I'm on a sidewalk at the mouth of Stockton Tunnel, in San Francisco. Cars roar by. I have to walk through the tunnel to Chinatown; there's a walkway, but it's loud and stinky.

I'm gobbling salad from a squarish cardboard box that I don't plan to take with me through the Tunnel. Gotta eat and run! Snatch cucumber & tomato slices; cram then in my mouth, trying to grab all the best bits since I can't eat all. I have a deadline--some appointment in Chinatown.

Strangely, as I gobble, I feel like this is SEX not food! Like I'm hastily fucking my date--the salad box!

That's no fantasy. It's real. I can sense the box glumly expects such callous haste, since all the guys she's ever dated are desperate for salad, but then don't last too long...

Poor old frustrated salad! It's always eat and run.

But this isn't how I like sex OR food. I like to go slow and savor things. Why am I acting so strange? I don't understand this at all...

And then I wake.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Freud would say that tunnel's sex, right? But eating salad already means sex. That tunnel's loud and poorly ventilated, reeking of car exhaust, so for me it means not sex but environmental stress. The dream hints at coming trouble, though the tunnel (and thus presumably the stress) is short.
• Appointment in Chinatown: unsure. My recentest trip there WAS an appointment: I signed up for a health plan. But they double- and triple-billed me; after 18 months I switched to Kaiser.
• Salad, a healthy food I treat like fast food: chocolate? I eat sugarless chocolate; though bitter, it reduces gum infections and improves my mood. But I eat so much it's fattening; I've been trying to cut back. If the dream's equating it to salad, if it means "Chocolate's healthy, eat all you like" it's awfully indirect. Coulda just showed chocolate directly, as in the equally surreal/smutty dream Chocolate Balls. So I doubt the choc-connection.
• Appointment, feel rushed: I got an unexpected call from my therapist today; I had the wrong date on my calendar, thought our phone appointment was a week off. I felt rushed and confused. Maybe my therapist is the salad, let down by my disorganization?
• My date's dismal expectations: I just read Carrie Vaughn's black comedy After the Golden Age. Celia's parents are superheroes. Their fame cast a long shadow on her life. She has low expectations, not just for sex/dating, but friendship and work too--she's always wondering "Am I being used as a gate to my parents?" She's not neurotic or negative, just glumly realistic after a lifetime of abuse--lost count of the betrayals.
• So... are my expectations like Celia's? Kind of. My parents were affectionate but unreliable. So I don't trust easily and expect to face trouble alone. I'm brusque--impatient with people, since I assume they'll be no help--possibly well-meaning, but mostly incompetent.
• ACTION: Unsure. The dream offered no easy solutions, but it showed me how hurt others can be when I'm brusque. Be gentler with people when I'm under stress--and I soon will be.

NEXT YEAR

The stress warning was real. A few weeks later, a City water truck crushed my parked car, totaling it. For months I was carless, isolated, and mired in insurance/paperwork hassles--it took a month just to get the police report. I got snappish. But this dream predicting trouble/fallout from cars did help me to be a bit more patient.

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-Sh - Si-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites