November 13, 2008
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In the dream…
I met this man through mutual friends. We shared coffee and talked about politics, psychology, society and culture: some of my favorite topics for casual conversation. There was nothing amiss with him until he isolated me, and not at first even then.
On our way to someplace else, we stopped by his place, a garage apartment behind his landlord’s home, so he could show me an invention he was working on. It was a “novelty” item, a pocket fish, supposed to give the impression of a fish flopping in someone’s shirt pocket. He expressed frustration and dissatisfaction with his progress in achieving a realistic effect, and I commented on the presence of a nickel (5 cent coin) showing on the body of the fish through the fabric of the pocket.
Our conversation turned to other matters [EDIT: I said something about having gotten a good night's sleep with the help of a couple of ibuprofens, and he said he never got any sleep without powerful sedatives.] and I mentioned his birthday coming in May. He corrected me and said he had been born on July 11, 1951. Then, without any logical transition, he turned hostile and threatened me with a gun.
The next part of the action becomes confused and frantic. In fleeing from him, I practically tripped over the landlord’s family sitting in lawn chairs in the yard. I yell at them to call 911, and then there was a struggle, the cops arrived, and then leave with a man all trussed up — but it turns out not to have been the right man, so I ended up being chased by and struggling with the guy all over again.
Then I woke up.
Comments (8)
Before anyone asks: No, I don’t know what it all means. The pocket fish is a total mystery, and the date of his birth has no particular meaning for me.
The only thing that I might be able to trace is the pursuit and violence. I read a lot of detective fiction and thrillers.
It’s always weird to the day having has a dream like this.
Hmm, the pocket fish. It made me think of those fortune fish things. Where you lay it flat on your hand it will lay flat, curl up or flip over.
are you having problems in dealing with your own problems?
take one thing at a time and sort it out… then when its on your terms you won’t feel like running away.
Not that you ever walk away.
The fish represents alot of things
@OwenHiggins - I’m basically a Jungian when it comes to dream interpretation. In my reality, a fish is food and a nickel is money that means nothing unless it comes in big bunches. Novelty fishes with nickels stuck to their sides, flopping in pockets… incomprehensible.
Running from an attacker is something I would really like to be able to do. In physical reality, I cannot run. “Stand and fight” is not even a practical matter for me. It would be more like sit and fight. Maybe that part of the dream was a wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Thanks for the perspective.
I wondered if you recognized him at all….but you already answered that.
Dreams are peculiar things. Once I even became head-over-boots infatuated with some Japanese girl, and I literally woke up crying because we were on a train, and something bad happened to her. I was AZN too, which was kinda weird.
Kathy, did you have any anxieties the previous day, or before you went to sleep? Or a lot of emotional arousal in general? It might have manifested itself in your heart-pounding dream. Supposedly, that’s how the mind “works through” these things and takes the psychological sting out of them.
@Apocatastasis - No emotional turmoil or stress, but a lot of physical exertion and fatigue. In my reality, dream imagery can come from one or more of these three sources: things experienced but not processed; emotions that need to be integrated and processed; and “inspiration” or “psychic” input. When I’m gaming a lot, I dream games and wake disgusted that I couldn’t save my progress. When I’m reading something absorbing (right now, I’m in the middle of Altered Carbon, an excellent futuristic detective story full of violence), imagery from the books gets into my dreams just as if I’d experienced it IRL. The date and the pocket fish come out of left field, but everything else in the dream can be explained by recent “experiences.” I googled that date, and found nothing of significance. Where’s the nickel come from? It’s a puzzle.
@SuSu - sources: the former two were the ones I was thinking about.
I share that perspective on dreams.