Blue_Opossum

Morning of January 18, 1969. Saturday.



I am apparently in Africa and it is mostly early in the morning in the several scenes. The landscape does not have many features; mostly tall grasses in sparse areas and slightly muddy both brown and gray ground areas and a small pond or two. There is a dirt road (rut road, mostly) that winds through some areas. A few rusty old abandoned jeeps are sitting around in random locations, one on its side. There seems to be at least two villages in the region, although a bit more like ghost towns and with only a few people. At one point, there is a slight concern about, when driving a jeep, how would you know about a lion coming out from one side of the tall grasses? But that is not really a strong focus for any part. There is also a point at which one road suddenly cuts off just prior to an embankment with a drop of several feet (as such, how could a rut road have developed there - or perhaps that explains some of the wrecked jeeps).

There is something about Erin Moran (seemingly older in my dream) having “two lives” or two separate identities in a sort of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” fashion; one as the young daughter of the veterinarian (“Daktari”), the other as a “frog queen” or even “were-frog” of sorts. I think I see her as such at one point (in silhouette only). No one else knows her secret but me. The frogs are many but not that threatening and mostly seem to cause problems relative to the maintenance of the road somehow (that is, leaving extra “potholes” from their movement over the soft ground). I ride in a jeep and a greenish gray Land Rover (which I never saw one of in real life until coming to Australia in 1994). There is evidence and concern regarding rain causing jeep engine problems and “more frogs coming out” which apparently like to live in the engines when leaving their pond. (It is as if it is “normal” for a few frogs to be in a jeep engine, but a lot more will cause problems. Since frogs hop, this is likely an odd distortion of a hamster wheel upsized to imply running an engine.) Eventually it seems like the towns are completely deserted.

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Key points:

An anagram (though I am not implying that anagrams always mean something) of “Erin Moran” is “Inner Roma”. (My “mystery girl”, who was an exact copy down to the smallest detail, from heritage to appearance to unusual mixed accent, of my real-life wife Zsuzsanna long before I met her, was and is Roma.)

Additionally, to augment the above point, Erin Moran, though a very rare character in my dreams, seemed to be a “stand-in” for Brenda W, who, in turn, was a precognitive “stand-in” for my wife-to-be. Brenda was the only sincere friend (and only mutually intimate one) who remained as such from early childhood on until my move back to Wisconsin (as even my best friend Toby and I had falling-outs at times). Zsuzsanna in fact, wrote a story in her childhood called W’s Dream (using Brenda’s actual last name without knowing of her - in addition to the identical drawing of Susan R’s).

I have already explained the frog theme in another entry to a greater extent but will simply repeat here that it seems some sort of reversal of (certain versions of) “The Frog Prince” story. However, because most features in dreams symbolically or metaphorically represent the concurrent level of consciousness, frogs are also a waking precursor and symbol of the preconscious (unlike fish, which would be the deeper unconscious unless near the surface) because they start out as tadpoles but then emerge onto land, consequentially symbolizing the dreamer leaving the dream state. “Frogs in the engine” validate this, as an engine represents dawning consciousness and the power of critical thinking.

After consideration over a number of years, I have decided that the position of a vehicle in a dream may be a subtle play on physical position in bed though not necessarily concurrent, a jeep on its side being an interesting possible play on spooning (and was validated as such regarding at least a few of my own dreams). Also, I have noted that a car accident in a dream sometimes is a metaphor for a person rolling over in their sleep (which has occurred and been validated in several of my own dreams).

Rust is one of those dream features that is quite rare. Presently I assume it refers to the passage of time or even the decay of the dream state in its last segment as it was as such in metaphor in at least one dream (that being “Wool Into Rusty Iron“, which represented waking from the dream state as most final segments do with multiplicity-based scenarios).

A lion, which there was only a very vague concern about here (and no imagery of one), represents coalescence (as does anything that can either cover up or swallow the dreamer, including sand but mostly excluding water in my case) and the return to whole consciousness. However, the mechanism here did not manifest and my dream became a bit more vivid at that point as a result (that is, higher up into preconsciousness, also represented by the presence of more and more frogs, which has occurred in several other dreams in the same way, one of them becoming fully lucid).

The “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” theme is an obvious play on unconscious vs. conscious or dream “reality” vs. waking reality.

A town becoming less populated or deserted over time is an obvious play on the waking transition.