Sunday, October 23, 2011

Fence

Above is another set of drawings inspired from a dream collected at Dream Harvester during Artbeat.

Dream of Man with Top Hat

The drawing above is inspired by one of the dreams I received during Artbeat for Dream Harvester.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Break Hold

A Recent dream:

An old friend from high school (whom I randomly met on the street) offered to give me a ride to the airport.  I think I had alternative means of getting to the airport, but I opted to go with the friend.  I had many hours until I had to be there. Of course, with all that time at hand, it had to be squandered.  It felt inevitable.  In the end, I had forgotten my medications and I had to be driven back home, and around the city, until I finally made it to the airport.  I was going to fly to Israel to see family, and visit the gravesite of my recently passed grandmother.  

I remember feeling bad, that my friend drove me all around the city. The past couple days, during my waking hours I started thinking about my behavior in this recent dream.  Do I expect people to serve me?  I felt that there was something in the behavior of this dream that felt so wrong.  It seemed so strange, yet predictable of my behavior, to wait, to need to extend the favor? I wonder what this ties to?  What was I resisting to let go of?  

Back to waking life, I am going to Israel this year.  It is hard to imagine what it will be like to visit my grandmother in a place of empty bodies.  She was terrified of gravesites.  I have actually already gone there two years ago when my grandfather, her husband, passed away.  He is burred in a plot right behind her. 

Last fall/ winter I painted a large canvas, 60w" by 74h" called "Song of Songs."  I painted it for her.  I started it before she became very ill.  When I was thinking about the images for this painting, I knew it had to have a ram with female figure holding a cell phone.  I was also certain that it had to have some text from the love poem to G-d, Shir v Shirim (song of songs).  I only found out later that it is common in Sephardic tradition to sing this poem at a widow's funeral.  

Sometimes intuition about those we love speaks so loudly, even when oceans cause physical separation. 

Friday, October 14, 2011

Omg I had a dream about you!

About a month ago, a dear friend of mine sent me an email    . . . “omg I had a dream about you! I didn't want to tell you this dream, it wasn't very pleasant, but since you're into dreams these days, I thought I should share it with you. My husband did tell me that dreams usually say more about the person dreaming then about the characters in the dream.”  This is a reference to Carl Jung’s theory on dreams.

We met a week later to discuss the dream. 

“So I and some other people were at a high school parking lot, and someone told me you were in     trouble, and trapped in a car. We found you in parked car in the high school parking lot.  When we opened the door, you were completely frozen and even your nose fell off. It is usually the first to go when one is frozen to death. We were all shaking and crying.  It was horrible.”

It seemed to me, in this dream, that I represented the importance of social status, seeing that I was found dead in a high school parking lot. High school can represent acceptance by our peers. I know my friend had a big event coming up that week, and I’m sure the excitement and fear of the event was tied to this dream. But on the other side, I hoped the dream was not foretelling a bad omen for her or me. 


Maybe there is more to this dream.  I do think it was brave of my friend to open the car door and look face to face with the noseless corpse. In the dream world, could I as a corpse have something to offer my friend?  

Here is a link to an article on leaning from our nightmares: “Don’t Fear Vulnerability” by Rodger Kamenetz.  This article in the New York Times is part of a series called “Should We Manipulate Our Dreams.”