In article
<4b4cfde8-4ee5-4826-9298-106f2448f68d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
aimeeault@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> To preface this dream: In real life, there is this professor I have a
> thing for. I've lately been trying to decide if I should actually do
> anything about this attraction towards him, as in... letting him know.
>
> In the dream, I go to his office hours, which seemed to be at an
> inappropriate hour. It definitely wasn't nighttime but it was either
> very early in the morning (say, 6AM) or very late in the evening (say,
> 6PM). I can't tell. The reason I suspected it was early or late was
> because the air outside had this purplish hue, so it was nature
> telling me what time it was, nothing as modern as clocks. I kind of
> had the feeling it was later rather than early, though. But I have
> nothing to back that up... just a gut feeling.
>
> Normally, I would expect his office hours to be mid-afternoon and this
> feeling rang true in the dream too. I KNEW it was a bit odd. I go to
> his office but I don't feel "right" there. It's not really his office--
> there is a sliding bamboo privacy door but not a real, solid wooden
> door. When he pulls the door to the side, opening the room to me, I
> sit down outside in the hallway. This way, there is this very literal
> line between the two of us... in the room, out of the room.
>
> The words I really want to tell him in my dream? "I want you. I want
> to **** you." The words I want to articulate instead to move to that
> point? "I really enjoy your class. You are a wonderful professor." The
> words I manage to get out before the entire tone of the conversation
> ****fts from potential seduction to condescending paternal lecturing?
> "Um ahhh ... I..." It's that feeling I get where I am ad-libbing
> something very beautiful I have rehearsed and the adrenaline pumping
> through me ruins it and makes me forget it all. I'll add on briefly
> that this is a professor of rhetoric I am talking about, which could
> only possibly add to the interpretation, but I don't really think it's
> an im****tant factor. If it were any other professor, it'd be the same
> dream, I think.
>
> I am going to seduce him but it's completely out of character for me
> and my dream knows it. I am sitting on the floor. He is sitting in a
> chair. I don't have the confidence to be on the same level as he is.
>
> He smiles warmly at me and says, "I want to make sure you're getting
> the most out of my class. That you're understanding the concepts." He
> says this in the same offensive way that people talk down to shy/quiet
> people as if they are children. I sense that he does not feel I am as
> intelligent as I really am. I am on par with a sorority girl in his
> mind. It's a lost cause. In reality, when I interpret this dream, I
> realize this kind of response is a normal response from a professor.
> They are not personally invested in their students and aside from
> students who constantly communicate with them, are unaware of much
> about their students' comprehension of the materials. I am offended in
> the dream because it greatly deters me from my ultimate objective to
> seduce him. The more academically rigid he is, the more stupid I feel
> for being ***ually attracted. As if ***ual attraction were only for
> morons.
>
> I hem and haw, trying to get across, "No, I completely do. I love your
> class. I do all the readings and I'm always awed by your lectures..."
> but again, it just comes out as garbled sentence fragments that amount
> to nothing except a confirmation on his part that I am an idiot. I am
> very flustered, mildly annoyed by his misunderstanding of who I am. I
> feel that he isn't giving me the time and attention I deserve.
>
> Another student appears and I continue to sit there on the floor while
> they have a conversation about a graduate seminar he's teaching. She
> [the other student] leaves without me ever catching her name or face
> and he excuses himself to attend a dinner party.
>
> I laugh to myself because, what a coincidence, I too am attending a
> dinner party in the dream! Not possibly the same one he is attending
> because it is put together by the family of an ex-boyfriend of mine
> from high school. Surprisingly, when I get there, the professor is
> there. He knows people there. It is a huge banquet taking place in
> what looks like a cleared out, nicely cleaned, and well-lit ... barn.
> The dream radiates hues of brown and orange... all the decor... brown.
> Accents of orange on dinner plates. Orangish straw-colored lighting.
> It all kind of rubs me as a modernized version of a set from Little
> House on the Prairie. The table is several tables actually and side-by-
> side runs a good 50 feet, capable of seating maybe 100 people. Kind of
> reminds me of the first Thanksgiving.
>
> I don't see my ex-boyfriend there, but the professor is the only guy I
> know and I feel I can cling to that so I try to sit by him at the very
> end of the table.. sort of in this corner that is a little dark, right
> by the big barn door. I get away with this for a while but then out of
> nowhere, everyone wants to trade seats. The tables become rearranged
> so that they no longer form one solid line but now individually split
> up tables in a random configuration about the room. I hate it because
> I don't know anyone there and the potential for change is bothering
> me. The way it was before was already bad as it was, but now I'd be
> separated from the only person I "knew" there, who in actuality, I
> don't even really KNOW on any personal level.
>
> While we are all milling about the room, reorganizing seats, my
> teacher introduces me to his wife, who has arrived late for the party
> by a good hour or so. I didn't think he was married. He says, "This is
> my wife, Amy. We're not really married. But we've been together for so
> many years that we may as well be." She has 3 or 4 children with her.
> All very young, toddlers. His. Except I don't see him really
> associating with the children. Or her much aside from this very
> political, kind front... nothing personal. I think, "Ugh no. Amy? My
> name is Aimee. Amy is just a boring variation of the name Aimee. She's
> boring." I don't really know this though.. it's merely denial. I'm
> disappointed.
