Category Archives: dreams

I remember a little boy.

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I remember a little boy
with a heavy brow
framing a careful gaze.

I don’t remember
where I lost him.
Maybe
it was at that fuel pump,
where I absentmindedly
drove off, only to see him,
in hindsight, running
down the road after me,
crying. Both of us
crying.

Maybe
it was during that
black and white
winter night, when
the only light was
moon on snow,
and I left him, alone
powerless, not knowing
that the dark house
would overtake him.

Maybe
I didn’t really lose him.
Maybe
it shouldn’t matter.

What matters is that
I still dream about
a little boy with
a heavy brow
and a dark gaze,
who is always reaching,
reeling, and running.

GOING…GOING………………..

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The other night I dreamed of my best friend and roommate in college (from 1959-61). The last time I spoke to her on the phone, probably 7 or 8 years ago, she was living in an Assisted Living place while her husband, afflicted with Parkinson’s, was in the Memory Loss Unit. She was furious because her children had taken away her car and license.

When I “googled” her today, I found her obituary. She died in 2021, “peacefully”, it said, and suggested contributions to the Alzheimer Association.

In our Junior year, we shared a room in the sorority house with two other girls. This is three of us in 1959.

Shirley, Carole, and me.

I (on the right) am the only one of us three who is still alive.

Here are the four of us at our reunion in 2004. Shirley and Carole, in the middle, are both gone. Cathy married a guy with whom I loved to dance.  He had great style and knew how to lead.  Cathy has been a widow for the past 4 years.

Cathy, Carole, Shirley, and me.

Shirley and I shared our clothes and countless adventures during our college years. We wore the same size clothing, and I was more than happy to wear her comfortable, casual outfits, while she wore many of the dresses and skirt-sweater sets with which my family saddled me each year. Another difference between us was that I wore lots of makeup and she wore none. And while she was a Business major with a very linear and logical mind, I was an English major who fantasized about moving to San Francisco to write poetry and live in a garret. We also had different taste in boyfriends, so we were never in competition with each other. I don’t think we ever had an argument, unless you count the time my roommates got fed up with my messiness and took all of my stuff that was lying around, wrapped it all in my blanket, and threw it in the closet.

Shirley taught me to drive while she was taking the college class to get certified to teach Drivers’ Ed.  She had a car, and I was 19 years old and had never learned.

Shirley’s and my greatest adventure was heading out to Daytona Beach during the spring of ‘59 for Spring Break. We drove straight through from Albany, NY to Daytona in a little blue coupe with three guys we knew. I think it was Chuck Recesso’s car, and he did most of the driving. One of the other guys was Frank Fallace, but I can’t remember the name of the third, although I can picture his face and could probably find him in the yearbook. I remember the drive through the South and the signs in the places we stopped for both ingesting and eliminating food that boasted signs of “coloreds not allowed.” We were liberal Northerners, and were taken aback by the reality.

While the guys were probably assuming that we would hang out with them, Shirley and I had other plans, since she had male friends from Cortland State College who were also planning to be there.

I don’t remember much of our time in Daytona, but I remember that the water was filled with Portuguese Man-of-War fish, and that we partied hard (still vehemently protecting our virginities, of course) and finally wound up booking flights to come home, avoiding the stifling car ride back– 17 hrs (1,157.2 mi).

We each married in June of 1961, but our lives went in totally different directions. Shirley married the handsome and sweet Owen Davis, teaching business subjects at a community college, and boasting three children and, finally, several grandchildren.

The last time I saw her and her husband was about 15 years ago, when I met them one Fall, down in the Catskills, for an apple festival. Owen was already showing signs of the Parkinson’s disease that finally ended his life; but he was still handsome and sweet. I wish that I had kept in better touch with her, but, you know…..LIFE!

And this is the way it will go from now on.  Because, you know….LIFE!

 

I think I know what Karl Jung would say.

