THE DREAM

We are having dinner in a house waiting for Dracula to come. I can't find the mayonnaise. Dracula is finally in the doorway. I am surprised he has no pointed teeth. He sits down beside me and I give him a sandwich.

I go to the car and drive it on a draw bridge. It feels close to the water. I fall asleep and soon become conscious of the car moving in circles floating...then sinking down into the dark depths of the ocean. I am so frightened!! This is the end of me!

Then I come up into a boat dock above and tell the workmen, "I am dead! Pull me up!" I give them a white cord and dive back into the ocean. Now some time later I am aware of being in a room with people. Perhaps my wake? I have the sense I am a spirit. I can hear people's conversations but they cannot see me.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

When a baby is born, it comes bursting out of the dark kicking and screaming, and announcing to the world: "I'm alive! I'm alive!" Then, somewhere between the exuberant first moments and the day we taste life fully as an adult, some of us lose our way to non-life. Whether through painful experience or conditioning, we unconsciously resign ourselves to a place that is neither life or death.

The dream, Dracula's Sandwich, is about my finally waking up to life at 45 (around sunset to the undead) and my subsequent transformation. In my religious conditioning, I was taught that the world was an evil place doomed to destruction. Those who made sacrifices in the present would be forever blessed with eternal life in a world to come. As a result of this belief, all my dreams, future adventures, and personal potential were denied, pushed down, and repressed. Deep in my soul I envied those living in the world, mortals who were free to walk as they pleased. My thirst for that forbidden life became the shadow which held all my creative power.

Not fully aware of what was happening inside me I felt depressed, lifeless, and unfulfilled. The promised eternal life in a new world of God's making was wonderful, but would life in paradise be any different than this reality? Could I bear to exist in my deadened condition for all eternity? To me, something vital was missing in the way I was expected to live my life. Life tasted like a dry sandwich! If I could only find the mayonnaise! My search for something more created the dream meat/meet for the sandwich. I finally met my dark animus Dracula, and the meeting wasn't as threatening as I had feared! Sitting down with this rational side of myself I could finally see that there were no points to all the arguments in favor of putting life off!

I went to a draw bridge and fell asleep. I remember graphic design school was the first restful step I took when I consciously began the transition from the person I had been to the person I would become. In this transition place I became conscious of floating through life, circling for a while in the same place. Sinking into the ocean meant a type of death for me. It was frightening, for I was all alone in my effort to change. My conscious working mind had to assist this rebirth by pulling the sacred cord attached to a lost spirit beneath the unconscious.

Meeting Dracula--waking up between death and life--freed the undead in me, which eventually resulted in an enlivened spirit! The free spirit that is me now has found many new friends, life as an artist, dream explorer, and most surprisingly, a revitalized spirituality.

--Brenda Ferrimani

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