Last Night’s Dreams

I dreamed that I had some possessions on a stoop and people were coming and going. It may have been a University.

I wasn’t the only one who had some possessions there. There was a desk with stuff on it, and I had placed a few things there. I knew the desk belonged to a guy I disliked; he was self-entitled and accustomed to getting his own way, and I was fed up with him.

At some point, I was close by and saw him run up to his desk and go through stuff, looking for something he urgently needed, and I was under the impression he needed it for a class project or presentation. I had no remorse for putting stuff on his desk, but neither did I feel angry at him in that moment.

Later, a guy who was a friend of mine but who could get annoying came along, and I was holding onto something, maybe a floor lamp, and he was demanding that I help him out with something, but I didn’t want to. He was trying to physically drag me away, and he got me off the stoop and onto the grass before I yelled at him. “No!”

He was shocked and stopped and stared at me. He wasn’t accustomed to me saying no, to me not being an extreme people-pleaser. I was surprised at myself.

Next, I was moving out and my male ex-roommate passed by without even acknowledging me. I think we were both ex-roommates and ex-friends.

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I dreamed I was in kind of a large and cluttered space, maybe a basement, with a few other people who were busy with their projects.

I was in contact with a guy who sold cannabis. I think I was on the phone with him… but it was weird, because soon I was holding in my hand one of his cannabis products. I thought it was delightful, because it was sculpted out of cannabis and resembled a witch flying a broom.

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I don’t know if that was the same dream, but I walked into my mother’s kitchen–she had a female friend (probably one of her siblings) with her. I noticed next to the stove a package of 3 treacle tarts just like the ones I used to get at a British import store. I exclaimed, “Treacle tarts!”

My mother snapped, “Don’t eat those up! That’s all I have!”

There were only two left, and the middle one was cut in half. I considered eating only half of the middle one, but they were so small. I asked her where she got them, so I could go there and buy my own treacle tarts.

Unwelcome in an Old Home

I dreamed that my mother and brother and I were staying at a house that had been in her side of the family for a very long time. It was big and had lots of rooms and lots of stuff. The front hall looked like the one in the house where she grew up.

The dining room had two tables, one two-person table under a window and a larger table, I think the shiny kind from the 50s with those metal legs; the tabletop was shiny and white. I think we sat there with relatives early in the dream.

A bunch of people, strangers who looked like they were in their twenties and dressed professionally, were there or even dropped in when I thought it would be the three of us. It turned out that they were going to turn the house into a school. I was shocked and anxious, having assumed it would stay in the family.

I think I was wearing a nightshirt when they arrived, and I went back up to my room and was struggling to decide what to wear and kept getting interrupted and talking to people in different parts of the house.

With my mind on this change—from private home to school—I reminded myself that I live far from here, in Oregon, and that none of us lived near this house and we should be willing to let go.

I began thinking about stuff around the house to take with us. I looked in the (messy, cluttered) bedroom my brother was using. It had bunk beds on the left side of the room, and there were some things scattered on the floor, near and under the bottom bunk. There was a crocheted green and yellow Afghan (the colors of the University of Washington and of the horrible kindergarten through high school I attended), and partially hidden in it were a couple of ceramics (and my mother made ceramics in the 1970s)… one was a candlestick, maybe pink and blue, and the other was about the same size and looked like a pedestal, painted yellow and green, shaped like a branch and leaves; the top was a leaf curled to the side. I thought these were worth keeping.

I’d alternate between doing stuff like that and going through clothing in my room and trying to decide what to wear. No garments seemed to go together.

Also, at some point, I was down in the kitchen, and some of the strangers were also there, and my brother had made cinnamon muffins, and they were still warm and mostly in a muffin tray, and I reached out and took a piece to eat. But as soon as I did, I felt self-conscious in front of these people and thought they must think I’m weird.

 

I could interpret the dream as representing how I don’t belong in my mother’s side of the family or in any house associated with them. Not that I would want to associate with that side of the family ever again.

Not Celebrating

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are miserable after your parents die. In less than an hour, this Mother’s Day will be behind me. This will be the third Mother’s Day since my mother’s death in March of 2016. It hasn’t gotten easier.

So many businesses inundate the Internet—including my inbox—with ads that say, “Happy Mother’s Day!” and urge me to buy gifts for my (dead) mother. This is what greeted me this morning, after I finished writing in my dream journal. I wanted to scream at all these businesses. NEWSFLASH: NOT EVERYONE’S PARENTS ARE STILL ALIVE! Their behavior seems not merely inconsiderate but downright cruel. I unsubscribed from three email lists.

