Last night's series of dreams wasn't very interesting as far as the storylines go, but there were some funny details.
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I was somewhere with my parents, sister, and grandmother. We had been on some kind of outing and were getting ready to leave. We were in a weird, railroad-tunnel type structure (wood, with an elevated table-/rail-like structure running down the middle, with a small space to either side of it). We had almost gotten to the exit of it when a large javelina appeared in front of me. Either she (it was a she) knocked me over or I had already been sitting down on the middle structure--either way, she was looming over me. I was quite alarmed, having heard that javelinas could do a lot of damage. My dad indicated to me that it was my family responsibility to restrain the javelina while they got away, and then I would be able to extract myself (he wasn't throwing me under the bus, exactly; it seemed like the most sensible approach since I was last in line). So a tussle with the javelina ensued, with her eventually down in the little space beside the rails and me trying to immobilize her with my feet. The funny part was that she was speaking the whole time, although I can't remember what she was saying. I was struck by her rich vocabulary, though, and her excellent command of language (really, it was impressive, especially for a javelina).
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I was on a _______ (that's right, Alert Reader--group trip!). I was riding in a car and we were caravanning with another car. I don't really remember who else was there; probably a combination of past acquaintances and dream people. We drove up a very steep, winding road in some wooded hills/mountains and stopped at the apartment of a group member for a bathroom break. I went into the bathroom and started out with some freshening-up. I guess I was taking a while, because another group member came in (a girl I knew in the rather distant past) and started messing with the toilet. It was then that I noticed it wasn't an ordinary toilet. To begin with, because of the remote, hilly location it was some kind of special self-contained system, some sort of chemical toilet (she told me it was quite expensive). Also, it was "wheelchair-friendly", which meant that it had a rather complicated fold-out system that produced a ramp up to the toilet itself. She had helpfully decided to start converting the toilet back into the non-wheelchair version to speed things up for me. It was a rather cumbersome process, and--grossness alert--the fold-out portion had been covered with toilet paper lain flat that was soaked with urine [at least no excrement, but still, yuck!].
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I was on my way home from work and debating whether or not to go to a party I'd been invited to. I was very tired and had pretty much decided not to go. I stopped at a little health-food-y juice place/cafe on the way home (not a real-life place), and ordered some kind of snack. They had already started to ring me up when I decided to get a coffee too and try to go to the party after all (which I ended up clutching, un-drunk, for a good part of the dream before finally drinking it and rather shamefacedly just leaving the empty cup somewhere).The party was at a house in the country, given by a girl* I had gone to elementary and high school with. I went into a bedroom and found about 4 girls dressed up in bizarre, makeshift costumes (including something vaguely Mongolian, over jeans and tennis shoes). That made me think it was a costume party, but then I found that it was only the host's sister and a few of her friends, and the real party was outside.
On going outside I found a rather overwhelming scene. There were several folding tables with handwritten game rules on large pieces of paper (lots of cross-outs and corrections), and a huge crowd of people participating in some arcane game that I couldn't begin to grasp. It involved forming a large circle (like duck-duck-goose) and moving around it. Some people landed on spots with big, elaborate, ugly porcelain figurines of fantastical animals that were the prizes--they seemed very excited about them and lifted them up in the air. I gave up on figuring out the game and just people-watched. The most interesting thing there was a greyhound in a pastel crocheted jacket--she was very sweet.
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The last tidbit featured Picasso as a washed-up artist looking to re-launch his career. Apparently he hadn't actually died, just stopped producing. He was showing a few recent "works" which seemed to fall far short of his previous output (including some typed pages--?). I wasn't quite sure what to tell him, but he seemed very excited about re-branding himself in a new, more corporate environment.
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*An interesting detail here was that the girl and her sister were (surely still are) very pretty in real life, and my parents were excessively fond (to my mind) of pointing out how pretty they were. In this dream, they both had rather bad skin. This makes me a bit ashamed of my subconscious for being schadenfreude-y, especially since I liked them in real life and we were friends, despite my parents' harping on their looks.
Showing posts with label appearance anxiety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label appearance anxiety. Show all posts
Friday, May 7, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
extremely gross (Warning: Excrement Ahead)
Due to some snooze-button-pushing this morning I had a lot of weird dreams, although I can hardly remember most of them now. The part I do remember is exceedingly gross. You've been warned.
I probably don't need to specify it by now, but the context was a group trip. I had arrived at some intermediate destination and was just hanging around and waiting until it was time to move on. The setting was a sort of complex of makeshift buildings that had sprung up around a train station in a rural setting (the next leg of the trip was going to be by train).
