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March, 2008

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Some men are investigating my stock exchange transactions. They do not find anything wrong with them, but have focused in on one that has not yet been executed, an order that was put in awhile back. They argue it was illegal and are trying to prove criminal intent, apparently also looking for any other orders that would show I'm trying to break SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) rules.

Meanwhile, not aware of the investigation or the official attention to that particular order, I am trying by phone to place another order and to clear up what happened to the missing and suspect order, as I never got a confirmation it had gone through, but it seems its being still in the system is a monkey-wrench, preventing new orders from being acted on.

A brokerage representative, not conspiring with the investigators, is on the line (phone), dealing with me in good faith, attempting to get the matter cleared up, and he discovers that the unexecuted order has been pulled for investigation.

I tell him to just cancel it, but he says he cannot. He must have the physical order (hard copy) there.

I go to a commercial exchange. (It is like a blend of a bank, a brokerage office, and a sleazy, greasy spoon eatery or bar.) I discover that one man there, a big fellow who acts like a bully, is holding a stack of about 4 of my unexecuted orders (the hardcopies), including the missing, suspect one. It appears he is trying to either profit by putting them through for himself or by turning them over to the Feds (the investigator fellows) and helping them prosecute me.

I confront him and demand he either return the orders in question to me or destroy them at once and in front of me. I angrily point out there is nothing wrong with an unexecuted order and that if there were anything questionable about any of them I ought to have simply been called immediately by the brokerage so I could correct any errors. By holding the stack of my orders, he is illegally interfering with protected commerce and intruding on my privacy rights. He could be found liable.

However, he is not impressed with my assertions. He knows he's doing what the federal investigators want, so he is in the right, and I am wrong. I am very angry, but our impasse is not ended (when I wake up).

Later. Title: "Dead Head in Bed"

I took a short nap this morning after having gotten up earlier. Then I thought I was awake when I leaned over to look at the clock, to see if it were time to get up. As I did so...

I vividly saw a large dead human face and head, bloody and missing its skin, about where Fran's normally would have been.

[I was shocked, frightened, and surprised at this visage and jerked back, coming fully awake then and realizing the shape I was seeing was in fact a thick, bunched up rise in a bedcover Fran uses on her side of the mattress, the colors vaguely like those I had mistaken for a bloody head. I did not recognize the "head" in its traumatic condition, but, based on where it appeared to be, assume it was Fran's.]

3/3/08 - Yesterday the DG discussed, along with others, my 2/29/08 dream, "Making the Most of Little Feet." Highlights:

• The dream is apparently about my maternal grandmother, Mama Paula, and represents another aspect of my anima or feminine side. Mama Paula had a life filled with suffering and stoic adjustment to her unfortunate lot.

• She seemed a very sweet, mostly quiet, somewhat frail older lady, in relation to me or her other grandchildren. She would usually not engage with her when my mom would visit her and harass her with self-righteous exhortations about how she should fix or clean up her house better or do various other things to improve her circumstances, but then, when the emotional and negative criticism had ended, she was often very loquacious, even if not saying much of significance from my point of view, or (later, when she was married to [I think] her third husband, a man twenty years younger than her and far less smart than she, who at least worked hard and provided some income, whom she looked after and whose young daughter she helped raise, and so Mama Paula was then doing a bit better) she might just have the TV on and mindlessly watch it for hours at a time.

• Rumor had it she had in the past had periods when she just could not cope and might be silent and unresponsive for days. Some said she had been "crazy" earlier in her life for a time, especially after various traumas.

• She had depended greatly for material and psychological support on her first husband, but he had, early in the Great Depression, abandoned her and the rest of the family when my mom, Mama Paula's oldest daughter, was nine years old.

• Rumor has it too that she was abused by her father when in her mid-teens and bore him a child, a boy, who was taken away from Mama Paula and reared by her mother, my mom's grandmother, but that then that woman "went crazy" and was put into a mental institution, and nobody still alive or talking of it knows what happened to this possible other uncle (and great uncle) of mine, possibly Mama Paula's first child.

• My mom had not even known of this possible older brother, assuming she herself had been the oldest of Mama Paula's kids, till about 2-3 years ago, when someone in her extended family, a lady she had not met before and who lives in another state, had come to visit her to learn some things from her and also pass along what said she had learned in extensive genealogical researches.

