She and I both watched as the elevator reached ten and did not stop, but continued up to the top floor, not pausing, not breaking, hit the roof, and fell slowly back down to the basement. We were silent for a while, as the elevator continued to rise and fall through the building. I pressed the brake, the alarm, the pause button, picked up the emergency phone--nothing worked, nothing helped. This went on for a while, until we both realized we had cell phones, and began to call people in the outside world for help. My friend called the CIA, and demanded to be connected to the local police department. Just then, the elevator landed calmly on the first floor and the doors opened. We both raced out into the lobby, and I ran, incensed, into the administration office. There were many women in flowered dresses wandering around the room, shifting piles of paper. I went to each of them in turn, trying to tell my story, and they all looked at me blankly before continuing on with their work.

"We were in there for an hour! We could have been killed!"

I didn't get a response.

Belonging

Last night I dreamt that I had moved to a small rental apartment in Washington Heights. Not only had I moved, I'd moved in with my mother, and had enrolled at the local elementary school. To make money, I had volunteered my services as a baby sitter, and was transporting children to the school every morning via subway. In the dream I found myself walking happily downtown from Harlem to the Upper West Side, and suddenly realized I was on 84th Street and was very late for school. I ran and collected the little boy I had to take with me, and we got on the train.

When the train stopped at 148th Street we got off, but something terrible had happened at the station. A giant monument was being built, and the construction workers hadn't yet built an exit from the station, and told us we wouldn't be able to leave until they had. What I was most worried about was that we would be late.

A little while later I was downstairs in a fancy social club in a large stone building downtown somewhere. Edith Wharton's characters would have been very happy there. I went up to the hostess in the lobby, who seemed to know me and looked just like the receptionist at my first job out of college.

"Are they up there?" I asked her.

"Yes they are!" She smiled brightly, almost conspiratorially. "Go on up!" I started walking up the stairs. I could hear raucous laughter and music coming from a room. I kept thinking about who would be up there, and I couldn't remember. Halfway up the stairs I turned around and headed back down.

"Please don't tell them I came," I begged the hostess. "Please don't."

She promised me she wouldn't.

Meanings

I dreamt about trains again. I'll write about the dream, but first I want to address the fact that this will be my third dream in a row about trains. So for this post I am simply presenting a dream interpretation from www.dreamloverinc.com.

In the meantime I'll just say that I have to travel tomorrow and I've decided to take the bus.

Train
This dream symbol can be very complicated and its meaning is specific to the dreamer (as all dream symbols are). If you normally take the train to work and it is a part of your daily experience, closer attention should be paid to the other details of the dream. Going on a train ride may be symbolic of your life's journey. If you are the engineer, you may be reassuring yourself in the dream state that you are in control of a specific situation or life in general. The train could also be symbolic of your need to move on and to do things in an orderly and sequential manner. Freud said that the train is usually a phallic symbol and that a train going through a tunnel represents intercourse. Freud also said that there are other possibilities to this symbol. For example if you missed the train in your dream, you may be fearful of missing important opportunities. Jung thought that the train ride represented the way a person moves and behaves just like everyone else and that you the dreamer may be striving for wholeness.

Bridges and Trains

In my dream last night I took a trip. I was on a very luxurious train, something of a cross between a French TGV and one of the trains in the latest James Bond movie. There was nothing American about this train, but I was traveling to Arizona. I knew I wasn't alone but I couldn't find my traveling companions, even as I wandered back and forth along the train searching for a familiar face.

When we arrived in Arizona we were in a giant city in the desert. A suspension bridge the same color as the Golden Gate connected the train station from the city; beneath it was an enormous, bright blue body of water. As we crossed the bridge on foot, it felt as though we were walking downhill. I remarked to someone near me on the activity in the water. Giant space-age helicopters were showboating, doing pirouettes and figure eights above the water before crashing in and then rising again. The man next to me said that this was a great attraction of the city, and I should definitely try it. I watched one of the helicopters crash and said it wasn't for me.

When I got to the end of the bridge I realized I had forgotten something on the train and was ordered back. I turned around to walk back across the bridge and found it almost impossible. There was a howling wind pushing against me, and the bridge no longer had rails, only duct tape to hang on to. I pulled myself along, progressing inch by inch, incredibly slowly, getting lower and lower until I was crawling along the floor of the bridge. The surface had turned from dry cement into a wet mixture of concrete and dirt, and I put my face in it for a minute to cool off. I could see the train up ahead but I was terrified I would never get there.

