Blue_Opossum

Night of December 16, 1966. Friday.



This was recurring from when I was very young. I believe there were a few versions that occurred in the middle of the night. In one version, in one journal, I had decided that the opossums may actually be small foxes (even though that really was not very reasonable), so I wrote a poem called “Foxes in the Trees” in real life, yet later decided that I should not change things, so I came to have an internal self-fulfilling symbolism of the opossums being the “princes of the trees”. Being watched by mysterious animal eyes is probably a universal theme in children’s dreams regardless of race or culture, but I am only guessing that based on my own early experiences in dream work.

It is late at night and I am in the woods, I assume in an area of Chipmunk Coulee farther from where I had actually lived in that region.

I am near a tree in which there are a few opossums on the branches but all I can see are their eerie glowing eyes (and in later versions, the lighter heart-shaped areas of their faces). It seems these opossums are some sort of guardians that are supposed to follow me and protect me in some unknown way. I pretend not to notice them because I do not want to cause trouble or perhaps draw attention to myself in this unfamiliar landscape.

In the distance is a long, winding path of an unusual (almost a sequence of Z-shaped turns) path where some areas seem to be dead forests. The moon (or sun in a rather “bad” dream rendering?) seems to be a black shadow hanging in the sky rather than the “real” moon or sun. This unusual area seems to be very similar to my “Empty Boots” dream found here: http://blue-opossum.tumblr.com/post/...75/empty-boots