• Mom had only known, and indeed had told me and others, that there was some deep dark scandal in her family's past, likely involving her mother, but that her full sister (there being both a half-sister and a step-sister as well), who supposedly knew the truth from one of their aunts, a great aunt of mine and sister to Mama Paula, had refused to tell what this secret was either to Mom or others, or even to let anyone else know how to get in touch with this aunt of Mom's and hers while that lady was still living.

• Speculations about what this allegedly dark secret might be had ranged from Mama Paula being partly Black (and so all her children and grandchildren also being considered Black) to her having had relations with a Black man, her having been crazy and in an institution herself, etc. Perhaps there had also been speculation about her having had a child out of wedlock, but neither my mom nor I had ever previously heard or at least remembered any suggestion heretofore that this had been as a result of abuse by her father, my mother's mother's father.

• After Mama Paula's first husband, my maternal grandfather, Papa Richard, abandoned the family about 1932, Mama Paula's life got really awful. Most of the amenities of a comfortable life ceased to be a part of the family's existence. After she had divorced Papa Richard and remarried, the new husband was a sharecropper. The family had a little house provided on the farm owner's property, but they were all forced off the place when Mom's stepfather had a heart attack and could not longer work the farm.

• I do not know why they did not feel they could get help from any other relatives at that point (perhaps they were estranged from Papa Richard's family of origin after his disappearance, the divorce, and Mama Paula's remarriage to someone not approved of...), but Mama Paula, her son, her two daughters, including my mom, plus this now disabled stepfather to my mom, settled on a creek in a lean-to fashioned there, about 5 miles outside Waco, and did their best to carry on exposed to hot and cold central TX conditions, terrible problems with flies and mosquitoes, and so little food they were for awhile literally starving.

• As if these circumstances were not bad enough, sometimes at night Mama Paula's disabled husband, my step-grandfather (whom I have fortunately never met), would slip into my then young teenager (future) mom's sleeping area sometimes, fondle her, and try to have sex with her. She says it is hard for her to believe Mama Paula did not know what was going on, but that, in any case, she did nothing to stop the abuse. The experiences were deeply disturbing for Mom and left great feelings of shame, insecurity, and inferiority that probably will have affected her the rest of her life.

• After some time, Mama Paula's first husband's parents, my mom's paternal grandfather and his newer wife, Mom's terribly strict and harsh step-grandmother (Mom's warmhearted much loved biological paternal grandmother having died when relatively young), somehow found out about the overall situation and took Mom in, to get her out of the abusive situation. They also gave some money to the rest of Mom's family so they could get on their feet again and away from the lean-to by the creek. Mom's younger sisters and brother, she says, likely never even knew of their stepfather's abuse of her (nor had she talked about it with them) and have retained loving feelings toward him.

• Through all this, though, and much more, it can at least be said of Mama Paula that in her way she was a survivor. When I was a young child and we would go visit her, she had a little shack of a house in one of Waco's poorest sections. It was a place such as I described in that dream and where then she was living alone.

• There were no carpets on the bare floor. There was no sheetrock or even paint on the wood of the walls. There were almost no furnishings. The bed mattress sagged in the middle all the way to the floor. There were no screens on the doors or windows. There was a single bare bulb for light and a single pipe (no regular faucet) over a sink for water. There was an outhouse for one's necessaries. She sometimes had a few chickens running about the almost grassless little lot.

• I do not know how, even with this modest an existence, she got by. She would not have had much if any Social Security. For just a minimal bit of spending money, she did sell for pennies a few little candies of the cheapest kind to neighbor kids. And she would also sell these children for a nickel each a few bottles of cold pop, chilled in an ice box that still used chopped up blocks of ice in water for the cooling.

• Much later, when Mama Paula was in her eighties, her third husband had died, and she was suffering from severe osteoporosis, one time when Mom had driven her down from Waco to Austin, where most of my primary family was then, and Mama Paula was briefly staying with my parents and younger siblings, my brother, Ron, then about seven or eight, I believe, was playing rather rambunctiously near her with his brothers and accidentally knocked Mama Paula down, fracturing her right wrist, a painful injury from which with her bone condition it was hard to heal. She never really recovered its function before she died. (Boys will be boys, but, along with some other things, Mom would hold this against Ron for the next many decades.)

• The DG had a variety of observations about this overall story (to which I reacted with quite a bit of sadness in reviewing it, thanks to the dream, as well). One member believed it not so much about my personal inner landscape as in some ways about a more universal or collective situation of being a woman in our culture, one that tends to subdue the feminine, devalue women, and abuse them. Indeed, there were several other personal instances or stories touched on yesterday that resonated with this.

