I'm on an intergalactic journey with a young man and we're lost. We build a satellite and are joined by a group of workers. Somehow my companion is trapped and held in a huge, white rectangular box containing an angry tiger. Finally, they let him out but he keeps having wild fits. I try calming him in a loving way, but his eyes continue to open wider and wider. He quiets down and then goes crazy again. I realize his behavior is the result of being isolated with a frightening creature.

I work with the group building parts to aid in our escape. Three or four of us ascend a vast staircase which we create as we move up it, tossing silver-blue, cast aluminum parts in the air and climbing on them as they land. We're going to a lecture about the meaning of this journey. We enter a darkened amphitheater, and on the ground floor lecturing, is a half-lit figure speaking through a PA system, with the voice of ancient wisdom. But he doesn't reassure me and we have a closer look.

He's a slightly transparent man in a lab coal whose glow comes from theatrical lighting. I shake my head thinking, "Oh, it's him, that guy from the film. I don't believe him."

Then either driving or wearing a small car, I find myself on a complicated freeway interchange traveling out of a megalopolis toward open country. I'm going to see Margaret Mead in the Pacific Northwest. I'm in front of the place I thought she lived in, or was building. A large scaffolding blocks the building's view. Some guy points out where she's moved. I leave the books I'm studying at this site and walk to the new one. It's situated on a waterfront area and feels like Oregon. I carefully examine her house, which is freshly painted a subtle, dark blue with wooden carvings left to weather. While looking up, I embarrassedly pass Margaret Mead, who scolds me for snooping. I reply that I value privacy and don't intend to bother her. She looks frail. I return for my books and find that guy took them.

Wandering around in a large, grey office with bad lighting, I look at photos of Margaret Mead and her friends. It makes up the history of anthropology. On several desks there's a collection of drawings, and books of prints/still-photos made by women artists I know. That seems to make sense. I study a photo of her receiving an award from a famous, young woman anthropologist. The image touches me.

Margaret Mead returns and while standing some distance behind me says, "Well, as long as you're here you might as well see me." I understand by this she means, I can hang around, do my own work, and not bother her. I enter the room next to hers which is a forgotten space crammed with abandoned things. As I start reading, I look in the corner at a small, living apricot tree. I yell out the door, "things grow in the strangest places!" Some other anthropologists arrive and I tell Margaret Mead I'm involved with art. She responds, "lf you work with art, you must care about the future. So we might as well talk."

SOURCE: Dreamworks: an Interdisciplinary Quarterly (v.1, no.1, spring 1980 (the film issue), p.34)

EDITOR'S NOTE

I posted this example from the initial issue of Dreamworks partly because, in its hundred-plus pages, it's the only one by a woman. And note how insecure O'Neill is here--she seeks Margaret Mead, her frail, grudging, lone rolemodel, painfully aware Mead had few rolemodels herself. Male mentors? Please. The Voice of Ancient Wisdom turns out to be a Wizard of Oz "humbug" in a lab coat.

But persistence pays! O'Neill finds a fruit tree gowing indoors (women's art?), and wins Mead over as a mentor.

It says little about O'Neill (but much about me) that I found only on my third read-through that I'd twice misread the opening scene:

"...my companion is trapped and held in a huge, white rectangular box containing an angry tiger. Finally, they let him out but he keeps having wild fits. I try calming him in a loving way, but his eyes continue to open wider and wider. He quiets down and then goes crazy again. I realize his behavior is the result of being isolated with a frightening creature."

Silly me.

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