>
> No one likes me there. I'm too hard-to-grasp, distant, the only person
> I am willing to really open up to is my teacher, but he's too
> scattered, not necessarily disinterested in me, but interested and
> seeing and talking to everyone. To me, it felt like this was my mind's
> way of comprehending the personality I associate with this guy. He has
> taught not only all over the country but in Africa as well. Me? I've
> been well... not so far as he has. It's not that I didn't want to talk
> to other people but I just had no idea how to break in to these groups
> and as a result, I was isolated and by myself. The party-goers are all
> older than me. I'm in my very early 20s. They're all in their late 30s
> to mid-40s. The women look kind of homely and country mom-ish...
> large, unflattering sweaters with cats. Mom jeans. Perms. I'm not
> really that interested in getting to know any of them because just
> from a superficially visual perspective, we have nothing in common.
>
> Everyone begins to leave, the party is ending. I don't remember eating
> anything. I stand outside in the parking lot (this building was not
> actually a barn after all despite its interior largely resembling
> one). As I stand outside in the parking lot, behind the building, I
> feel extremely lonely and depressed. I am standing on a large hill the
> overlooks the parking lot as cars one-by-one trickle out. The parking
> lot is dark and shadowed by the building and as they enter the street,
> everything is flooded by sunlight. Everyone is taking off in their
> cars and it feels like I have nothing or no one to move forward from
> that moment with.
>
> I decide to go home. I'm not in the city I live in from this point
> on... I'm actually in a city my parents live in about 150 miles east.
> I am on foot, not really sure where I am walking... supposedly home...
> but I don't really know for sure. I am standing near the Intercoastal
> Waterway as I look to the sky and notice a tornado forming. I'm
> standing on the side of a major highway in the grass. There is a huge
> bridge ahead of me. Several people scream in unison, people that also
> happen to randomly be walking around by the highway, but I just stand
> there, paralyzed with fear. The tornado is a dark funnel amidst an
> eery cloudy sunlight... the foreground is nothing more than ominous
> dark clouds however. Kind of like "a light at the end of the tunnel."
>
> As I see the tornado whip around in the distance, I notice a
> silhouette of a man being levitated off the ground by the wind of the
> tornado. He doesn't get sucked into the funnel. It is more like the
> tornado lifts him and then punts him away. I see him fly a few feet
> above the tornado, so he is likely at least 100 feet off the ground,
> and then for whatever reason, I see a large "X" form over his
> silhouette. He then plummets to the Earth and I cry at the sight,
> knowing he'll die as soon as he hits the ground.
>
> I feel like several people saw it happen, but I don't really see any
> of the other people because my eyes are so locked on him that my
> peripheral vision is nonexistent. I turn around after he starts to
> fall and it hits me that there are several tornados. I don't know
> where they all came from because there wasn't any sign of inclement
> weather during the dinner party... it was all unexpected.
>
> I feel the wind pu****ng me in all different directions because the
> tornados are forming from East, West, North, and South and moving
> randomly. I feel the wind is obscuring my vision and I am suddenly
> pushed inside a building with a basement. I am in the basement. It's a
> bar mitzvah. There are young children in dress clothes, crying.
> They're maybe 4, 5, 6 years old. Boys and girls. Maybe 5 of them.
> They're lost in the whirlwind of excitement caused by the tornados. I
> grab their hands the best I can and I drag them to safety, this small
> covered alcove in the basement. I tell them to duck and cover, and
> show them how, but I don't do it myself after I see they're safely
> doing it correctly. I just watch the building around us, and I see the
> ceiling begin to crumble. And I wake up.
>
> I was sort of taken by the presence of children in the dream. At
> first, I am treated like a child. Then I see the children of the man
> treating me like a child. Then I am an adult helping children. I don't
> really think the dream is calling any attention to the process of me
> "growing up," because I went through that a year or two ago... I'm
> actually maybe a year older than the average college senior undergrad
> and I already have a full-time job and my own home so I know that
> whatever this is about, it's not that, despite how it may seem as if
> so.
>
> I almost wonder if the dream is about feelings that I am just not
> doing as much with my life as I hoped. I am beginning to develop
> commitment phobia to the city I live in... which makes the professor
> actually a really good choice this dream as someone who has seen the
> world--I idealize that. I still want to travel before I settle down
> but I feel trapped here by a job and a boyfriend. I feel like maybe
> the teacher represents one single path I could take that I am
> unnecessarily committing myself to without even knowing it that well
> and as a result, I am closing myself off to a whole nutritious
> "banquet" of other options merely because I am judging them at face
> value. I missed out on all the good food and people because I was so
> fixated on staying close to him since he broadly fit into my zone of
> familiarity. As a side note, I think the tornado is really just
> telling me, "Woah, hold on. You have to make decisions that integrate
> well with the rest of your life or else your whole life is going to be
> one big windy mess." And yet, I have no idea what the children have to
> do with any of this.
>
>
> Aimee
The children are your potential. Care for them, nurture them, guide
them, and you will do yourself a great service.
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