• Another noted that my own feminine aspect or anima tends to be subdued. Also she noticed that there was no participation by me (or the ego "I") in the dream, that I experienced the dream as simply an outside observer. I do not know what to make of this. It is true, but I do not believe that is either good or bad, and I not infrequently have such observation dreams, when I simply see things as if in a movie rather than as an active participant.

• This person had remarked as well that my Mama Paula anima is rather plain, as described.

• One member felt that the "feet" in the title is a pun and refers to the feat (ironically qualified as "little") my Mama Paula anima figure had managed in simply surviving as she had under such difficult circumstances. That is, both the real Mama Paula and my own mirroring anima had accomplished a feat of dogged, stoic survival under challenging conditions.

• One person noted that her habit of not engaging, when criticized severely or undeservedly, was sometimes an effective defense.

• Another noted that perhaps this anima had wanted her story told, which was achieved by my having that dream fragment and explaining its background to the DG. It was even suggested that I might write out her story, to help get better in touch with this aspect of my inner cast of characters. (In a way, I have done that here.)

• Perhaps, one member suggested, Mama Paula was putting her foot down, her way of making herself heard (as part of my inner play) and of getting her point(s) across.

• Whether as part of the collective or my own inner landscape, this dream anima represents the forgotten or shut away or out of sight hidden woman in pain who is absolutely, no matter what she endures, to make no waves, stay quiet, unobtrusive, not even speaking for the most part, to remain "the crazy woman in the basement," to quote Ross Pero, or like the Jane Eyre character, a crazy aunt in the background. But she is nonetheless a powerful, significant surviving part of our culture and of my own inner realms, and not to be ignored or forgotten, bearing with her much archetypal energy.

3/6/08 - Yesterday the DG discussed, along with others, my 3/2/08 dream, "Paranoid (?) Ideation, Privacy Protections, and What's Right." Highlights:

• The dream apparently is about my early relationship with my father, the bully in this dream, who touted himself as being a savvy stock investor, certainly believing he was better at it than I would later be (though objective evidence is to the contrary), and, at least from the time I was two years old and until I rebelled and would angrily stand up to him if he tried to criticize or belittle me, as a teenager or adult, who was also very abusive. When I was little, according to Mom, the abuse was both physical and mental. For whatever reasons, she did not stop him from such behavior or leave him or insist that he get professional help, but then she was a victim herself, and had been since childhood, so that much fight and assertiveness may not then have been in her.

• He was big on issuing orders too. And possibly a big factor in my inner landscape is that the rather negative psychic energy from this shadow figure has not yet been executed, despite the fact my actual father died in late 1995.

• Like the dream bully, it was not uncommon for Dad to take credit for things his children had actually done or to sabotage them in order to try to make himself look better. And he frequently made it glaringly apparent he did not give a damn about his offspring except as they were a reflection on him.

• The presence in the dream of "the Feds" is ironic. One aspect of most healthy parent-child relationships is that the parents tend to nurture their kids. Here, though, a parent has conspired with "the Feds" to undermine me (his child), in order, in his view, to make himself appear better and more powerful.

• It is healthy that I recognize, though, that I have done nothing wrong, that I am angry and outraged rather than simply resigning myself to this kind of abuse, that I have a positive shadow figure who is working "in good faith" with me to resolve the difficulties, and that as the dream concludes I am still pissed off and intent on dealing with an unacceptable situation (for "our impasse is not ended," i.e. "this doesn't end here").

• Also, the 4 represents "manifestation in reality" of the transformations that have been occurring.

• It may be positive too that (shadow) investigators are now going to "focus on one not yet executed," i.e. in my inner landscape, there will now be an emphasis on resolving the issues over the "ghost" of my father.

• The greatest sin of my father, for which I rightly feel anger and outrage, is in his having devalued or denigrated my stock in trade, my genuine self-worth. Instead of empowering his children, he sought to steal power from them and make them feel small, so he could feel bigger at their expense.

• New marching orders and a new internal (psychic) world order are awaiting the more complete "execution" of the "missing one," the "suspect one," my father.

