November 12, 2004

• The dream started out in a college or university.  I’m a student
  there.  Some sort of job fair or career exhibition was going on,
  with various tables and booths set up in corridors.   The
  booth where I was hanging out featured psychology.  The instructor
  had been showing a video of an “innovative” (that was the claim made in
  the dream) form of therapy, involving group interaction, role-playing,
  nothing all that new.

  At the end of the show, I looked at her.  She read my mind and
  said, “I bet you wish I were teaching that.”  Then she went into a
  defensive rap about school policy, standard curricula,  etc.

  A group of my friends came by and we all walked among some of the
  exhibits before settling into a conversational grouping of chairs and
  couches in a sunny lounge.  The group included a man with whom I
  had a steady, committed relationship (possibly married), and a woman
  who had been making moves on me.

  As we were discussing the exhibits, another man came along.  I
  recognized his face, but wasn’t sure where I knew him from.  He
  took my hands, lifted me from my seat, and gave me a warm, close
  hug.  He was obviously sexually aroused.  [and isn't that
  uncharacteristically sedate, discrete phrasing for me?  Never
  mind.  Crude lewdness would not further the relating of my story
  here.]  Then he drew back, still holding onto my shoulders, looked
  at my face and asked, “Don’t you remember me?”

  There was an awkward moment, of trying to place him.  My boyfriend
  or husband was looking on, and I stammered something
  non-committal.  Then the scene shifted.

  The whole group of us had signed on to an odd project, an expedition by
  railroad.  The purpose and destination were unstated.  What
  makes it particularly odd was the private nature of the purpose and the
  train itself.  We were not just traveling on a passenger
  train.  We had accomodations on a privately-owned train which also
  included freight cars, a lab, etc., and had contracted to use
  commercial rails.  The machinery was the property of the organizer
  and leader.  Our “skipper” was a slender man with short iron-gray hair
  and a neat vandyke beard.

  We had covered some distance when we stopped at night on the edge of a
  city for what was apparently a routine inspection by railroad
  employees.  They found some oil leaking from a damaged seam in a
  fuel car, and shut down our trip until it was repaired.  It
  reminded me of a similar event eleven years ago when Doug and I and a
  ferry-load of other passengers were stuck for three days in Juneau
  harbor waiting for parts and repair on the state ferry we were riding
  down the Inside Passage.

  The skipper and I were sitting on the edge of one car, looking across
  the coupler at the damaged tanker.  He was troubled by the delay
  and extra expense, and I felt troubled as well.  I was trying to
  decide whether to rough it and camp out somehow on the cheap, or to use
  my credit cards and find some comfortable accomodations for the
  duration.  Our companions were coming by singly or in pairs,
  asking about the situation, and discussing plans.  The “stranger
  from my past” and the woman who was romanically interested in me both
  expressed a desire to share a room should I get one.

  I gave them both the hairy eyeball and said, “I bet you’ll change your
  minds when I tell you I’m sixty years old.”  They did change their
  minds, and left together.  But the skipper offered to share his
  room with me.  And that was when I woke up.

  I might have known, with Neptune and Mercury both aspecting my big
  intensity stellium, as well as Jupiter and Saturn, that I’d be getting
  some vivid and interesting dreams.  This one makes a lot of sense
  to me, but I don’t feel like parsing it for public consumption. 
  Figure it out for yourselves.  Interesting, I thought, when I got
  up from that dream this morning and found a comment from fatgirlpink, saying that lately my “words are rolling like a freight train.”

  ---

  Last night’s meeting was interesting although the topic taken from the
  daily meditation was a bullshit analogy between surrender and
  infatuation and between acceptance and love. 

  My van passengers from the rehab center are still showing the good
  humor and high morale that was conspicuously absent in the group that
  was there before.   We had fun on the ride to the meeting and
  back to the ranch.  Some of them head-tripped about taking off in
  the van and seeing how far we’d get before we got caught.  They
  were wondering how we’d get gas money, since the ranch keeps all their
  funds locked up.  I let them work on the problem and didn’t
  mention my credit cards.  The van had almost a full tank. 
  I’m betting the call would have gone out to Troopers and we’d have been
  stopped before that tank ran out.  The van has the ranch’s name
  lettered BIG on the sides.

  ---

  The drive home was harrowing, through patches of thick fog and over
  patches of black ice.  It was above freezing and wet on the way
  down the valley in the afternoon.  I saw some of my neighbors
  still shoveling the wet heavy foot-and-a-half of snow from their
  driveways.  Our driveway is mercifully short.  The driveway
  at Elvenhurst is long, but when we lived there we’d shorten it in
  winter by parking near the mouth of it.  Much easier to shovel a
  narrow foot path from the end of the driveway to the house, than shovel
  the whole drive.

  I parked my car at Greyfox’s cabin and he drove us around as I shopped
  before he dropped me at the ranch to pick up the van.  When we got
  back to his place, I had to scrape frost from my windows before I
  started home. 

  I saw cars in the ditch in several places on the way home, and there
  was one big van nosed into the berm, just sitting there dark on the
  shoulder, apparently abandoned.  One guy who passed me going fast
  spun out and went into the ditch.  He just slid, didn’t roll or
  anything, so I didn’t try to stop.  Another time, I was slowed
  behind someone ahead of me and another car passed us both then lost it
  and started fish-tailing and almost hit the car in front of me before
  he got it straight.

  In a few places I lost all traction and control briefly.  All I
  had going for me was forward momentum and steady nerves.  I had
  this mantra going in my head:  “steady on the gas, steer into the
  skid….”   I made it, no mishaps.

  Oddly, the temp up here was warmer than the lower end of the
  valley.  Our thermometer was reading just above freezing when I
  got here.  It hasn’t changed this morning.

  Doug was in bed and the fire was almost out when I got home.  He
  got up about the time I went to bed.  Despite having started
  nodding out over my book before I turned off the light, I had the usual
  fatigue-related trouble getting to sleep, and as usual my sleep was
  interrupted several times last night.  Now I have two weeks to
  recover before I do it again.  My next scheduled drive is
  Thanksgiving.

   

  • 1:45 pm
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