Friends' Dreams

This is a dream that my friend had last night.

"The dream starts off with me in a white, rough cotton-type dress with 2 ties at the top, a loose string summer beachy dress.

I am sitting with a corpse, well more like a skeleton but bloody and with flesh still on the bone. I am cutting it grotesquely in strips but not stabbing. I knew this was the body of some guy that had hurt me. Some dude, known to dream me. Then, in the midst of all this carnage, an older man approaches. (When I thought about my dream after I woke up I thought that he was Abe Lincoln at first.) He takes my hand and takes me away and to this big castle and puts me in a room and has someone take care of me and then I am led back into his room but I am still wearing the same thing, look exactly the same but not wild. Then we have a very nice love affair. But no sex involved. Just romance. I am an object of affection.

And then I woke up extremely disturbed. I knew the image was from Goya. And I was like, that wasn’t Abe Lincoln, that was from Goya.

Goya’s life was late 18th, early 19th century, also my favorite time period, Romantic period. I had never thought about this before. My dress wasn’t from that period, but everything else. It could have been out of Heathcliff. I was younger in the dream, maybe 17, at least physically. I was . I knew it was me. I was just watching this romance take place."

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.