3/8/08 - Title: "Impromptu Encounter with Two Women, Misses Young and Needs"

In a bright retail establishment with a maze-like arrangement of shelves and aisles, maybe a bookstore, I see an attractive woman employee who is tall, quite blond (with her hair up in a bun) and dressed in nice jeans and shirt, as if she might later be going dancing, perhaps the Texas 2-step. I've met her before. Her last name, as best I recall, is "Young."

I ask her the last name of another young woman who works there, and she says it is "Needs." I say: "That should be easy to remember because..." (and we finish my sentence together) "...we all have them!" We laugh.

Just then Ms. Needs herself, also attractive, young, and chicly but semi-casually dressed in nice jeans and shirt, but brunette (with her hair long and down), appears, or I see her nearby as I turn into (walk into and down) another merchandise aisle where she is standing. As with the other woman, Ms. Young, I've had some earlier acquaintance with Ms. Needs, so we say "Hi!" like we know each other.

As we get close, she quickly and surreptitiously reaches toward me with her right hand and pushes a peace (piece) of pink paper into my right hand. I am surprised but don't show it, and we talk casually, as though this exchange had not happened. I assume at first her phone number is on the paper. As we are talking, of a trial or other court appearance in which she is directly involved (as a witness, I believe), I wonder, though, since I am a reporter (journalist), if it might instead have been a secret note about the court case. (Perhaps it is both a note about the case and her phone number.)

But the note feels soft, like crumpled up tissue paper, and so I also wonder if she might just have given me her used Kleenex to throw away for her. (This is perhaps a somewhat intimate gesture in itself, but not quite the same as her giving me her phone number!) Adding weight to this, I notice (from the appearance of her eyes and nose) that she seems to have been crying or else has a bad cold.

3/10/08 - Title: "Surprise Ending"

I'm in a medieval setting inside a big castle-like structure. People are wearing simple, monk-like habits or stylized uniforms. I'm in a courtyard about to leave on a trip. Another man with me suggests I stay a little while. He says the execution is about to take place, and I may find it interesting. I agree to tarry briefly. I understand that there is a man here who has a severe illness or otherwise is to die soon.

The condemned man and the executioner enter from our right, both walking with confident paces (steps). The condemned man is well dressed with colorful garb, including a separately attached big white fluffy ruffled collar. If not the style of the time, this would seem clownish. He has a young, handsome face, short dark hair, and (except for the collar) an athletic, strong, manly appearance. His face as he faces imminent death is animated, self-assured, with a big smile and a sparkle in the eyes.

The executioner is dressed in black (leather boots, pants, coat, and hood). He too seems fit. He has a black mask over his face like the one the mysterious patron (supposedly Salieri) wore in his silent encounters with Mozart, in "Amadeus." He is carrying in his right hand a black lance or iron pike (10-12 feet long). It has a sharp metal head attached at the end, twice or three times the diameter of the lance/pike itself.

We are then all present in the little courtyard, the castle walls rising around us, and standing in a loose circle, roughly facing one another, the first man to my left, the others about opposite us. Suddenly and rapidly the executioner swings the lance/pike around and plunges it into my right chest. He keeps on shoving it in, apparently doing great damage there. I am startled at this turn of events but also curious to note I feel only the pressure of the weapon but so far not the pain of its effects. I'm surprised that such a blow has not immediately killed me. For a moment I am just an observer of this. As if to account for my still being alive, I wonder if the weapon might not be in my chest but just between my right arm and my chest. It could just be it takes a bit to realize one is dead.

3/11/08 - Title: "The Narrow Way, 'Twixt Feeling Inferior and Being Abusive"

It is evening and dark outside. Where we meet is like a big cave or den, but it has a low lighting glow. The rest here seem like fierce and yet cuddly adult bears. I am but a cub in their midst. Once again I am showing up for a meeting in which most of the others are in one way or another brilliant, even geniuses. As usual I have mixed feelings. I get a lot out of the meetings and am learning a great deal. Though others tell me I am wrong to question my abilities, to think I am not smart enough for the group, much of the time I feel out of place.

[It is a strange thing, difficult for me to get used to. It is hard then, if I accept them, to not to let the compliments go to my head. I switch back and forth between feeling inadequate and having a swollen ego. Yet if they are real it is important to be mature with these new-found capacities, not use them to put others down or make them feel badly. I must also not hold them back if others "need" to hear (can benefit from hearing) something it appears they may not be understanding about themselves. But who am I to judge that? It could be mostly projecting.]

