Blue_Opossum

Morning of July 28, 2014. Monday.



I am in an undefined indoor location in my dream but with somewhat of a sense of being in the Barolin Street house (where we moved from in the beginning of 2008), though there is also a lesser awareness of the Gellibrand Street apartment in Clayfield (our first home together). Zsuzsanna is present in some scenes.

My attention is on a plastic doll of 18 inches of the generic kind that represents a female toddler in standing position, dressed in 1890s fashion. Apparently, I had gotten this doll in the mail recently. I notice a number of signatures of former schoolmates and friends, most written in either blue or black ink. The handwriting is mostly on the lower arms, hands, and legs of the doll.

Wrapped sparsely around parts of the doll is at least a four-foot length of sections of retied “wire”. Though it looks like barbed wire, it may be craft sinew. There are only a few twists around each limb and a few around the body. The “wire” firstly seems soft even at the junctures of the knots.

There is also a small booklet that is tied on with a small thin ribbon around the neck, which seems to hold a series of messages from different people over time and intended for anyone that temporarily has the doll before they mail it to someone else, the tone of the writing somewhat like that found in a typical school yearbook.

The doll also apparently serves as a fancy friendship book (FB), which is sent from person to person for each to add their contact details. (This was common practice for penpals, though some of whom annoyingly and intentionally collected the booklets and foldables of various themes, styles, and materials instead of passing them on). I am not sure who to send it to. I read a message from Toby, my best friend from school. He talks about what a good idea this “friendship book” is.

Later, there is a second doll, seemingly of which has not passed via as many people. The second one has sharp and thick barbed wire around it in a few areas of the limbs and body as well as a small part of the head. A length of it is disentangled and somewhat loose.

I consider sending both of the “friendship books” on their way, but I feel a bit uncertain because of the potential harm the projecting barbed wire (on the second doll) may present for those I send it to (or anyone handling the package itself assuming it is wrapped in paper rather than being sent in a box). I test the possible danger by moving my hand against the wire to make sure it is flatter and not of a potential to accidentally cut someone, but I soon come to believe that it would not be a good idea to mail either doll.

My dream starts to lose cohesion. When I look at the second doll again, it has transformed into a flat cardboard cut-out doll of the same frontal appearance. It begins to separate into sections and copies of those same sections, relating to a potential to then rebuild it, even the nose then needing to fit into the face of which has a cut-out circle where the nose cut-out would fit into, as well as a redundant additional full face cut-out. Eventually, the aspects of my dream change to where the transformed doll is apparently now a paper tole or 3D decoupage project. The “barbed wire” seems no longer present or relevant. I am not sure how to proceed, as it now seems a more time-consuming task to meet the responsibility of passing on the school reunion addresses, messages, and signatures.

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One layer of my dream was an incidental distortion of “wiring someone” as in sending them a message. However, barbed wire is associated with a fence and a fence typically represents a division between dreaming and waking (especially the higher preconscious level). Additionally, a doll typically symbolizes the status of being asleep and inactive while in the dream state and thus is not usually a symbol of real life relevance. I consider this dream important with respect to that understanding as it also redundantly validates a doll as of a specific level of unconsciousness due to the parallel symbolism of being “of a fence” (liminal space divider) as well as how being unconscious limits the movement of the physical body. There is an additional revelatory feature of the friendship book element regarding the transpersonal nature of the preconscious (closer to the collective unconscious than either the dream self or conscious self identity, relating to both static and dynamic influences from other people, though depending on the personal will of the individual).

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It was my dream self’s focus of intent that transformed the doll into flat cardboard and thus changed the original nature of my dream. Recall that I was deliberately checking to make sure the wire was not sharply protruding outward, so this was non-lucid dream control, not lucidity as I was unaware that I was dreaming in this case.

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Revised, clarified, and simplified for the casual reader on Sunday, 22 October 2017.

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