Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Yet another odd dream

There are my typical nightmares and then there are the weird ones that seem to come from out of nowhere.

It was dark in mood and aesthetic.  I was looking at these boots, slender and old, but not really old.  They were like... Victorian, but present.  I didn't feel a need to look up and the wearer - there was only one person it could be: my mum, but not as I know her today.  In retrospect, I would say that I was like, back in an older time, but it all felt contemporary at the time. 

The boots, on their feet, worked by their legs, were operating a sewing machine - one of those foot-powered ones.  The boots were black.  They had a very skinny heal.  They were skinny themselves and they were done up in the back with these tiny little buttons.  The buttons were fascinating me.  I followed them up until they disappeared beneath layers of crinoline. 
I wanted to count the buttons, but I did not know how to count above about 4 or 5.  I mean, I could look at them and see that there were more than the 4 or 5 that I could count to.  So, I was, like, "there are many."

I asked Mum what she was making.  Somewhere during her answer, I looked up her.  I think I was sitting on the floor... maybe on a cushion or something.  I did not come up anywhere near as high as the table.  I don't think that, in the dream I had any notion of age.  Things just "were."  So, having looked up at my mum in the dream, I got a look at her dark brown, curly hair all pinned up.  This is not *my* mum... but it was my dream-self's mum.  Thinking about the mum in my dream, she could not have been more than twenty years old.  She was a happy person, but was sad at them moment, despite the smile she wore.  In the dream I could tell she felt tired, drained.  The oil lamp on the sewing table cast a warm glow that did not seem to extend beyond the two of us, but I had a vague sense of the book case against the wall, the unlit lamps on either side, the open doorway that was behind her, the snow outside the window behind me, the seat to my left that other people - people who were not me - people like Mum and Dad and people that came to visit them - sat in.  Its colour was warm and it was soft to the touch.  I liked running my hand over the soft, fuzzy fabric after someone got up out of it because then it felt warm like it looked.

These were things that I just *knew* there in the dream.  Fixtures that always were, and always would be.  I knew no sense of change.

She said, "I am making the dress we will bury you in."

That's when I woke up.

LQ

3 comments:

  1. Hm. Very interesting imagery here. A touch of the anachronistic, a sense of comfort, or at least stability, and then the statement about the dress to bury you in. I suppose you know that "death" is often used as a symbol of change. Samurai themselves were taught to choose death, meaning to stick to a set course of action, whatever the cost or consequence. I don't remember if that was from the Hagakure or something written by Yagyu Munenori. But the wording "dress to bury you in"... If I had my friend Tex around, she would probably think that it meant burying a certain aspect of yourself, but it's been years since I've heard from her.

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  2. Thanks for the comment. I was believing - beginning to believe - that I was not going to get any on this. (Cause, you know, bazillions of people read this thing.)

    Yeah, I agree that the change part would more or less equal change. It is the same in tarot, eh?

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  3. I believe so. Not that I'm one to do any tarot readings, my aunt dabbled in that every now and then. (I had meant to comment awhile ago, but you know how life is, right? Sorry for taking so long)

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