3/12/08 - Title: "Of a New Beginning, a New Vehicle, and Mutual Trust"

There's a huge brightly lit (sunny) hall, with seating for hundreds or thousands. I'm late getting in but do manage to find a seat. A major speaker and message are about to be presented early this afternoon. People are excitedly coming from all directions to be present for the occasion.

Just before the vast meeting and speech, I make a large purchase (of a new car or SUV, I think).

I try to settle the contracts and other paperwork for it, but the dealer salesman, who is intent on quickly getting to the big speech himself, and who shares with me the honorable way of living of the speaker's philosophy, says there is not time now but he trusts me, so I can just take possession of the vehicle, and we'll settle the details later. He is eager to hurry off and get a good seat in the vast auditorium.

So I suggest we get together right after the speech or other presentations to finalize matters. But he says not to fret over it, that it can be handled at our convenience another time. He adds that, since the meeting/speech/presenter is so important and will mark a bold new beginning, he'll be taking off work at least the rest of today.

I have the impression it will then be at least several days till the deal is settled. However, as we completely trust each other, it's cool.

3/13/08 - Yesterday, the DG discussed, along with others, my 3/10/08 dream, "Surprise Ending." Highlights:

• The dream is about the killing off of an ego. Like onion skins being peeled off, once one ego has been cast away, deleted, or killed, another appears, hopefully one more integrated and healthy, to take its place. This can be disconcerting for the ego being killed off, of course. It may defend its "right" to exist beyond its usefulness to the organism as a whole, but sooner or later, in dreams, in reality, or otherwise, it must kick the proverbial bucket.

• There is no pain involved in the killing of this ego, only a sense of the great pressure of the lance or pike in my right chest, because it is happening in a dream. If the ego were not killed off in this fashion, one DG member suggested, imagine the great pain instead of carrying around a dysfunctional ego for years and years in ordinary life. There is a sense of pressure, however, for it has taken great pressure to kill off the entrenched ego. It has not gone willingly at all.

• The wound is to my right chest, not the wrong chest or wrong part of my chest. If the center or left of my chest had received the killing blow, it would have been as if my heart center or metaphorical access to emotions had been seriously damaged.

• It is also possible that in opening the right chest (i.e. the correct place where things have been stored, maybe forgotten there) what has been avoided was opening another (wrong) chest, more like a Pandora's Box of neurotic archetypal energy that could have run amuck in my life.

• There is also a lot of sexual energy exhibited in the dream, the innuendos too numerous to list but so apparent that I got tickled by them when trying to read the dream to the DG and "lost it," setting off a round of successive laughter among the others that circled and volleyed about the group (and left me in several laughter paroxysms for long, blushing, weeping minutes, before I regained some semblance of self-control), and forcing someone else to the bathroom to recompose herself.

• The dream's sexual energy likely is related to the suppression or repression of sex in my present lifestyle and circumstances, due partly to my age plus partly to Fran's having little real interest in sex anymore (perhaps due to her age as well).

• My low-key sexuality in waking reality, then, may be represented in the dream by the clothing related phrase "simple, monk-like habits," ones in marked contrast to the virility expressed in the dream.

• There are four male figures here, including myself, apparently showing manifestation in reality, just as a table is more stable on four legs than on three. However, this is of course a temporary condition, since I or my ego is killed off at the conclusion of the dream, leaving only the three shadow figures. Thus in this case transformation seems a more important message being conveyed.

• At the end, there is the suggestion it takes awhile to realize one is dead. This is confirming the death of my ego. "... one (as in the number 1) is dead."

• The supposedly condemned man who enters with the executioner is likely a shadow aspect of myself who is, at least in part, to take the dying ego's place. It is perhaps significant then that he is: well and colorfully attired, dressed in the proper style of his time, manifests a somewhat clownish aspect, and is young (possessing the energy, vitality, passion, and growth of youth), handsome, manly, strong, confident, animated, self-assured, in good humor (smiling and with sparkling eyes [also sparkling "I's," i.e. shining egos!], and athletic. Or he may not really take the dead ego's place but still be one of the new ego's shadows. Either way, his qualities can be owned as major aspects of my holistic self. We also see competence and decisiveness in the executioner's shadow character, more attributes to be acknowledged.

• The surprise ending is a surprise mainly for my ego, that it's time of departure has come.

• The supposedly condemned man but actually shadow character who is reprieved, since I turn out to be killed instead, is "young," but this may be a pun. He may also have a "Jung" countenance, i.e. being into Jungian understandings, intuition, and connections with the unconscious.

• The death aspects of the dream, the entrance, appearance, and actions of the executioner, and certainly the killing of the ego, raise existential and/or spiritual issues.

• The word "medieval" could be a pun with multiple levels and suggest, for instance, that my current setting is mid-evil or medium evil (moderately intolerable or unhealthy?), but also may convey (like the end of the dream) "me die," among others meanings.

• In the context of the domestic situation being one reason for sexuality being more latent than expressed, there is even a suggestion of a choice, either I (my ego) must go or Frances must. If so, the choice seems to have been made in favor of Fran's staying. It remains an open question what the new ego(s) bring(s) to this interesting brew, how things may alter now that the old ego is or is about to be history. The differences may be either subtle or more noticeable.

• There are concentric circles in the dream, the loose circle of four male characters surrounded by a castle, its walls encircling us. This is usually a centering and unifying symbol in Jungian interpretation.

• Three kinds of phallic symbols appear in the dream, the "spear" in Shakespearean, the lance, and the pike. It is not unlikely that there are also some pun meanings here, but neither I nor the DG got them if so. The three representations of male or yang energy may again show transformation and are consistent with the presence of three other male (shadow) figures.

• We are in the courtyard, i.e. the place where judgments are to be made (court yard).

• "Execution" probably has more than one meaning. An execution is about to take place, one I may find interesting. Perhaps, besides the death of that ego, some other aspect of my life is about to be executed, i.e. put into effect, resulting in a change.

• There is a reference to a scene from a movie, "Amadeus," which can be interpreted to mean I am intellectually "getting the picture," even if I am not there yet on an emotional level.

• "Amadeus" could also be a pun for "I'm a Deus," a recognition of unity with the Highest Self.

• I'm "shocked" by the killing of my ego, perhaps enough to jolt me a little bit more awake, in an esoteric sense.

• There must be significance to the "big fluffy white ruffled collar" around the supposedly condemned shadow character's neck, but it was not mentioned by the DG and eludes me as well. All Fran or I can think of is that it is a theatrical flourish, yet maybe a powerful one, that seemingly protected that character's "neck" so he was not after all the one selected to die.

3/17/08 - Title: "No Place or Time Left"

I'm lost in a dark swampy or marshy area. It seems I'm out here with my mother. She knows I am afraid of snakes and warns me that the footing is treacherous. Not only is it hard to find ground solid enough to safely step and not slip, fall, and sink, but there are countless small and large poisonous snakes. They are camouflaged almost perfectly. Sure enough, as I look about where I had hoped to try to walk next, several water moccasins are finally noticeable. It is almost inevitable that others are so well blended in I won't see them in time. I wonder how my mom, whose vision and mobility are limited, can safely get around here. It seems a miraculous feat, quite beyond me. I realize if I take even one step I'll surely be bitten by one or several poisonous snakes and never get out of here alive. Yet I cannot stay where I am either. It is getting dark. To stay at night would seem worse than at least trying to walk out now.

Title: "Airline Passenger's Nightmare"

I'm on a large modern aircraft, maybe a jumbo jet. We have been warned to expect turbulent flight conditions. It is nighttime. The distance to the ocean below is tens of thousands of feet. A few of us passengers had been engaged in recreational activities, but now must strap ourselves, one to each, into an array or grid of coffin shaped boxes or harnesses, each attached to the bottom skin or floor of the plane. There are not nearly as many of these as there are seats in a normal plane. The distance between the rows of boxes/harnesses, and between each one and the next one within the rows, is about 10 feet. One senses that the outer shell of the plane is thin. It won't take much for it to tear open. We are feeling terribly vulnerable, completely at the mercy of conditions beyond our control. The destructive forces or stresses acting on the plane are of two kinds. There is wild buffeting. But there is also an intense, steady, low frequency vibration that we can feel throughout our bodies. It might cause as much or more wear on the plane as the larger, wind related movements. I see a somewhat younger man, a member of the crew, perhaps a junior pilot. In my nervousness, I try to make a joke about our "final approach" and wish him luck during the coming shaky times. He is a professional, but assumes from my light manner I am more secure than I really am. So he feels free, in a light, bantering way himself, to talk candidly. He is quite nervous too. Talking seems to help. So, he tells me, in the last few moments before he must go strap himself in too (in a more forward part of the craft), how bad it can get, saying sometimes the combination of the airship's intense, sustained vibration and of the violent shaking gets severe enough it pulls a plane apart. It can go on and on for hours, and the whole time one can imagine that in the next moment the craft may be torn to pieces, its load of terrified or broken bodies being then borne down, finally to disappear in the sea.

