I'm sick again. Pelvic inflammation. Anywhere I poke deep transmits pressure & pain all over. Sweats and chills. I get these often, and to me they feel like an infection flaring up, but my doctor at Kaiser dismissed it as "stress" and suggested therapy--except Kaiser won't pay for therapy. Thanks! The doctor also suggested cutting back on work. I have a half-time library job. To restrict my life (and income) any more in the name of stress reduction, I'd have to be, well... dead.

THAT NIGHT

A picture book about a unicorn, titled Filly's Quest. I've seen cheap pocketbook editions before, but this illustrated version's beautiful. Colors so vivid. Story of a sexy little unicorn filly--white neck and belly, brown Appaloosa dapples, black mane and tail--and golden-eagle Pegasus wings. She's on an adventure--a quest.

But it's a book no more. Dozens of pages have been razored out & pinned on the walls of a curving tunnel. Read my way in...

Since the passage curves, I can't see all at a glance or even see far ahead--though there is light at the end of the tunnel.

To my surprise, I emerge deep in the basement stacks of Stanford's main library--a dim jungle of shelves. But ahead's a brighter reading room, like a clearing in a dark wood.

Under a spotlight stands a dais with a lectern or podium. On it, a massive book. I step up. Filly's Quest! An intact copy of this gorgeous edition. Huge, with lushly painted unicorns on the cover.

Too lush. The publishers and editor are French, and obsessed with unicorns' symbolism--purity, healing, sublimation? So he ordered big muscular equines to symbolize health, and the illustrator complied. Stallions nearly the size of the rhinos that started the whole unicorn myth.

But they're too heavy, overmuscled... and wingless. Wrong for this story. You gotta stay light to fly!

I liked the Filly better.

Still, I open the massive book at random. Get a full-page picture that wasn't on the tunnel walls. It shows a centaur with a human child riding on its back--black hair, light freckled skin, gold dappled tunic, a kid's plastic horn and ears--all echoing the Filly! Is this her--in human disguise?

She's drawn well, but the centaur looks... just wrong. His upper, humanoid part is gigantic--way too big for his horse body, already massive. He's insanely top-heavy!

It's a shame. The rich color, texture and expensive paper can't hide that his proportions are just... botched. I can't see any competent artist letting that pass!

Again, I suspect the editor's obsession with intellectualism (or patriarchy, or butch) made him insist on this, override the artist--and common sense.

I think "Wow, I GOTTA get this editor out of the way!"...

...and wake.

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEEEEEEAN?

At the time the dream baffled me, though I knew I preferred small, light and femme--Filly--to the heavy, earthbound, butch unicorns and centaur.

Now, it's pretty clear. The dark tunnel is my dreamwork up to that point--individual dreams I'd analyzed closely, though I couldn't see the overall pattern because the tunnel curved--couldn't see my future! Except that there was light at the end of the tunnel--hope for a cure for my chronic illness.

The tunnel's also vaginal, in contrast to that raised podium with its hymnal to masculinity. Anyone who's seen a Hindu temple will recognize these as yoni and lingam.

I don't normally bother seeking Freudian symbols--his theory's so bound to Victorian repression, and sex doesn't need to hide in modern dreams. It didn't here; the Filly was openly flirting in many tunnel pictures. No need to look for sex symbols!

But it's hard not to think of Papa Freud here... not with that heavy-handed, doctrinaire editor, and that top-heavy centaur. Not just over-intellectual dream theory... but patriarchal dream theory.

Even though I didn't intellectually understand this, emotionally the dream did its job--in my journals around this time, I see a tidal shift. After this dream, theory and interpretation ebb, and in their place, my dream recall improves and my dreams get happier, stranger, more magical, as I start to respect shamanic dream quests on their own terms, as experience not symbols--and shamanic dream beings as friends not phenomena.

Oh, I still overthought and overworked--some. Theory's so addictive!

But my dream-filly had got her feathers in, ignored her wingless male elders' advice, galloped around flapping her wings looking pathetic and silly, built up her strength, and, finally, finally, reached flight-speed. And took wing.

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