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It has some weeks now since I have last posted any of my dreams.

This one is weird in many ways.

Here is the setting. It seemed to be in possibly in one of those CDB multi-level office building. The place looked modern, and nothing out of ordinary. Each person has their own cubicle; partitions that divide one workspace from another. Each workplace has desk, chair, some with computers and some without, and stationary.

There are lots of cubicles in this whole floor, but there weren't as many people around as one would expect.

Ok, now I will get to the strange part. I am walking around, meeting different people at their workspaces.

I went up to one neatly-dressed young man, and ask him, "Have you seen Mr Grumpy?" And his reply was: "No, I haven't seen him."

I would then find another person and then another, and would ask exactly the same question, but I will always get a negative answer, in which they don't know where Mr Grumpy is. Each person may varied his/her answer, but it is always negative responses, like "I don't know where he is", or "He is not here", or "I have not seen him around", or even "Who is Mr Grumpy?", etc.

I seemed to be very patient, in asking the whereabouts of Mr Grumpy, because I don't seem upset with each person's reply.

I meet old and young office worker, male or female. Eventually I had run out of people to ask, so I got in the elevator, and meet half-dozen women wearing exactly the same tweed jackets, white blouses and dark skirts. I don't recall any of the women I have encountered in the office wearing these clothes.

Again, I'd ask each woman in the office if she had Mr Grumpy, but no-one has. After asking one woman, she would get off the elevator on the next floor. No else got on the elevator.

Eventually I left the elevator with the last woman, whom I ask about Mr Grumpy.

I don't remember much of what happen next.

-----------

It would seem that my Free2Code's multiple persona have come to life...well, in my dream at least, where I have taken on the role of the Lost Patient. But instead of asking for the ever-elusive Dr Angelo in my dream, like I do here at F2C, I am asking for Mr Grumpy.

I think my on-line life have caught up with me in this dream.

My cyber-multiple-personalities have been a great deal of fun, but I must be losing my mind, for it to intrude on my dream like this.

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Very weird indeed. I can't say that I've noticed Mr Grumpy going missing. He certainly comes out at the Politics forum when you put Bush or Howard down. It seems to me this dream is about the setting, the standard sort of commercial city office situation. We expect people to be polite and efficient and Mr Grumpy doesn't fit in there. He's a very human side of you, storyteller, and indeed, we all have a Mr Grumpy inside us somewhere. In a "professional" situation, however, we're expected to hide our Mr Grumpy side and pretend everything's cool.

I can't think why this dream would come right now. Maybe you've been trying too hard to be polite lately. That's why you've lost Mr Grumpy.

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That would seem to be the case.

HEY! Why are you talking about me like I'm not here?

Who are you?

Grrr!

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Last night I had difficulties in sleeping. I was still awake around 2:30AM.

The wind had picked up speed, becoming stronger and stronger, as well as become noisier. I had earlier shut the window, because it tends shake too much if I leave it open.

I am just laying in bed, listening in the dark, the howling winds.

I suddenly wake up, and found my light turn on. And there were insects everywhere. Hundreds of them in my bedroom! They must have come through my window that was now open.

I jumped out of the bed, and ran to the kitchen where I keep the fly spray. I ran back into my room, and sprayed. It didn't last very long, because the damn can was near empty when I got it.

I woke up later, and realise that it was only a dream. My bedroom light was off; it was still dark outside. The window is still shut, and not a single bug in sight.

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This dream and its narration both weave in and out of different "realities", normal daytime or "waking" reality and the imaginative world of dreaming. The latter world is outside time and relates to concepts of the "eternal" or the "hereafter".

Today, I got this invitation for an event in Melbourne that I can't attend (not without travelling way too far!) but it has a description of Sufism that seems to me to relate well to this dream/narration intermingling of worlds.


source: www.intercultural.org.au/edialogue/2007/april/

The fact that the light is on in your dream world is good: it shows you're not "in the dark" about what's happening. The open window seems to me to relate to the openness of your sharing your dreams on this forum. The insects might be nagging doubts about the wisdom of this adventure but you seem to have something on hand to deal with that. However, you are running out of this resource.

I've noticed that YmirGF has visited: maybe he'll inject some much-needed help in this.