"Is it always this windy?" I shouted to someone passing by me.

"No, it's just while that bridge is being built," the man replied, pointing across the water to a giant construction site on the other side of the pirouetting helicopters.

"When will the bridge be ready?" I asked, desperate.

"In a few months," I was told. I woke up before I got back to the train.

Baggage

Just before I finally quit my last job, I had a long dream that was so obviously symbolic I found it almost boring. And yet I still remember it clearly several months later.

I was in a big country house that was located in the Bronx for some reason, with all the men from my office. None of the women were there, just men, and we were packing our boss's possessions into a giant box. The box was huge, maybe 6 by 10 feet, and it still looked as though all the stuff wouldn't fit. The art handlers hammered and pushed and pulled and rearranged, and finally, 60 years worth of crap was squeezed into the cardboard container.

I asked one of the men how we were going to get it back to the office in Manhattan. He looked at me like I was nuts, and barked that I would be taking it back on the subway. Suddenly we were at a train station, and the train was barreling towards us, and everyone was shouting instructions at me.

"You have to jump!"

"Make sure no one sees the box!"

"Pretend it isn't yours!"

The train doors opened and all the men pushed the box into the subway car, and pushed me in as well. I climbed on top of the box inside the train and tried to look inconspicuous. And then I realized: how was I going to get the box out of the train when we reached our stop?

Other People's Dreams

A friend confessed to me that I was in her dream last night. I love being in other people's dreams, except for one time in college when my roommate's boyfriend told me we had French-kissed in his. Not only did I kind of want to kill my roommate's boyfriend every day, the term French-kiss seemed horribly graphic and slimy in the context.

This was a much happier circumstance, but still, leads me to believe both she and I should be worried. My friend is a lesbian, and in her dream, her ex-lover, a girl she has agonized over and cried over, who has tortured her and torn her apart, had turned into a man, and I was dating "him". I asked her if she was mad at me and she said no. I said she had probably conflated her ex with my boyfriend--she said that was probably true. In any case, she was sitting on the grass in the dream, and kept texting her ex-lover, hoping for a response, and "he" wouldn't answer, because he was with me. I think maybe we should both go for broke and just date each other.

Anxiety Dreams

I would say that all my dreams are anxiety dreams to a degree. I'm what you'd call an anxious person, sure. Some of my anxieties are extreme, others rather banal and boring. And sometimes the anxiety dreams are too.

Last night I had an anxiety dream that mixed the mundane with the totally bizarre.

It started out with me back in high school. Yup, one of those. It was a Wednesday, and I had two exams on Thursday and two on Friday, and I was ill-prepared for all four. Thursday was Math and GYM (gym???) and Friday was English and French. I knew I could bluff my way through Friday's tests but Math was really going to be a stretch. I borrowed a girl's notes (the girl who was best at Math in my high school) and felt rather guilty as I lifted what seemed like years of data on Trigonometry, Algebra, Calculus and something called Turdutrky. And then suddenly I was walking down the hall and the exam was about to begin and I hadn't had any coffee and I hadn't read any of her notes and I tried to sneak a cigarette and the smoke alarm went off.

Before I knew it I was back at my old job, or a conglomerate of old jobs, rounding up people to try and get them to go to Carnegie Hall for what I was promising would be a monumental and groundbreaking show. But when I walked inside the auditorium, it was empty, save for a few people I knew from college. On the stage was my nephew (in real life, quite a famous guy) and he was trying to sing opera but kept stuttering. Finally, he announced that he was having a panic attack and would have to revert to show tunes. Facing away from the audience, he began to belt out Disney songs.

I sat in the front of the audience, hyperventilating.

Barack My World

I am not alone in being in love with Barack Obama, and I am also probably not alone in having dreams about him. I do not want to marry him, and I don't think my subconscious wants to either. We both respect Michelle too much. I just want to be his friend.


My first Obama dream: Friend of the Family

In my first Obama dream I was back in high school, and Obama had a daughter my age. Even though we were both 18 or so, we were having a playdate at her house. Barack and Michelle were both there, drifting pleasantly and calmly around the house in a reassuring way. I remember at one point Barack was reading the newspaper in an armchair. They asked me to stay for dinner.

My Second Obama Dream: Captain of the Resistance

This second dream was a great deal more complex. In the dream I was the leader of some sort of secret Obama force. The force had furtive meetings at my apartment (Obama was not involved), where we discussed the tragedies inflicted on our country and how to change things for the better. In the dream world, it seemed America was under a totalitarian rule of some sort (not too far off) and getting Obama elected was the only way to save us all.

In my dream, there was a giant rally for the opposing candidate (unknown) at the Catholic church next to my apartment building on the same day I was holding a secret meeting and also, for some reason, babysitting Barack and Michelle's toddler. (I don't know why their children are always the wrong ages in my dreams). I knew there would be trouble: how was I going to sneak everyone past the demonstrators next door? I called Barack. He sounded as breezy, calm and in command as ever, told me not worry, and called in the Secret Service. Minutes later, two secret agents arrived in black sedans on my block, and calmly handed me the toddler and a giant dog on a leash. They assured me they would stand guard in the lobby.

When I arrived upstairs with toddler, guard dog and resistance force, my front hall was filled with flowers.

With Obama the presumptive nominee today, I am sure I will have more Barack dreams. I can't wait.

Losing Everything to Brad Pitt

I woke up this morning and remembered my dream. I love it when this happens. I get to lie there in bed and play it back in my head like a movie, and whether it's a good dream or a bad dream, a nightmare or a sad dream, the fact that I remember the dream at all feels like a victory.

Last night I had the strangest dream. It felt as though it lasted all night.

It all began with a road trip. I was leaving my house for good, leaving my mother, leaving my doorman, leaving everything that I cared about behind. I only had one bag with me, and in the bag was everything I owned. All my clothes (every piece of underwear), my laptop, my novel, my books, my makeup, my checkbook, my wallet, and the ten dollars Dream Me had to her name.

The car was parked in an alley behind my Dream Apartment, and I needed to put my bag down to help load the car. There was another car parked across the way, and I put my bag down next to it, asking the young smiling couple if I could rest it there for a minute. The couple beamed, delighted--I couldn't see the man's face, but the woman picked up the bag, said thank you, and put my bag in their car. They drove away, with all my worldly possessions.

The road trip was not too fun after that. I wasn't too sure why I was on it, and no one would lend me any money, and I kept getting dirtier and dirtier as we drove further along. My chauffeur was a high school friend of my boyfriend's and that wasn't too much fun either. I didn't know where my boyfriend was and we didn't have much to talk about without him there.

I found myself at a dinner party with childhood friends at an apartment complex in Brooklyn that looked just liked the one in Rear Window. The father kept talking to me about his son, about how he wouldn't pay attention. The son picked his nails and leaned against the terrace where we were eating. I confided in the father that I had lost all my worldly possessions and I didn't know where to look. I asked him if he knew who the couple in the car were. The father told me to ask the doorman.

The doorman looked concerned--he was my childhood doorman and knew me well. We talk about the Red Sox and Obama together. He gave me an envelope of pills with a pharmacy on the label. "Call the number," he said gravely, "and they will tell you who the pills belong to."

I don't remember the pharmacy, but they must have told me who it was, because the next thing I knew I was sitting across from Brad Pitt's wife at a table at a cafe on Columbus Avenue. Not Angelina Jolie, just Brad Pitt's wife, a nice-looking, slightly neurotic woman clearly transported to New York from the Midwest, and the woman who had taken my bag in the alley.

"I thought the bag was a present," she confided, somewhat confused. "For our daughter." She was sitting next to a toddler.

"No, I just needed to rest my bag for a minute," I protested, trying to remain calm so I could get it back. She frowned. She thinks I'm a stalker! I thought to myself. I don't even like Brad Pitt!

At that moment Brad himself entered the cafe, as cool as ever. He cuddled with his wife and looked across the table at me.

"I hear you have a house in Italy," he said in a friendly way. "So do we. We just bought it. I'd love to get your mother's advice."

My mother walked over to the restaurant. She only lived a few blocks away.

Suddenly we were in Italy, and Brad and my mother were wandering around his villa methodically, she explaining how to restore the tile, he listening patiently, rapt, like he'd found his new Nouvel. I chased after the toddler around the house, and talked with Brad's wife about making careers work. I was struck with each phrase by how ordinary she was.

I woke up before I got my bag back.