I had one of my dogs with me (the well-behaved, sweet pit bull, not the giant unruly doberman). She had just been wandering around the place while I was waiting, and I hadn't been supervising her all that closely. Apparently she had "done her business" and a guy working there was looking at the results. He called me over while he was stirring around in it (with some kind of utensil), and pointed out to me that there was a smallish white worm sticking out the end of one of the *ahem* pieces. He was concerned about possible health issues that this might indicate, and somewhat chiding in his manner that I should have let me dog be infected with parasites. He abandoned his utensil and started to dig through the mess much more energetically, picking the whole thing apart with his fingers and separating out the (numerous) little worms. To make things even more grotesque, his very vigorous separating action was spraying out bits of both excrement and worms in a 10-foot radius.
I was horrified, both at the presence of the worms and the fact that I and all my possessions were now covered with a light speckling of dog excrement. I was much more calm about it than I would have been in real life, though, exhibiting a positively zen detachment. I guess that was in part because concern for my dog's health (she seemed perfectly fine, by the way) override regard for my personal hygiene, and in part because I knew that I didn't have time to clean up before the train was supposed to leave.
Having accomplished the highly unrealistic feat of rising above and ignoring my dog-doo-spattered state, once the train had started moving I went into the bathroom and set about trying to clean myself up a little. A curious detail is that normally in dreams where I'm doing personal hygiene/appearance work I'm stressed out about it because I'm starting from a point of needing to do a lot of remedial work on various skin problems (flakes, blemishes, you name it; my dream skin is almost invariably pretty bad). In this dream, though, I didn't have any problems other than excrement. Even in the dream I realized that this was an unusual and positive twist on the usual pattern.
I probably don't need to specify it by now, but the context was a group trip. I had arrived at some intermediate destination and was just hanging around and waiting until it was time to move on. The setting was a sort of complex of makeshift buildings that had sprung up around a train station in a rural setting (the next leg of the trip was going to be by train).
I had one of my dogs with me (the well-behaved, sweet pit bull, not the giant unruly doberman). She had just been wandering around the place while I was waiting, and I hadn't been supervising her all that closely. Apparently she had "done her business" and a guy working there was looking at the results. He called me over while he was stirring around in it (with some kind of utensil), and pointed out to me that there was a smallish white worm sticking out the end of one of the *ahem* pieces. He was concerned about possible health issues that this might indicate, and somewhat chiding in his manner that I should have let me dog be infected with parasites. He abandoned his utensil and started to dig through the mess much more energetically, picking the whole thing apart with his fingers and separating out the (numerous) little worms. To make things even more grotesque, his very vigorous separating action was spraying out bits of both excrement and worms in a 10-foot radius.
I was horrified, both at the presence of the worms and the fact that I and all my possessions were now covered with a light speckling of dog excrement. I was much more calm about it than I would have been in real life, though, exhibiting a positively zen detachment. I guess that was in part because concern for my dog's health (she seemed perfectly fine, by the way) override regard for my personal hygiene, and in part because I knew that I didn't have time to clean up before the train was supposed to leave.
Having accomplished the highly unrealistic feat of rising above and ignoring my dog-doo-spattered state, once the train had started moving I went into the bathroom and set about trying to clean myself up a little. A curious detail is that normally in dreams where I'm doing personal hygiene/appearance work I'm stressed out about it because I'm starting from a point of needing to do a lot of remedial work on various skin problems (flakes, blemishes, you name it; my dream skin is almost invariably pretty bad). In this dream, though, I didn't have any problems other than excrement. Even in the dream I realized that this was an unusual and positive twist on the usual pattern.
Monday, February 8, 2010
chubby and manly?
I hate to displace the great dream below, but if I don't I'm going to forget this. I've had three depressing low-self-esteem dreams lately, three nights in a row.
1.
All I really remember from this one is suddenly realizing that my posterior was WAY bigger than I had been thinking it was. This didn't really fundamentally shake my self-concept, it was just really weird and very surprising. My first thought was, "well, I guess I didn't need to be worried about having a lack in that area", and my second thought was, "oh, I guess I should start exercising more". I also wondered what other aspects of my self-image were totally inaccurate.
2.
This was the worst one, and I was discombobulated by this one for a while after waking. It was in the course of a much longer dream in which I was in Italy on an extended vacation with my parents, sister, and grandmother. We were staying in a huge rented villa. It was a very old building with a lot of weird rooms and strange layouts resulting from hundreds of years of add-ons and modifications. There was also some very unattractive carpeting and paint (think a church basement/fellowship hall with carpet that was cheap thirty years ago).
At some point I was attending a wedding in a nearby church. I don't know who this wedding was for, but the curious thing is how I was dressed. Normally in a dream like this I would have gone through an agonizing search through a weird assortment of very detailed clothes, but I don't remember a getting-dressed sequence in this one. I do remember what I was wearing: an oversized sports jersey (hockey?) tucked into a rose-colored below-the-knee early 90s pleated skirt and topped off with a squarish navy blue cardigan (??!). I had my hair straight and parted on the side, and I remember being satisfied with how I looked [although, at the same time, my always-awake editorial review board was strenuously objecting to the outfit].