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Yes, I was glad that the dream ended before those insects decided to swarm over me.

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I am outside, walking along the street. There are houses on either side, all of them seem like it was built in the 40-50's using white weather-board for walls.

One house I saw, a 2-storey one, seemed run down. It was built on low mound, so it stood even taller than the other houses. Paints were stripped and mouldy. Windows broken, and the unbroken glasses are muddy. The front door is still there, but slanting at angle, because only one hinge was the only thing holding up the door. The brown-dry lawn needs cutting, because the grasses were as tall as my hip and waist.

My guess that this house is deserted.

I could hear a strange squeaking noise, the sound of metal scrapping on metal. This sound drew my attention, so I entered this run down property. I walk up the driveway, that had no garage on the other end.

As I turn around the corner, at the rear of house, I could see one of those metal clothe-lines you see in some houses, which you can adjust the height, and would spin if the wind is blowing. (I don't know what you would call them) And the clothe-line was turning round and round, even though I can't feel the wind. This was what was causing the metal noise I heard.

The backyard had no lawn or any garden to speak of, and the rear fence were badly in need of repair. It was just brown dirt or soil.

On the clothe-line, at least half-dozen bodies were hanging down. They were all dead and naked, both men and women. It ghastly enough to see them, but thank goodness that the bodies were not rotting and decomposing, because in real life that would turn my stomach. Rope tied them to the clothe-lines; most of them had noose around their necks, but a couple of people were tied by their ankles. One of them was woman, with her dark hair dragging behind her on dirt ground.

I saw something on the dirt ground on the other side, shiny green. I went around the clothe-line, avoiding the bodies, and picked up this green ball. It was about the size of cricket ball or softball.

At this point I decided to leave this ghastly property with the ball I found. I was bouncing the ball, but once I step out of the property, the ball bounce straight up into the sky, until I lost sight of the ball.

I became sad and angry at the same time because I've lost the ball. I turn back to the house, and spat in its direction (which is unusual, because I am not a spitting-type of person), before I continued down the street in the direction I was originally going.

That's about all I remember of last night's dream. The dream is actually very short, but I guess my description of the dream here makes it seem longer than it really is.

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This dream strikes me as a summarizing or encapsulating dream because it has a feel of getting to the heart of the matter.

As seems often to happen lately, a theme seems to resonate between this dream and something I've come across lately. In this case, it is a story about the childhood of poet Pablo Neruda. He grew up in great poverty both material and spiritual but one day when playing alone near a hole in a fence he saw a hand poke through with a toy sheep for him as a gift, a hand he never saw again. It was like an angelic visitation, a small sign of the beauty of friendship, however brief.

I read this story in Stephen Jenkinson's book, Money and the Soul's Desires.

The theme both here and in the dream is of something precious, even magical, that is found in the midst of neglect, despair, death and devastation. In many stories that special thing is almost immediately lost and must be recovered through arduous adventures.

For example, there is the story of the Frog Prince, where a golden ball is lost down a deep well or spring of water. The princess must recover that ball by kissing an ugly frog who is, in fact, a handsome prince under a spell.

This magical object - green ball in your dream, toy sheep for Neruda, golden ball in the tale - is a symbol of our natural capacity to enjoy and engage in life. It is something we lose when confronted with the suffering and inevitable death and decay inherent in life. We become barren, dried up and cynical then, much like that grass and backyard in your dream.

Where does your green ball go? It shoots up into heaven, into a purely spiritual or intellectual zone, unrelated or unconnected to the earth, to everyday reality. For you, then, joy is but a distant possibility, an imagined reality and not a truly "realized" or made-real reality.

I don't know how to help you get that ball back down to earth: maybe adding these weights through associations will help. Keep reading those stories that tell you how others coped.

To end, and given that this is a religious forum and this theme is ultimately a religious theme, here is a poem from Neruda, which seems to speak to the dangers that heaven holds for that ball:



source: wikiquote - Pablo Neruda

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These are Hills hoists, named after Lance Hill who invented them back in 1946. The wikipedia article on the Hills Hoist has this to say:



As an Australian baby boomer myself, I can vouch for that. Since moving from a unit to my current house in the suburbs, I've become the proud owner of an old Hills hoist on which shirts and sheets are drying right now. It's great in a tiny backyard in winter when sunshine is minimal and often blocked out by tall surrounding trees. I really need the hoist then. However, I don't use the wheeling function: instead, one of the corners is tied up with rope to a nearby tree thus fixing it in place.

I have to say that when I hang clothes on that hoist I am often overcome by a feeling of great contentment, even bliss. I really do feel like it's heaven on earth.

That's how easy mystical ecstasy can be, LOL!

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It has occurred to me, since I wrote the above, that the Frog Prince fairy tale is really a woman's version of the tale of a lost "golden ball". A man's version of the tale is Iron John, made famous by the excellent commentary on the tale by poet Robert Bly in a book of the same name.

I would highly recommend this book if you can find it in your local library.

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I was going in the middle of replying (typing away), when my computer shutdown. The power, must have went off for a split second, due to gale force wind, but enough to lose everything I wrote yesterday. So I thought leave it till now.


Thanks, Arizona. I didn't know the name. The we had, when I was growing up, wasn't removable, which you can put away when not using. I think the stand is made out of cast iron or something; it's very solid. You can adjust the height, by turning the crane clockwise or anticlockwise. The one in my dream seemed to be the same type.


I am not familiar with either version of the lost ball.


Yes, that's the sad part of the dream - losing that ball.

What are the significances of the bodies hanging down from the clothes lines? And the couple of them that were hanging upside-down?

I getting the feeling that these bodies are bad omens, which is at odd with the green shiny ball.

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This is always, of course, just my own impression of the dream imagery but here's how it came across to me.

First of all, the turning in the wind - or in fact in the non-wind. Maybe there was wind in the air but the fact is you couldn't feel it, it wasn't impacting on you. This turning of the clothes hoist reminded me of the Buddhist eternal wheel of life-death-rebirth (Bhavacakra) as well as the comparable Western imagery of the wheel of life and fortune (linked to the mythology of the goddess Fortuna and also depicted on one of the major arcana Tarot cards).

As I read the dream I just assumed there was no wind, therefore no apparent "cause" for this wheel to turn. To me, this seems to represent the strict scientific view of life: we are born, we live our lives, and we die, with perhaps our genes moving on to the next cycle of life and death. There is no "mover" or first cause or driving spirit (wind) to this process. It just happens, as if in a vacuum.

When you speak of this image being like a "bad omen", you're quite right in that we all must die. It is predicted for each of us. It is inevitable. However, there is something sad and humiliating about these deaths. There is no nobility there, none of the trappings we actually add to death through funeral rites and practices. It's ironic that this is actually a very down to earth truth but it is often communicated emphatically (and quite literally at various times and places in history) by a display of people hanging. The most common, of course, is the usual death by hanging but often the body is hung upside-down as an extra mockery and humiliation.

(I can't help here but think of the hanging death of Saddam, the public hangings in Iran, and recent gruesome findings in torture chambers uncovered in Iraq where the victim is hung up by the feet.)

It's only human - and I've certainly experienced this often myself - to feel forlorn and disgusted with how life is, what with all that meaningless suffering and tragic deaths. It's easy then to lose one's "joie de vivre", one's natural zest for living, a zest you see in young children and animals who have not (yet) experienced suffering and death.

We then try to blame someone or something for this basic ugliness of life. In your case, you've targetted people like Bush and Howard who, in your eyes, are a driving force toward suffering and death. Some people blame a "system" or human institution, like communism or capitalism or religion generally (and Islam in particular).

In the Frog Prince fairy tale, the princess must kiss (or sleep beside) a frog that she finds quite repulsive in appearance. The frog is life as seen through the cold realities depicted on that clothes line. Only when she actually embraces this horrid reality, that is, accepts that this is how life is - take it or leave it - and decides to take it, only then does she find happiness again. That final happiness is represented in marriage and the likelihood of having children and thus perpetuating the wheel of life.

The Iron Man story is more complex and the adventures more drawn out but there is a similar underlying theme.

The shiny green ball in your own dream is actually found through the confrontation with tragedy, despair, destruction. It is then lost, as if gathered up into heaven, when you walk away.

My hunch is that you do need to keep focussing on that imagery of death. You may need to struggle to come to terms with it, rather than walking away and hoping that it isn't a part of your own destiny.

Since the rotting of the corpses is what really appals you, you could try to buy some cheap meat and let it rot somewhere in the backyard, maybe in a plastic container. Leave it a few days and then go and smell it, just to drive home the reality of death. This might trigger some strong but important emotions that you might need to deal with before you can engage more fully in life.

Phew! I've written a lot! Better stop now ...

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Ok, I will correct myself. I have heard of the Frog Prince tale. Perhaps, not the full story, but I know the outline of the princess kissing a frog, and the frog transformation.

It reminds me of Celtic mythology in a number of variations. The ugly crone would accept a kiss from a man or actually invite a man to have sex with her. The crone then undergoes a transformation into beautiful woman, or even a goddess, in which the man become king. She represents the sovereignity of the land or kingdom.

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Ah, yes! It is the same imagery but depicted in a more sexually explicit fashion. Again, the crone is the world - or life - as seen from a jaded perspective. By embracing this ugliness of life, accepting it as a part of life, we are able to live life more fully and take control of our destiny (thus becoming king or queen of our realm). It's much easier said than done!

I know your mother was ill not so long ago and this might have caused you to think about suffering and death, perhaps more than usual.

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You're probably right about that.

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There were more to this dream in the beginning, but I can no longer remember them.

My sister, mum and I got in the car. I was driving and when I went to get petrol at the gas station, I found that one of the tires was missing. How did we get so far with only 3 wheels? I don't know. It doesn't seem to matter. After putting petrol in the tank, we left without putting the spare tire on, but this time, my mum was driving!

My mum have never driven a car in her life, and she never got a license. Clearly this is irrational dream.

The police stop our car when we were driving through a bridge. A red-headed woman arrested me and took me to correction centre, but not my mum or sister. They don't reappear in my dream after this.

At the correction centre, a woman with short blonde hair interview me. After the interview, she pass me an envelope full of hundred dollars. I think there were $7000, although I did count it. She told me to replace the tire on the car.

Did I go to gas station or tire shop? No. I was sent to some sort of laboratory facilities. I was about to enter the lab room, when the blonde-headed woman gave me some more money and told me to go in. But the room was a lab. It was more like a theatre with stage and seats. The theatre was oval-shape in plan, and well-litted, but no windows.

Apparently, the Hi-5 was performing with some Asian groups. Hi-5 is my youngest niece favourite group. They were actually doing to public rehearsal. I don't know what they were singing, but they seemed to be singing in Korean. All I know is that they sound awful. Even my dream self cringed at the sound of their voices.

The audience who had come to see the rehearsal were definitely Koreans, because some were holding a large South Korea's flag. Everyone in the audience were adults. Not a single child among the audience, which strange considering that the Hi-5 catered for young audience.

There are no tires here. Apparently the dream wasn't about the tire anymore. The tire is forgotten.

Actually, I don't even remember what happened at the end.

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Ah! I have my new computer and can now post again here!

(storyteller: I've sent you an email explaining my lack of response recently)

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Yes, I have it. Thank you.

Here is another dream.

Here, I seemed to be in a maze of mirrors. There were mirrors on every wall. The floor were like linoleum tiles, you can see in the home's kitchen. The wall is dark, possibly black.

I expect to see on the mirror, the reflection of myself. I do see myself, but just not what I expect to see.

For one. When you look into a mirror that is parallel to another mirror, then should see almost infinite number of the same reflections, but each reflection get smaller and smaller. Instead, each mirror only have a single reflection, instead of the multiple reflections.

The other weird thing about all these mirrors is that they don't show exact image of me.

In one reflection that I see is that I have crew-cut, wearing singlet and pair of shorts. I am also sporting tattoos on both of my forearms. However, when I look at my arms, they are covered by my long-sleeve grey shirt. And when I pull up my sleeves, I see no presence of these tattoos.

I walk around this maze, and look at some more mirrors. They were all different, and too many for me to remember. Either my clothes are different, all my hair style are different. Sometimes, I have beard, and other just a moustache. In one, I am not wearing anything except a pair of short.