3/23/08 - Title: "More Stimulating Than Espresso"

In the morning, soon after getting up, I see a buxom, naked lady at the sink in the kitchen, am turned on, and realize I want to have some of that.

3/24/08 - Title: "Two Women, No Call Completed, and Calls Waiting"

I have a seemingly important message to convey and a contact to make on the phone, but am not at home and do not have the number readily at hand that I need to call. I have it, but it is in a shoebox-sized organizing file (with multiple dividers) that is itself disorganized. Almost every time I locate the number I'm to call, something happens that interferes with completing the call. Fran has a call pending too and is having to wait till I get through on the phone to make her call. She, of course, has her number right at hand, not mixed in with any other numbers. There is a woman in charge of access to the phone, as though a desk clerk at a hotel lobby where Fran and I both are to borrow use of the hotel's guest phone. After I have tried unsuccessfully several times to call my number, it is evident the monitoring lady (who reminds me of a woman, Maria, who worked in the next cubicle to mine when I was in my last few years as a state employee but has since been promoted to a more supervisory roll [role]) is concerned and feels under pressure, thinking she must ask me to give up on my call and let Fran use the phone for hers instead. Indeed, in some exasperation, I finally give up the phone to Fran voluntarily, just before Maria would have forced me to. I hope, once Fran has finished her quicker connection and completes the conversation she needs (or wants) to have, I can try again. Perhaps then, with Fran's call out of the way, there will be a better chance to get my call completed.

3/25/08 - Title: "The Road"

It is night and dark except for brief lightning flashes. I am crawling on (or) pulling myself forward on my belly. This road apparently has not been used in some time. Here and there on the pavement are little gifts from nature, fireant (fire ant) mounds, snakes, muddy washes, etc. I left my stuff, that I had with me while the trip still permitted walking, somewhere back behind me in an abandoned urban setting. I cannot imagine how I'll ever find it again when I return. I am down in the muck like this now to make it harder for hostile people to notice me.

Title: "Yuck! There's a Cockroach on Your Shoulder"

I fix myself a bowl of breakfast cereal and walk over toward the (round) dining table. Fran is sitting down (sitting) across from my place and has started eating already. She looks up as I approach and says "There's a cockroach on your shoulder!" She points at the right shoulder of my shirt. My impulse is to set the bowl down and shake about violently to get it off, then smash it under my shoe. But I have bad back pain and must be very careful with how I move. I also think of flicking (flipping) it off with my left hand after putting the bowl down (as my left hand now holds the bowl). I am afraid the cockroach will fly into the cereal. Meanwhile, Fran is making disgusted sounds and faces. (Much as she loves insects in general, she hates big cockroaches in the house.)

Title: "Hungry for See Real?"

I'm eating heaping spoonfuls of cereal.

Title: "Startled Awake"

I'm working at the computer. I hear a slight noise behind me and, turning my head, suddenly there to my left at the doorway looking in I see Fran's tall, thin presence as if she had just appeared. It startles me (awake).

3/26/08 - Title: "To Dance with Maria..."

Maria is barefoot, spontaneously dancing in her small living space (like an office cubicle but outside, accessible, and her residence). Her dance is an unconscious mating ritual. (In the dream and reality) I am much older than she, maybe 55 to her 35, but my own small living space is adjoining to hers and, like everyone, I am entranced.

A younger man, a lot closer to Maria's age, has moved into our area, notices Maria's dancing, and falls under her spell. To me, he seems a lot more cool than I am. He starts hanging around near Maria's place. Instinctive or unconscious as her life is played out, it's obvious she notices the new, cool, young fellow's attentions. It would hurt to see her hook up with him, much as it makes sense.

Both Maria and I, separately, are thinking of moving to better living spaces. As she is considering this, I hear her talking with some of her women friends about the two men in her life, as though she cannot choose between me and the cool guy. But it is obvious to me she should pick him. I feel like weeping, but figure I must move away, even though I'm pleased she would even think of a life with me.

Then, though she has not yet moved, Maria has found a bigger living space nearby, maybe half again as large as the first cubicle-like space she's had next to mine. She is dancing (like a honey bee) to show her women friends where it is and what it's like.

