Simple dream fable, but maybe with quite the moral...

So I find myself telling a tale to my younger brother. There's a snowy landscape before my eyes, open fields under a cloudy dark sky. It's a windy winter. I'm not sure if we are both somewhere there, and it's a third person dream, or if it's just my voice and his echoing in the landscape like the narrators of some movie. I just know it's me and my brother.

I'm telling him a quite Disneyesque tale (am I? Can't remember saying any words to him during the whole dream. I just know I was doing it) about a land where winter comes suddenly with the wind and the native birds simply freeze. I watch as some sort of dark birds (small ducks, maybe) freeze in their flight high in the air and simply drop to the ground, where they should await until spring comes. Simple, efficient, just as some bacteria and viruses do. But also somewhat sad.

The vision changes to under a lake which, oddly, starts freezing from its bed up to the surface. There is a swan lying in the lakebed, a swan with grayish blue feathers like the ice creeping around him. He gets frozen like the rest in an instant, remaining silent and still all the time. Maybe he was sleeping?

And of course, ice is less dense than water. The winter-ice in my dream lake seemed to have forgotten so, but the frozen swan doesn't. He floats all the way to the surface, and the vision focuses on his head as steel attracted by a magnet. As soon as the swan emerges from the water, he bursts in a flash of yellow light. I feel scared, fearful and scared, and soon wake up.

NOTES

• Disney feeling, birds: once I watched some Disney cartoon about Pluto freezing in Mickey's garden and fighting another animal (a crow I think) for the warm spot inside his doghouse. I still remember the cartoon today, as stupid as it was.
• Exploding head and ensuing fear: I've had dreams before with a helpless feeling of my vision being focused on something before it came to the worst, a explosion of light or a violent death or the like. They scare me like hell.
• Winter: in the past I always wished for the colder days and seeing snow, quite rare where I live. But as I grew up, my taste for winter faded and was replaced by the liking of summer's heat and humidity.

MEANING

Maybe I'm afraid of sudden changes, maybe afraid of the death of someone I love? It would make sense. But a swan emerging from the water and exploding... it could be something else.

For a swan reminds me of the Ugly Duckling tale, which I can connect somewhat to my own life. A smart kid, with a lot of plans to the future, willing to grow soon and be someone very important in life, and shut up those who didn't believe in me when I was younger. Others fall when winter comes (a metaphor for adult life in this context) but I arise instead.

But is the swan afraid that when he finally emerges, he'll fail?

--Aleksanteri Nevalainen

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites