2) I was walking down some steps outdoors, in the country or in a park. Suddenly birds flew out from a small paper bag sticking out of the riser of the step I was just about to step down from. Different kinds of birds but I remember distinctly a pigeon with grey, white, and brown feathers. I was taken by surprise. A man who was crouching by the side of the path saw it all.
3) I had to pee and went into my parents’ quarter of the house. Passed by my dad lounging on a daybed reading in the first room. Then I went into their bedroom and saw through a half open door my mother was already in the ensuite bathroom. I left and went back out to a much larger bathroom adjacent, but found that my mother had filled the sink, the bathtub, and the toilet completely, and left the water running slowly and overflowing. I hesitated for a moment then flushed the toilet to see what would happen. It worked normally so I was relieved. There was a yellowish foamy jelly-like mass at the base of the front of the toilet.
DREAMWORK:
1) Alex, a guy from my most recent participation in the rat race. My animus, watching over me while I choose what to put on to go out into the world with? The dress I decided on was very feminine, cheerful, alluring, vibrant, carefree, pleasing to the eye (and the ego too). I wanted to look good. But somehow I ended up with boring, plain, dowdy, and embarrassing. I want to be myself, show my true self—am I being delusional about what I really look like, or am I frumping myself down when I show myself out there?
I have to admit, when I was at my last workplace (where I worked with Alex) I did not present myself as I truly and wholly am. I was a role being played, a job description being enacted, an unit of productivity being generated according to someone else’s script. Alex probably saw more of my real self than anyone else there, but even that was minimal. We saw each other as the uniform we wore, a hat we put on, one of the many we wear in a lifetime.
The real woman I am is that beautiful chartreuse dress, eager to go out into the world and society with a smile and an open heart, ready for the adventure of the extraordinary and everyday. That, is the only way I want to go out. I don’t ever want to wear a hat (or clothes) that someone else has made and labeled, that obscures who I am and limits me in what I want to be. I don’t want to ever hide myself, make myself invisible or plain, dumb myself down, or show myself as anything less colourful and exotic than I am. Eccentric and unconventional I may be, socially unfit sometimes, uncompromising other times, but I will find that hole where my weird round peg can fit into, somewhere out there.
2) Nature, was the first thing that came to me as I see the dream in my mind now. It has to do with Nature.
The descent was gradual and leisurely, the scene peaceful. Slightly darkened, as if under trees. The steps were well-worn, either just earth or wood inset into earth, and only a person wide. Old, but not ancient. Then, sudden shock, birds as an element of Air, flew out from inside the earth under my feet, through a paper bag tunnel and exit no less. Why paper bag? Why not just a hole they flew out of? Is it akin to ‘letting the cat out of the bag’? This is letting the birds out of the bag?? Birds symbolize freedom to me (didn’t I just have a dream about this a few days ago, except that was a wooden toy bird ?!), freedom manifested and expressed. So unexpectedly, though not unpleasantly, freedom came on my way to deepen into Mother Nature, out of the element least associated with flight—the earth. How lovely is that!?!
Birds also embody creativity, their flight is the movement and expression of creativity to me. Does that mean my creativity, and sense of freedom from its expression, is to come from my deepening connection to Nature? I see that that’s where Mary Oliver writes her poetry from, and I would love to tap into the same source. I suppose all poetry is about Nature, but her subject is so often, Nature herself. (Does Mother Nature, like us women, have masculine qualities and energy innately?? She must, as I am a part of Nature. At any rate, my masculine, my animus, is always nearby, even if only on the sideline.)
A paper bag is quite fragile, humble and commonplace, yet it is a container of a sort, usually for purchases. So perhaps these birds are freedom and creativity that I have paid for, earned with hard work. That’s why the birds were of different ‘feathers’, they are specific forms of creative expression, personal to me. There were about 6 or 8 of them. The pigeon with the brown/grey/white features, I realize just now, was most likely from the cover image of Karen Solie’s book of poetry called “Pigeon”, for which she won the Griffin Award last year. I just read it last week and felt that it took me to a different place I’ve not been before, not somewhere I wanted to go, but now I’m glad she took me there. In a way that’s even more powerful than having been taken to a place where one would willingly go, somewhere one already knows will resonate; but to be ‘forced’ to go to the unfamiliar, possibly unpleasant, and then being persuaded and converted into a fan, well, that’s awesome. I hope I can create something with that kind of transformative power someday. Maybe that’s my pigeon in the dream, taking flight…3) Funny I was just thinking yesterday that I haven’t had a toilet dream in quite a while, I guess I was either planting the notion in my subconscious or channeling the unconscious…
I wonder if I get these dreams when I have a need to unload emotionally (and also having to, coincidentally, go pee), and if that’s true, what emotion did I need to unload now or yesterday? I haven’t felt much urgency in needing to express my emotions consciously, nor do I feel pent-up about anything. But water could mean so many things to me that perhaps it is not necessarily emotions this dream is featuring…
I have the feeling now that this time it is about flow, in general, of energy, because for me, being of mostly a watery nature in a watery phase of my life, my energy move as water does. In my own writing lately, I’ve used the image of the opening of the floodgates several times, at the same time, I wish for and try to ground in stillness. Hence the quietly and slowly overflowing bathroom fixtures in this dream. There was a pervasive sense of calm and peace to the whole scene, except for my need to pee which was physical and real. The only obstacle, in a way, was that I did not find what I needed from my parents, my masculine and feminine familiars, what I was used to, where I expected to find help and resources. They were quite peaceful too, but I had to find ‘satisfaction’ outside their domain, though still within myself.
It was a large space, lots of room to move around in, and everything was cast in a mellow, golden light or tone. Slightly low lighting, so not entirely in my consciousness. And even though the water was overflowing the containers, there was no flooding on the floor. My first thought was that my mother had done this for a reason unknown to me.
The only thing perplexing me is the yellow stuff at the base of the toilet. I didn’t get the sense it was something dirty or awful, more like it had ‘grown’ there by itself, like honeycomb or plant resin. But why at the base of the toilet? Expectedly, it would be yucky and disgusting stuff that accumulates there. But this dream has an element of the unexpected, the ‘think, see, expect differently’ written all over it. Ambrosia is the word that comes to me now, and we all know that to be nectar of the gods, at least the Greek ones, but did I know that it is also known as “beebread: a mixture of nectar and pollen prepared by worker bees and fed to larvae”? Maybe it was already in my subconscious, maybe it’s from the collective unconsciousness. Doesn’t matter as much as its connection to my earlier sense of it as honeycomb, or rather, honey from honeycomb, the gooey, golden yellow ooze.
Hmmm… If I follow this line of inquiry and connection, it would seem to say to me that instead of expecting to find the usual negativity that I associate with emotional or any kind of overwhelm (overflow), I am finding something surprisingly rich and heavenly delicious and magical, a divine elixir for immortality.
Always, leave room to be surprised.
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