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I sleep a lot and I dream a lot.  The other day I got my second Shingles shot, and this time I had a reaction.  Not only was my arm really sore, I developed a low grade temperature. I was toally wiped out. As usual, though, I didn’t fall asleep until 2:30 am.  And I had one of those dreams from which I just don’t want to wake up.  This is how it went:

I am at some some sort of State Fair kind of place, and it’s time for me to go home. As I leave, I pick up a small bunch of flowers and stick them in my pants pocket. My pants have lots of pockets. I plan to give the flowers to the man I recently met. My other pockets have money in them, both coins and paper.

I have to get on a bus to get back home. Crowds are crowding into the waiting buses, but I am having a hard time finding the bus I am supposed to get on. I am looking for a bus that will take me to Albany NY, where I used to live. I keep asking people what bus I should get on and I keep getting different answers. I finally get on a bus that is very crowded. I keep asking if this is the bus I should be on and saying where I want to go. Everyone seems to be planning to get off at different places. It is hot and crowded and noisy. I feel I am not being helped because I am an old lady. So I start doing a Mrs. Maisel act – shouting funny things at various people and using “fuck” a lot, like Mrs. Maisel. People start paying attention to me and laughing and relaxing. At the same time, I keep trying to call my ex-husband to tell him I will be late, but my phone isn’t working. So I ask if there’s anyone who can help me figure out what I did to screw up my phone. A black “homie” guy says he can help me, so I give him my phone. It becomes obvious that he is not going to do anything or give it back. So I kiss him on the lips and lick his cheek, and his other homies laugh and tell him to give me back my phone, so he does.

As I do my schtick, I say I am 85 five years old and make a big deal out of it because I don’t look that old. One girl on the bus asks if she could see my driver’s license, so I give it to her and she lets everyone know that I am only 82 years old. She says she is a college reporter and she would like to do a story on me after we all get home. I say OK.

Little by little people keep leaving the bus, until there are only a few of us left who will be going in my direction. We get off the bus at a road that has appeared in my dreams before. I realize that I have to cross that road to catch the bus going the other way. I also realize that the flowers I had stuffed into my pocket were all dried up and crumbing, so I throw them away.

Finally the bus comes and some of us get on. When I go to pay the $1 fair, I keep trying to fish out the quarters I have in my pocket, and at the same time, the paper money keeps falling out. The guy behind me helps me fish out the quarters and hands me the money that had fallen out. As the bus continues on, I see a roadside store that I had been to in another of my dreams. The landscapes I am seeing go by are ones familiar to me from past dreams.

Then I am at my apartment and I am excited because I am about to see the man I got the flowers for. My deceased cat, Calli, is waiting for me but she has become feral, and won’t go inside. So I put cat food and water out for her outside the patio door. The man lives in an apartment across a park from mine, so I go to him.

We kiss and he holds me and I feel wonderful. He laughs when I tell him about my adventure.

Each time I get up, I return to the dream. There were more interactions with others on the bus, but can’t remember the specifics. I wake up hot and sweaty because I had turned the heat on at one point when I got up to go to the bathroom. I have been in bed for 12 hours, from 2:30 am to 2:30 pm.  I could have gone back to my sleeping and dreaming, but I figured 12 hours in bed was more than enough.  Maybe I can find my way back there  tonight.

 

Hah. Another all nighter!

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After my all-nighter the other day, I just stayed up all the next day, fell asleep in my chair for a couple of hours in the afternoon. After taking some MMJ, I fell asleep about 4 am and slept for 15 hours. It doesn’t help that I had great dreams, filled with people and things to do. No wonder I don’t want to wake up.

It’s now about 2 am. I’m losing track of what day and night it is. I am either going crazy or I am dying. I don’t know which I prefer, since I have no reason to stay alert and alive, anyway.

I need a reason. I think I found one at the Thomas O’Connor Animal Shelter. A sweet looking 8 year old couch potato cat. I will make an effort to make that happen.

I also have to get the MMJ under some kind of control. If I take too little, I still don’t fall asleep. If I take to much, I don’t want to get out of bed and stay there all day. That, alone is going to drive me crazy.

Tomorrow, I will call the shelter. I have to find a reason to stay sane. And alive.

And I will look of a neuropsychologist who takes my insurance and does telehealth. It can’t get any worse. If it does, I’ll just refuse to ever get out of bed. It’s not worth it.

So, here I am at 2 A.M……

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While I’m waiting for that “sleep switch” to kick in, I’ve been trying to track down other bloggers around my age to see if we can develop into a virtual community of kindred spirits. That’s what I had back in the 2000s, and I miss the virtual camaraderie.

As part of my efforts to lesson my feelings of isolation, I am working with my local senior center to try to put together a weekly Zoom group of older folks who are disabled or are self quarantined. I only go out when I have to — medical appointments or grocery shopping. I would love to make new friends, and these days, Zoom is the way to do it.

I did spend most of my afternoon sending out my poetry in response to several “call for entries.” I have been pretty successful getting my poetry published, but it is three years since I have sent any out. At some point I will add a “Poetry” link to my primary menu.

Beginning next week, I will be part of a Zoom-based poetry group. I just love when synchronicities kick in and I become aware of the ongoing spirals that my life is on. I dreamed of a married couple with whom I was close friends for decades, but then they moved away. I contacted to tell them about the dream, and they put me in touch with the leader of the poetry group. The leader of the poetry group was one of my ex-husband’s college students and my daughter was a flower girl at his wedding. Circles into spirals.

Obviously, I have my depression under control. If only I could do that about my Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder.

Three or four a.m. has become my usual bedtime. Will I ever be awake again during those morning hours when the air smells fresh and the birds are just starting to sing?

“to sleep, perchance to dream”

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Yes, that’s from Shakespeare.

Boy, am I doing a lot of sleeping and dreaming. As a matter of fact, my dreams are a hell of a lot more engaging than my life these days. It gets so I don’t want to get out of bed, because if I stay there and fall back to sleep, I will have more adventurous dreams that are more interesting than any of my daily doings.

My dream world has very specific landscapes that include a section that is some odd representation of the campus where I went to college; a distorted version of the part of the city where I worked for 20 years; a kind of Catskill Mountain vacation hotel where I once attended ballroom dance weekends; and a weird version of an apartment complex where I used to live. I am always trying to get somewhere among those places, but it’s usually a matter of “you can’t there from here”. On those excursions, however, I might meet up with friends, go dancing, play with cats, and come up with a good first line for a poem. But then I wake up, and it’s all gone where dreams go.

No matter how hard I try I can’t reclaim a normal sleep schedule. I often don’t fall asleep until early morning hours, and then I sleep until afternoon. My sleep got messed up more than a decade ago when I was taking care of my demented mother. A search of this blog for “caregiving” or “dementia” will unearth full details.

I have tried to get control of my insomnia (search “insomnia” if you are curious). Medical Marijuana worksto get me to fall asleep, but it is awfully expensive because it takes a double dose to have any effect on me.

There actually have been more than a couple of times when I didn’t get out of bed for more than 24 hours. To be honest, I there are times that I would just as soon not wake up. I kind of identify with a 1999 episode of Ally McBeal, in which “Ally’s favorite teacher from high school is dying, but she has a wonderful dream life which she would like to remain in. Ally decides to get a court order to force the hospital to put her into a coma.”

In my dreams, I have relationships, friends, hugs, interactions, adventures — kind of the opposite of life with Covid-19. (I do live with family, but that’s not the same as hanging out with peers.)

On the Late Show last night, Bill Gates suggested that it might be close to a couple of years before we can settle into some kind of normalcy. How are we all going to keep from going off the deep end before then? Will I even live long enough to see a “new normal.”

