Sunday, September 9, 2007

Dreamscape, attempt at analysis

Dream: At a gymnastics meet, handicapped girls, one pumping her lungs up with an oxygen tube then only able to move her hands, arm, and neck from her wheelchair, and having to stop to reoxygenate. Then a click, & 'the channel' changed - as if Bobby couldn't stand to see that and switched, because in the dream, even, it was evident he had the remote.
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Clarissa Pinkola Estes recommends taking only the nouns and attaching to them what they mean to me [personal symbology, representation], doing away with all the descriptive extra verbage unless it seems significant, a repeating color or motif.
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gymnastics: my true, heart sport
handicapped: slowed, fettered, prevented
girls: what I am inside
hands/arm/neck: essentials of/for expression
wheelchair: anchor, tie-down
lungs: internal wings of air
oxygen machine/tube: life support
click/channel change: lack/loss of focus
remote: power in someone else's control
Bobby: family connection
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Rewrite:
At my true heart sport, slowed, fettered, prevented, one of what I am inside on life support, pumping internal wings of air with the life support, only able to move her essentials of/for expression, from the anchor, tied down, and having to stop and reconnect to the life support. Then a lack/loss of focus, because in the dream, even, it was evident that my family connection had the power in its control.
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What I wrote in my journal, attempting to analyze:
I'm truly stumped. Where in my life am I anchored down, on life support, can only use my truest expression? My art IS my life support, and I AM only using my truest expressions, and those are also the oxygen. Circle feeding itself. Slowed, fettered prevented at what I am inside: I think that is connected to my desire to move past the surface, but I anchor myself out of imagined guilt or obstacles in/to telling my truths because my family connection will want to look away, isn't interested. [& maybe I'm afraid -- the return over and again to the life support?]
It really can't be about my job, because I use zero of my truest expressions there, although I AM severaly restricted in what I'm allowed to use -- certainly only the smallest portion of my abilities, only those that can be easily controlled and which maintain 'the status quo'. Even in that scenario/application, the life support would be my art. The fact that I have the art is resuscitation (sp?) enough to oxygenate me through a day at work. It's my anchor/tie-down, too, because it's my mental touchstone when I get frustrated by the limitations enforced on me, my boss who 'changes my channel' at whim, manipulating me, never really focusing on who I REALLY am (or what I REALLY could do) because she has a different picture freeze-framed in her mind.
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The analyzing part is easier said than done. I think I got pretty close, though. When I have a dream which isn't an entire novel of complications and tangles and images, it's worth it to me to attempt the analysis, just to SEE [seek]. I rarely have a dream, though, that I can distill like this one. I feel like I have to get better at this whole process before tackling some of my long-&-winding-road dreams, the truly intricate, lengthy ones. Probably a lot of meat in those, though.

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