In the late morning, I took a walk in my neighborhood under a too-bright and relentless sun. As I walked past a neighbor’s house, I noticed a lilac bush in their front yard, so I leaned forward and sniffed the beautiful aroma.

I recalled that during my childhood and adolescence, a vacant lot was across the street from our house, and in that vacant lot were two lilac bushes. For years, I picked lilacs on Mother’s Day and gave them to my mother.

Remembering this on my walk today choked me up, after all that anger at the internet. I kept walking and knew the high for the day was supposed to be eighty-three degrees, and it felt like it had already reached the high. It must have been the sunlight, because as soon as I got home, my smart phone indicated that it was only sixty-six degrees, which I could hardly believe.

This ended up as a day of bereavement more intense than I anticipated, especially since I was closer to my dad, and my mother was a narcissist. Even if your mother was a narcissist, you grieve for her…and sometimes for the nurturing mother you never had. I spent the afternoon napping, meditating, and reading. I managed to finish reading three books in one day. This evening especially, I’ve allowed myself to be with the grief. The anger I felt earlier is gone.

A Theater, a Staircase, and a Corgi

I dreamed that a theater group was doing a play set in an Eastern European house, and they grabbed me to play an extra. Unfortunately, I wasn’t familiar with the play and nobody told me what I was supposed to do, before I was in costume (a white blouse and a boldly patterned wrap-around skirt that felt like it was going to slide off) and on the set, but which appeared to be in someone’s basement.

The stage was just a section of the grey concrete floor. I stood upstage center and clutched some kitchen tools in my left hand, while I watched the real actors perform. To my right was a stove, and I think beyond that was shelving, storing lots of kitchen stuff. To my left was a counter and more kitchen stuff. I came to wish I was wearing an apron and realized I was acting more like an audience member than an actor, so I turned and looked down at the tools in my hand and paid attention to what a couple of men were doing to my right. They had become curious about a couple of antique iron cornbread forms or sort of muffin tins and were pressing what looked like crumbled daisies into them.

I was strictly an observer even while on stage, and the real actors were ignoring me and not interacting me during my “performance.”

I checked an online dream dictionary that indicated that dreaming of a theater reflects your present social life. Hmmm.

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I dreamed I was walking down many flights of stairs at one end of what I think was a tall abandoned building. When I reached the last, bottom flight, I was in an eerie basement, and all this sand-like dust was flying upward somehow, in slow motion. It created a hazy atmosphere. I felt afraid and wondered if something evil lurked in the basement. I was afraid I was going to be killed and considered turning around and going back up.

Next, I was with a small group of people and telling them about the dream, and they didn’t seem as fascinated as I was.

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I had a dream in which I got off a plane and drove partway from the airport, but because I had a magic or super hero ability to walk extremely fast, I went by foot, leaving my car in a rural area surrounded by cornfields. I was walking along between 2 fields.

Later, I was with a few people at a motel. They included my mother (who died last year) and brother, in addition to people I don’t know in this reality, some family friends. And there was a corgi.

I thought of this as a temporary living situation but seemed very moved in, or at least someone was, and with lots of stuff, books and figurines, all over the hotel room. It even had a couch, and at some point, I was lounging on it. There was a sense of waiting. Oh, yes: this was after we all ate out for lunch. I took a nap afterward and felt impatient to eat out for dinner with everyone, but then I reflected that it seemed like all I did was eat and sleep, like Garfield the cat. I was appalled at myself and didn’t mention dinner.

We all agreed it was time to go out, and I explained I needed to go get my car, because I left it not far from the airport. I felt like being sociable–that seems like a big part of my dream. So as we went out of the hotel room and were walking along the concrete walkway just outside it, I had a grocery cart and the corgi on a leash. I noticed a tiny wagon with some of my stuff in it, particularly a bunch of clothes (including a red plaid flannel shirt), so while everyone was still walking, I quickly scooped up the clothing and put it in the grocery cart I was pushing.

I was planning on going and getting the car and perhaps not bringing anyone except the corgi. At the moment, or before I scooped up the clothing, I considered putting the corgi in the cart.

Oregon is Burning

Today is the second anniversary of my mother’s birthday since her death. Add to that, it looks like the apocalypse outside. And that sociopath is dismantling DACA. I’m not in a good mood.