It is heartbreaking, but I am suddenly aware that the whole time, with her dancing before, later noticing the cool guy's attentions, and now also that things are about to change, she has just been waiting for me to make my move, to "claim her for my own." I cannot. (In reality, I was and am married. In the dream, it is as though there is some other constraint, maybe just that I am too old and not cool enough for her.) I wonder if, after our moves, Maria and I shall see each other again. Yet even now, as I am expecting us to be moving apart, I want to join her in her dancing, like Anthony Quinn in "Zorba the Greek," then unite our adjoining living spaces together. I realize it is only a fantasy, but one that at the right time could have happened or somehow might still.

3/27/08 - Yesterday evening, the DG discussed, along with others, my 3/26/08 dream, "To Dance with Maria..." Highlights:

• It is about a complex I have, to see myself as unworthy or of less worth than average, then a refutation in the dream of that poor self-image, and an opportunity to go beyond it, to integrate with a winning anima, Maria, who is showing me right feeling.

• My complex is to think or feel that, by one excuse or another, whether because I am too old, and so it is too late for me, or I'm not cool enough, or I'm bound to an anima and lifestyle that are not healthy for me and would not lead to the possibility of real joy, I do not deserve happiness or love, and so on.

• But my anima in this dream, Maria, shows me how to be spontaneous, free, natural, open, accessible, attractive, into the rich, vital dance of life, in touch with her instincts and unconscious, like a "honeybee," and sweet, loving and lovable, warm, emotional, yet vulnerable.

• Even if I, as the ego in the dream, am not very cool, I have within me a cool part or shadow, and I have in the example (both from the book and movie) of "Zorba the Greek" a demonstration of how to be genuinely cool as an older man as well.

• There is true feeling in the dream, and, like all genuine emotion, it includes deep, heartbreaking sadness. But this is part of the reality of life, on which we can depend, that life is what it is, and that this is enough, once we are open to it, not pretending or demanding that it be anything else than just what it is.

• At the end of the dream, it is apparent that Maria, my anima, has been waiting for me, just the way I am, to claim her for my own, so we may metaphorically join our two living spaces and integrate our two separate inner beings or lives as one as well.

• There are two living spaces to be swapped for larger ones, indicating dawning awareness as well as a change in and broadening of the abode of the highest self. With the merging of our living spaces, my feminine and masculine energies and traits may find holistic, synergistic union.

• Maria's women friends are like a Greek chorus or audience for the unfolding drama and its lessons.

• There are also two men in Maria's life, again emphasizing dawning awareness and the possibility of a uniting of the poles, in this case between the separate beings of me and my shadow, into one merged, "larger" being, a blend of the traits of both.

• From the feminine or anima, presenting right feeling, through her age (35) Maria is represented in the I Ching by the hexagram Chin: progress; or to advance in light, radiance, or influence.

• From my age in the dream (55), the masculine is represented in the I Ching by the hexagram Feng: abundance; achieving of the zenith; and new directions in self-understanding and development. "The king is told not to be anxious but to study how he may always be like the sun in his meridian height, cheering and enlightening all." Alternatively, "Let him be like the sun at noon."

• The DG suggested I take heart from the dream, for it is yet another presentation of how I am not undeserving, and members suggested I perhaps seek info from other dreams on union with my Maria anima plus my cool, younger shadow characters, and meanwhile to learn better to "dance" with life like Zorba.

3/28/08 - Title: "Stalled Again"

I'm alone in the driver's seat of my car on a two-lane residential area road, rolling down a gradual hill, trying to use the car's momentum and the clutch to jumpstart the engine. Just as I reach a dead-end intersection with a busier road, I give it another try, but then must stop because of prevailing traffic there. The car engine turns over a few times and almost catches so it can run on its own, but then to avoid an accident I have to apply the brake at the intersection, instead of pushing the accelerator as the motor needs at that point. So the engine dies again, and now I have lost the momentum I was counting on to get it started.

Title: "The Whole Kit and Caboodle"

I'm looking at the front of a new (financial?) magazine. My attention is grabbed by the bottom of four featured story headings or titles: "The Entire Kitnkabootle (spelling?) (Kit 'n Kaboodle: a Purina cat food brand) (correct phrase, per Google: The Whole Kit and Caboodle)." I assume this is an article about a major company, or possibly the U.S. economy, that is losing everything or being sold off for a song.

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