Here are some others that I do remember. Another reflection showed me with grey hair, but no wrinkles or lines. Except for the hair, my age is not very different from the other reflections. One image show that I have two long angry scars, on my left cheek. The scars criss-cross near my left eye.

In another strange image, I have long, unkempt hair, as well as full beard and moustache; it is like I am on a deserted island or remote desert, without a razor or pair of scissors. Despite my untidy facial appearance, I am wearing black suit, white shirt and black tie, as if I am going to a funeral.

Perhaps, the most weirdest reflection was that of me. It was my eyes. One with light brown pupil. The other was yellow. The brown eye (the right one) was larger than my left eye. I am wearing a thick gold neck-chain; it looked rather heavy. I don't seem to like this neck-chain because I am trying to pull it off for some reason.

I keep walking until left this maze, into this white room, where I found a single solitary chair, right against the wall. There were no windows in this room, but there was a closed door. I sat on the chair, and before long a pregnant woman came out of that maze that I was in.

She was holding 2 baby jumpsuits, of different colours. She shook them at my face, wanting to know if she should keep the red jumpsuit if the baby is a girl, or the green one if it is boy. I told her she should keep the red one. She drop the green jumpsuit on my lap, and left by that door, which I presumed to be the exit. I just drape the jumpsuit on my left shoulder, and began humming.

Nothing else happened after that.

ps. I didn't make this woman pregnant....well, at least I don't think I did. Must be immaculate conception.

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I like to notice small details like this one. The kitchen is the place in the home in which the major transformations take place: raw ingredients turn into "cuisine" (the French word for "kitchen"), the raw stuff of nature is transformed into a human cultural product.

So this maze of mirrors is also a place of tranformations, especially as regards your own self-image.

Re the parallel mirrors, I think this detail might be pointing to the different nature of these mirrors, as contrasted to those "in the real world". Many artists and mystics characterize "the real world" as mirrors of the human soul. What we "see" is really what we are. Inside the dream world this is particularly so.

The "you" with the crew-cut and tatoos seems to be a coarse uncultured type, the brawny bloke who works on building sites. The tatoos are a kind of cultural expression, a way of saying something about oneself to the world, so this fellow is not "uncooked". My guess is that he represents your most basic urges and desires, an earthy side to yourself that you are perhaps not too aware of or don't recognize much.

I found the grey hair wiithout wrinkles intriguing: lines on a face do suggest writing and maybe this older side to yourself is failing to find expression ... just a hunch.

The "two long angry scars" forming a cross near your left eye are most dramatic. I would definitely try drawing this, however clumsy your drawing technique. It would be useful to confront this image which seems to distill and concentrate all of your "angry" energies. This is a "you" that is definitely worth knowing better.

The unkempt but formally dressed "you" about to attend a funeral marks, for me, a focal point in the dream. He combines the opposites of raw nature and cultivated humanity, "you" as individual and "you" as social animal. The funeral tells us that someone (or something) has died and death is nature's way of making room for the new ... and sure enough, later in the dream, a pregnant woman appears, carrying the new possibilities.

The large and small brown and yellow eyes with the neck chain "you" feels strange to me - and indeed this one is especially weird to you as well. Maybe it's best to just leave this one as representative of your own unfathomableness.

Once out of the maze, you reach that white room which is similar to other white spaces you've visited in your dreams. I think I've also mentioned before how, in alchemical processes, there is an initial blackness followed by whiteness, then by a red phase. Less commonly, there is also reported a green phase. Well, these two colours are now in focus.

In our Western European culture, we assign pink to girls and blue to boys, not the red and green of your dream. Is this a Chinese cultural association? I believe that red and green are the two most strongly contrasting colours, with blue and yellow a close second. It would help, though, if you could think about where these colours came from out of your own internal cultural "database".



This last reminded me of Winnie-the-Pooh who is known for his humming. If you haven't come across it yet, I would recommend a delightful book called The Tao of Pooh. From what I know of you, it would be very apt.

Yes, the woman in the dream is like Mary and the virgin or immaculate conception. It's identical imagery. Now we must wait and see what kind of hero-child will emerge...

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Quotes from "The Tao of Pooh"
wikipedia on "The Tao of Pooh"