I’m not the only one freaking out over the hazardous air quality. The following is a letter I’m about to hand-write to my senators and representative:

Dear Senators,

Portland is snowing ash. Portland, Eugene, and other parts of Oregon look like the sky right in front of me: smoky and somewhat orange, with a glowing orange sun. For days, I have been smelling smoke, sometimes even from inside my house. When I ventured outside yesterday—coughing, mind you—I discovered that the public pool was closed due to the hazardous air quality, so I went to a nearby coffee shop, where several of the customers were wearing surgical masks. That reminded me of the handmade cloth masks I saw for sale in Tibet, and I’m going to make myself one today. I should have already done so.

I am absolutely FURIOUS that the narcissistic sociopath squatting in the White House pretends that climate change doesn’t exist and is an invention of the Chinese! Who from planet Earth doesn’t believe in climate change in the year 2017?!? This is proof that Donald Dump and his minions are aliens from another planet, probably Rexicoricus…whatever it’s called. Dump needs to be deported back to his planet.

We need to care about the planet we live on, which is planet Earth. We need to have a government that isn’t so evil and insane that it pretends that climate change doesn’t exist. We see it happening before our very eyes. Oregon is burning. Texas and Louisiana are drowning in flood. We are seeing record high temperatures everywhere. Meanwhile, that heartless monster Donald Dump is fiddling.

Feline Dream

I dreamed that I lived in a small apartment with Cheetah (the elderly cat who died in 2015 at almost twenty years of age), another adult female cat, and a new kitten. Cheetah attacked the kitten or tried to, and I rescued the kitten. The apartment had a sliding glass door in back, and all the felines managed to slip out, and I went searching for them. Cheetah was angrily and slowly walking around. The kitten was clinging to the other cat and was the deep orange of a red guinea pig and may have turned into a guinea pig.

I was going to take a trip soon and decided to ask my mother to babysit the kitten so Cheetah wouldn’t be a threat. In the dream my mother lived nearby, I think in the same apartment building.

Great: both my dead cat and my dead mother in a dream.

One of those Mother Dreams

I had a dream in which I lived in what looked like a large and spotless house with my mother. I woke from a nap and i didn’t know where she was; I didn’t think she was home. I went to the living room–a very large and modern living room I think with white carpet–seems to me like the room was white and black in its color scheme. I lounged on a couch and munched on Oreo cookies while watching a quirky show about two young women living with their mother. The decor tended to change slightly depending on what projects they were working on. For instance, their kitchen had strings of onions hanging from more and more things–such as draped over the fridge and hanging from each side of it.

Though I assumed my mother was out, she appeared walking down a hallway to the living room, and I think another woman, a friend of hers, appeared, too. My mother (who didn’t look anything like my real mother, more like one of the beautiful and glamorous Indian actresses in this show about the Buddha I’ve been obsessively watching). She didn’t say anything or smile; her facial expression seemed aloof, and I felt ashamed of being caught idle on the couch and munching on junk food while watching tv. (I suppose watching tv wouldn’t have looked so bad if it had been a documentary.) She wore something glamorous that included a leopard print, and she looked like she had just taken a shower.

It just occurred to me that the Oreo cookies matched the black and white color scheme of the living room.

Since my parents passed away–my dad in May 2014, my mother in March 2016–I continue to have dreams in which they are still alive. My sister said, with considerable relief, that she no longer dreams about our parents.

Today it sounded like aliens were trying to communicate through the toilet, before it sound was singing birds. Perhaps there’s a nest in the attic. (That actually wasn’t a dream.)

A Nightmare, Toxic Relatives, and a House

I had a disturbing dream in which I owned what appeared to be a large old house that was sparsely furnished, and I was planning on living there, but a woman who was present in the front room with me informed me that the reason my mother and aunts went out was because they were planning on…I forget the terminology used, but it was something to the effect of pretending that the house wasn’t mine and claiming it as theirs by requesting some sort of ticket or token.

I think in the reality of the dream, this was a house I bought and had nothing to do with these evil relatives. I felt utterly horrified and knew I had to act fast, but I didn’t know how.

These relatives returned and were having amiable, cheerful conversation among themselves while not acknowledging my existence. I was panicking. For the sake of someone else who may have been present, I started scratching a message in a rubber rug (like in a car, but larger and partially rolled up), but the message was not showing up well enough for someone else to read it.

In this reality, toxic relatives stole a house from me (after years of their talking down to me, verbally abusing me, and slandering me), a house that an uncle left me. I was in the room when he was talking with my mother about who should he leave the house to, and she suggested me because of my passion for old architecture. So he did.