In the meanwhile, lacking motivation, energy, and inspiration, I continue to avoid my pile of half-done creative projects that are wasting away in the corner where I piled them months ago. And, also in the meanwhile, I have tracked down a former therapist and have started, again, trying to find my muse, looking for some fuse that will propel me out of this mindless funk.

I dream #1

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Last night I dreamed I was driving fast in a small stick-shift car, and I didn’t have enough leg room. I have only driven a stick-shift car once, decades ago. I don’t remember where I was going or why, and it was dicey going. Well, there you go.

Dream Addiction

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If I have strong enough marijuana to ingest, I can sleep, but I still don’t fall asleep until 3 a.m. If that stops working for a while, I revert to taking night time cold medicine — double dose. (I can’t drink alcohol because of my Reflux disease, and I can’t get a sleeping pill prescription because of my age.) My brain seems to ignore the effects of sedatives unless they are pretty potent. It makes me wonder if some synapses in my brain have become immune to sedatives.

When I do sleep, I dream — elaborate scenarios, filled with people I know and people I don’t. One of the people I don’t know is a guy. I never see his face, but he is obviously someone I am close to, emotionally and physically. He hugs me, holds me, whispers in my ear. Obviously, I am compensating for these things I no longer have.

I have been missing that kind of interaction for more than a couple of decades. That is how long I have been without a relationship with a man — more because of situation rather than choice. My situation has also taken me away from close women friends that I have had for more than 40 years. And Covid-19 makes it very hard to be optimistic..

So I have a much more enjoyable dream life than my awake life. And so I sleep. A lot. Yes, it’s an escape during these depressing times, and yes, I take an anti-depressant. There are days I sleep from 3 or 4 a.m. until my daughter wakes me for dinner the next day. I need to find a prescribing psychiatrist to determine if I should be taking something else and to help me figure out the rest.

For now, I am addicted to sleep and the dreams that come.

Years ago, I saw an episode of “Ally McBeal” that featured an old woman who is dying in a hospital and was put in an induced coma. When they woke her up, she insisted to be put back in the coma, where she lived a whole other life as a happy, young wife and mother. She was much happier in the coma, and she was dying anyway. I get it. I’d rather be sleeping and dreaming rather than experience the dreariness of what my daily personal life has become.

I used to be able to amuse and entertain myself creating stuff — sweaters, upcycled t-shirts, learning to paint and draw, cooking….. Not these days. I used to dance for exercise. Not any more with my escalating arthritis and torn rotator cuff that will never really heal. I used to go for short late afternoon walks. Instead, I now sleep.

Maybe the results of the coming election will lift some of my depression. But not all of it. I have to figure out how to get rid of the rest of it. I’m assuming the psychiatrist will help.

But in the meanwhile, my life will be what it is, and my dreams will be my escape.

It’s so frustrating that my sleep issue is one that so many elders experience. We create vehicles that explore outer space, but no one has figured out how to solve the problem of elder insomnia (which must be associated with how the brain ages). And neither has anyone figured out how to make a removable partial dental bridge that actually fits and works.

Beginning a New Adventure: My Jungian Journey

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I have been through the process before, and blogged about it decades ago (somewhere on my old blog, which is only partially still available on blogspot). Severe sleep issues, depression (only partially helped with meds), and writer’s block have led me to try it again, this time with a different analyst, because my previous one is focusing these days on veterans and PTSD. Jungian analysis connects well with Shamanistic “soul retrieval”, in which I’ve also engaged before and which also has been successful.

One of the concepts Jung espoused is “synchronicity”, which, simply, is meaningful coincidence. And there already have been several as I work with this therapist: we both use a pen with purple ink; we both have hair issues; we both sport wearables that identify us — me my t-shirts and she exotic necklaces. Jungians also deal with dream interpretation, and I had one last night that is rife with meaning.

