THE DREAM FRAGMENT A holograph contains within each part the whole. Thus, a ripped-off corner of a holographic picture reveals the entire picture. Might the tail-end fragment of a dream do the same? S— presented the Ullman group with such a fragment she remembered from a longer dream she’d woken up with two mornings back. In the fragment, she’s alone in a car driving out of a parking lot. Cars whiz past at high speed on the road. She waits to turn left. When she gets onto the road she speeds up. Abruptly, a big truck in front of her slams on its breaks. She slams on hers just in time, only inches from hitting the big truck. The hood of her car is under the truck’s rear end. She felt other drivers looking at her, so hurriedly backed up – but did so too fast and hit a junior high school bicycle rider coming from karate class. The boy got to his feet, a little scratched up and bruised. A police officer asked her to go to the police station across the street. When he saw the boy wasn’t seriously injured, he said, “It’s O.K. Don’t worry.” She felt it strange that the officer didn’t call for an ambulance to take the boy to the hospital. S– said she did drive fast when she came home late at night and the highway was empty; but felt the dream probably reflected her current job situation as much as it did her driving skills. A year or two ago she’d left her teaching position at a nearby university, sold her apartment, and set off on a journey of discovery in Mexico. Returning some months back, she found there was no opening for a teaching position at the university. To qualify for the university’s table tennis team composed of all her good friends, she had to work at the university. She desired to continue working on the beautiful campus and easily got an office job in a different department. The job was easy for her and afforded an opportunity to hone her writing skills, which she wanted to do. But as it turned out her co-workers proved so small-minded and petty that she found it hard not to offend them and set them scurrying about whispering about her behind her back. She worked fast, easily finished her job, switched off her computer at 5, and went home. The culture in the office was to dawdle, waste time, then stay on, sometimes for hours after 5, presumably because the overtime was needed to finish up work. She tried to see the beauty in these people but found it difficult. The day before the dream, a dean acknowledged her for an accomplishment. He gave her credit only because she was in charge. Her co-workers felt it unfair that the dean always picked on them; but here S— comes waltzing into the office, a newcomer, and he starts giving her compliments. They scurried around all the more, forming small groups, and gossiping behind her back. She has decided she really doesn’t like them. That same day she finished her work at 4:30, wanted to leave and 5, but just sat around until 5:30 to avoid being criticized. It was boring to waste the time and she realized no matter what she did her co-workers would find fault with her. She decided that from then on she would always leave at 5, no matter what they said. The parking lot she’s driving out of in the dream brought to mind the job, where she is just parking herself for the interim. To drive alone in the car represents herself at that job, where she’s isolated and alone. None of her co-workers ever ask her to lunch. She feels it’s so stupid. Turning left onto a two-way street is the more difficult turn, as you have to cross a stream of cars going in the opposite direction to get to the lane going in the direction you want. Most of the looks she gets are from drivers on the other side of the road, going in the opposite direction from the one she’s going in. “I get the feeling that in my real situation I’m probably driving towards a different direction than my colleagues.” She has tried to tell herself that she’s getting to see a different kind of people. But she’s beginning to wonder, “Why do I need this? They’re not nice.” She mentioned one colleague particularly hostile to her. Again and again, to keep the harmony of the office she has covered up for her to the dean, who calls special meetings just to criticize her work. In return for this protection, the woman is ever more hostile. She wonders, what’s the use helping her? – the woman’s incompetent and spends time on her computer shopping online for clothes. On the road she moves forward and then backs up. “Moving forward,” she connects with mastering skills she wants to learn to do better, like writing. In this sense only, the job gives her somewhat of a preparation for what she wants to do in the future, which is writing. “Backing up,” suggests taking a lower profile, not shining so much. She felt she was too naïve to think that just being nice to her colleagues would work. She tried that. The teenage boy on the bike represents her vulnerable side, the part that got hurt when she backed up. That’s as far as she could get with the dream. As to what the big truck represented, she had no idea. Various ideas came forth from the group. It seemed the truck image was the most complex image in the dream and operated on several levels at once. The low I.Q. of truck drivers and how they chew betel nuts seemed to connect the truck image with the culture of this new office with its stupid, narrow-minded people. She said it hurt her to see such an ugly side to humans. At the same time the truck image suggested the opposite: her powerful intellect that can carry a big load and move fast to get its work done. For this to suddenly stop suggested her failed efforts to do less at the office, work less efficiently, and even stay sometimes past 5 even though she has nothing more to do. In truth she’s simply more intelligent and effective than these support staff colleagues, works more efficiently, and gets things done faster. To suddenly stop being this way because of how they perceive her, and back off, has caused injury to the part of her that is simply trying to grow and learn. The big truck also brings to mind the powerful spiritual journey that carried her to the other side of the world and might carry her further into a career of writing. All this suddenly ground to a halt when she took this job and has put her in this situation where she’s hurt the susceptible, still-growing part of herself. On all three of these levels, and in all three ways, the abruptness of the truck’s stop ends in causing harm a vital part of herself. Her co-workers in the office see clearly that she feels them to be petty and small-minded. If nothing else, the way she bends over backwards to accommodate them shows that she feels herself to have descended amongst inferiors – particularly how she repeatedly covers up for the one who despises her the most, the most incompetent of them all, the one the dean attacks, and who shops online during work hours. Plain and simple, they despise her for seeing herself as better than them. For this they can’t forgive her. It’s an affront to their being, all the more so because of the extent to which it’s undeniably true. So the tail-end fragment of this dream, like a holograph, would seem to do the work of a whole dream. With its economy of images it encapsulates everything that’s unsatisfactory about her present work situation. Moreover, it makes known to her just how unsatisfactory the whole situation is to her. But does it tell her anything new, like a dream always does – except perhaps that the situation is even more unsatisfactory than she’d thought? Maybe yes, it does. At the end of the dream, S— felt it strange the officer didn’t call for an ambulance to take the boy to the hospital. Might the dream be thus saying that the perceived injuries from these office biddies are not really that serious? Secondly, and more important, the boy knocked off the bike was coming from karate class. Why would the dream be this specific about this particular point if it weren’t implying that this part of her possesses fighting skills which this job may now be calling into play? While working with the dream in the group she said she has a mind to stop covering for the incompetent worker. If she did so, and let the dean fire the woman, she might quickly signal to the others that she has the one thing that can quickly make those kinds respect her and back off. What office hens do respect is pecking order. But, anyone who has lived on a farm knows it needs to be established by a good hard peck. In the end, no one can know what a dream means but the dreamer. But the possibilities we meet with in this simple dream fragment show how miraculous dreams are in their perceptions and how every little piece of a dream does have meaning. * * *
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 05:37:34 +0000
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