Sunday, May 04, 2008

Sometimes It's a Mystery

Sometimes the meanings of our dreams is readily apparent. Sometimes it takes some noodling around before the meaning comes to us. And sometimes, the implications go in so many directions, or lead straight into such an obdurate brick wall, that they remain opaque:


"The Nefarious Duo and their Bounty Hunter" (April 30, 2008)

I am in a seemingly-endless house. Rooms and hallways ramble on and on without end -- or a discernable pattern of organization. I can see the outside through windows, etc., but there does not seem to be any way to actually get outside.

This is my wife's family's house. My wife in waking life is also my wife in this dream, although she is wearing another body and her name here is Ariana. She is taller and leaner in the dream than she is in waking life, and her hair is different, too -- it is long, straight and black. But her green eyes are the eyes of my wife in waking life.

The whole aesthetic of the house and the people in it is very Addams Family / "The Nightmare Before Christmas", with perhaps a dash of "Beetlejuice" added in. I am there, my wife is there, her parents are there, my brother & sister-in-law are there, and my three young nieces are there. Everyone including myself is wearing different bodies remodeled along the lines noted above.

We are all preparing to leave the house. I don't recall where we were going or why we were leaving. I know we were going to be away for a long time, maybe forever, although I don't think we were actually "selling" the house.

I am wandering around the house, sort of a remembrance tour before leaving. A lot of the rooms have been emptied of their contents, or the furniture has cloths thrown over it, ghostlike. I go into a room and surprise a stranger and his wife. Their habiliments and demeanor resemble ours, but their bodies are dessicated and leathery, almost mummified -- they are both missing their noses.  He is wearing a dark brown, closely-cut suit on his long, rangy body.  She is wearing the sort of shapeless conservative dress English women of a certain age wore perhaps in the 1930s.  They are hiding and waiting for us to leave so they can occupy the house. I know that if they take over the house, they will pervert/change it to suit themselves -- the room they're hiding in is already starting to change, to be slightly corrupted/morphed to suit their more decomposed nature. He reminds me of a less sinister/dangerous version of Mr. Vandemar from the Neil Gaiman novel "Neverwhere" (a very nasty fellow indeed!). They are definitely inimical, but not an urgent or mortal threat.

They spend a few moments trying to convince me that they're friends of my mother- and father-in-law or somesuch thing. Although I see through their lie, I play along and leave them there alone in the room.

I want to find my wife Ariana and tell her about the nefarious duo, and wander rapidly from room to room -- without luck. I finally catch sight of her down a long hallway and through a few rooms. She's walking the other way, hand in hand with her best friend, who has evidently dropped by for a final farewell before we leave. I call out and run after them but they don't hear me. They walk up a staircase. By the time I reach that spot I cannot tell where they have gone from there.

I turn around and go back downstairs, figuring I can talk to my in-laws instead. On my way to them, I pass back through the room where I left the nefarious husband-and-wife duo. There is a colossal tussle going on.

A third person is there. He is evidently a bounty hunter of some sort and the pair are his prey.  He looks much like the husband, but he is taller and leaner, more decomposed (e.g., the husband and wife are missing their [rotted out] noses but still have eyes -- the bounty hunter's eyesockets are empty, although he doesn't appear to be blind).  His suit is a dark green-grey. 

The bounty hunter has the nefarious duo pinned down onto the floor. The husband is on the floor face up, and his wife is lying on top of him face down. On top of the two of them is the bounty hunter, facing downward. He is moving his arms so quickly the eye can barely keep up, wrapping thick chains around them and fastening the chains with ginormous iron padlocks, tying them up like a package. At one point, the nefarious duo try to break free -- the husband pushing the wife up off of him (along with the bounty hunter, who's lying on top of the wife). The chains stretch like rubber but do not break. All three of them are yelling and screaming imprecations and curses at one another. As the husband tries to break the chains, blue and bright purple bolts of electricity course through and around the chains (and the nefarious duo), zapping the husband and wife in an attempt to finally subdue them. It's an utterly hair-raising tableaux.

The husband's attempts to break out gradually wilt under the electro-shock and the verbal assault of the bounty hunter, who slowly forces the two of them back down onto the floor. The chains then tighten up like constrictor snakes and after a final, triumphant cry from the bounty hunter, there is a flash of light and the trio disappears, leaving the room suddenly, deafeningly silent.

They have left behind two cloths -- more than wraps, less than blankets. One has a pattern of alternating wavy red & white lines. The second has a more complicated pattern which I cannot recall perfectly. I pick up 3 possibilities when I try to remember: (i) A series of blocky patterns, as if a Jersey cow's splotchy hide had been roughly pixelated, (ii) A random-ish dot pattern, or (iii) A sort of crude triptych telling the life history of Mr. & Mrs. Nefarious Duo.

I take the two cloths into the room where my mother- and father-in-law and the rest of the family are (minus Ariana and her best friend). I fill them in on the story and then show them the cloths. My mother-in-law (who in waking life has an expertise with textiles) has the idea to put them up together against the light and see what visuals emerge when the patterns of the two cloths combine. Hopefully this will give us some clues to help solve the mysteries of the day.

As we are doing this (pointing out interesting bits of the combined patterns), the phone rings in waking life and interrupts the dream.

(I welcome comments and ideas. Naturally, this dream is eminently ripe for re-entry and dreaming on to a conclusion. More on that as it develops!)


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, Tim!

If this were my dream:

My wife’s family has many deep stories / secrets. Very convoluted connections / plot lines / histories. Something that can be left in the past (perhaps now is the time), but not ever to be completely abandoned (sold).

The family is aware of a pair of ‘ghosts’ who could cause some trouble if they are allowed to take up residence / have a place in this history. Even if it weren’t for the bounty hunter, we wouldn’t allow them any space, but apparently they have other enemies from ‘further down the line’ who will not be cutting them any slack, and thus our problem is mitigated without any fuss on our part.

It is, however, important that we understand who they are and what the weaving of the patterns (!) has to tell us, and handy to have a ‘ringer’ in the family who thinks to bring the inspection of the patterns to another level by Combining them. In essence, looking at things from another dimension.

Glad to have you back Blogging!

- Donna :-)