In real life, I am always worried about getting locked out of the house if no one else is home, so I found a very esoteric place to hide a key, which I wrap in plastic before I hide
it. Last night I dreamed that someone I was with wanted to come into the locked house, so I went an got the hidden key, let us in, and then started to re-wrap the key. Except I was having a hard time manipulating the plastic. I woke up before the story ended.

I have only had three sessions, but already stuff is shaking out.

One of the fascinating techniques that Jungians use is “sandplay.” My therapist has walls of shelves with various figurines, from realistic to imaginary, to use in setting up a sandplay scene. The figure at the beginning of this post was the one I picked to begin my scene. (I didn’t know why until I got home and started analyzing why I might have.) The actual figurine did not have that Celtic Raven on her shoulder, but she did have some sort of a black bird. I replaced it with a Celtic Raven because I have become fascinated with its mythology — and this representation of it. (I even made a shirt with a Celtic Raven on it.)

I have named her “Baba Bogina,” Polish for “Crone Goddess.”

So much is happening, and I have just begun. One of things I will be doing in the next few weeks is making an appointment with a nurse who is also a shaman, to do a “soul retrieval.” Those of you who read my blog eight or so years ago, know about the traumatic five years I spent living with my demented mother and my emotionally volatile brother — resulting in what my Primary Care doctor was convinced is PTSD. There is stuff still stuck in my subconscious that I can feel is keeping me from moving on. I’m still feeling angry. I’m still feeling guilty.

I was in a similar place after my divorce, and, thanks to my former Jungian therapist, I was able to move on. Follow me if you want to get a idea of how Jungian therapy can work from a very personal perspective, as I learn to access the wisdom of Baba Bogina, who is an archetype and who is a part of me.

Adrift in Archetypes

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The ancient Hanged Man is the center of attention, oddly modern in straight lines and upright, bloodless repose.

I am at a funeral mass in a church that is a testament to privilege, from the pale polished wood of vaulted ceilings to the delicate stained glass windows, graceful allegories of allegiance and ardor.

My dead friend rests in a simple urn among flowers and photos. I am here to honor him, but the incense filled air and steady droning of apocrypha ease me into images from my past life.

I am in fourth grade, sitting next to my classmate, Stanley Szymanski, enthralled by the drama and special effects of a Black Friar production of the “Stations of the Cross.” As our bones vibrate to the crashes of recorded thunder and our hearts flutter to the rhythmic flashes lightening that signal the death of that Hanged Man, Stanley reaches over, grabs my hand, and whispers “Let’s get hitched.”

I am somewhere in my pre-teens, standing next to my father, who smells vaguely of Old Spice and who subtly hums along with the inspiring choir. He is tall and strong next to me, and, for the first time, I feel stirrings of some kind of desire. Someday I will learn about Electra, and I will take courses in psychology, and I will understand.

When I return home after the funeral service, I finish reading a book I requested from its author because, these days, I am even more fascinated by death and the processes of dying than I was as a child growing up above the viewing rooms in my father’s funeral home.

I also am a fan of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, so I tend to have an affinity for archetypes, and Polishing the Bones by Jungian Analyst Penelope Tarasuk tells of a journey that embraces both of my passions.

It is a unique story – one that can only evolve between two very creative, introspective, and unique individuals as they embark upon a shared journey to unravel and understand, first, who they are as patient and therapist and, finally, as companions on a final pilgrimage.

Tarasuk invests eight years in partnering with her “client” to prepare for the inevitable, which comes later than sooner and provides a richness of inner growth for both.

Theirs is not an experience that can be easily duplicated, but it does offer tremendous insight into how it is possible use the limitations of mortality to spark creative energies and insight.

More than 25 years ago, I was fortunate enough to pair with a therapist who used Jungian and Shamanistic techniques to help me explore my own dreams and demons. I wrote about it in an essay that was published in 1990 in a psychotherapy journal, Voices.

If you are interested, you can read it here: shadows2