I entered the church and wasn't sure which side I should sit on, not recognizing any of the guests. I had just chosen a spot when an older man stationed on the opposite side of the church said--loudly--"young man!" I looked around to see who he was addressing, and he repeated it. Somehow I realized that I was the "young man" in question, and I tried to make him understand that I was not a young man. He was not to be dissuaded, and getting more and more worked up. He said, "young man, don't argue with me!", and went on to bluster that my lack of a tie was inappropriate and that I was going to have to leave until I could produce a tie.
Needless to say, it was extremely humiliating and destabilizing. I think everyone else there pretended that nothing was happening as I beat my retreat.
Later on in the dream, I had an exchange with Lindsay Lohan, who seemed very depressed and a little needy. We talked about how cruel the "entertainment media" was to publish pictures of "Stars without Makeup" and dissect celebrities' appearances when they didn't look any worse than your average person on the street. I got tired of the conversation pretty quickly, but I felt bad for her and couldn't figure out how to extricate myself without hurting her feelings.
3.
The third dream involved a couple of my real-life friends. We were eating in a restaurant somewhere, and one of them (who in real life is the most tactful person you could ever hope to meet) commented on how much I was eating. She said, "yes, I've always been amazed at how much you can eat and how often. I could never eat that much. I guess that's why you're chubby with a belly." This was said with a perfectly straight face, as if it couldn't possibly be offensive to me, so I figured I had better respond in kind, as if it were just a normal discussion about anything else.
1.
All I really remember from this one is suddenly realizing that my posterior was WAY bigger than I had been thinking it was. This didn't really fundamentally shake my self-concept, it was just really weird and very surprising. My first thought was, "well, I guess I didn't need to be worried about having a lack in that area", and my second thought was, "oh, I guess I should start exercising more". I also wondered what other aspects of my self-image were totally inaccurate.
2.
This was the worst one, and I was discombobulated by this one for a while after waking. It was in the course of a much longer dream in which I was in Italy on an extended vacation with my parents, sister, and grandmother. We were staying in a huge rented villa. It was a very old building with a lot of weird rooms and strange layouts resulting from hundreds of years of add-ons and modifications. There was also some very unattractive carpeting and paint (think a church basement/fellowship hall with carpet that was cheap thirty years ago).
At some point I was attending a wedding in a nearby church. I don't know who this wedding was for, but the curious thing is how I was dressed. Normally in a dream like this I would have gone through an agonizing search through a weird assortment of very detailed clothes, but I don't remember a getting-dressed sequence in this one. I do remember what I was wearing: an oversized sports jersey (hockey?) tucked into a rose-colored below-the-knee early 90s pleated skirt and topped off with a squarish navy blue cardigan (??!). I had my hair straight and parted on the side, and I remember being satisfied with how I looked [although, at the same time, my always-awake editorial review board was strenuously objecting to the outfit].
I entered the church and wasn't sure which side I should sit on, not recognizing any of the guests. I had just chosen a spot when an older man stationed on the opposite side of the church said--loudly--"young man!" I looked around to see who he was addressing, and he repeated it. Somehow I realized that I was the "young man" in question, and I tried to make him understand that I was not a young man. He was not to be dissuaded, and getting more and more worked up. He said, "young man, don't argue with me!", and went on to bluster that my lack of a tie was inappropriate and that I was going to have to leave until I could produce a tie.
Needless to say, it was extremely humiliating and destabilizing. I think everyone else there pretended that nothing was happening as I beat my retreat.
Later on in the dream, I had an exchange with Lindsay Lohan, who seemed very depressed and a little needy. We talked about how cruel the "entertainment media" was to publish pictures of "Stars without Makeup" and dissect celebrities' appearances when they didn't look any worse than your average person on the street. I got tired of the conversation pretty quickly, but I felt bad for her and couldn't figure out how to extricate myself without hurting her feelings.
3.
The third dream involved a couple of my real-life friends. We were eating in a restaurant somewhere, and one of them (who in real life is the most tactful person you could ever hope to meet) commented on how much I was eating. She said, "yes, I've always been amazed at how much you can eat and how often. I could never eat that much. I guess that's why you're chubby with a belly." This was said with a perfectly straight face, as if it couldn't possibly be offensive to me, so I figured I had better respond in kind, as if it were just a normal discussion about anything else.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
colorful dresses and makeup mishaps
I had yet another dream where I was picking out clothes and trying to get ready. I was at my parents' house, and I was supposed to be participating somehow with my sister in the church service at my parents' church*. I guess I hadn't packed any appropriate clothing, because I was looking through the closet in my sister's old room. There was a huge selection of dresses, so huge that they were stored on one of those rotating racks like at a drycleaner's. I could tell that most of the clothes had been found at thrift stores. They were all really interesting, with a lot of prints and unusual color combinations. Some of them were overtly "ethnic" and others not, but they all managed to be unusual while still being very wearable and not too weird or cutesy. I was really impressed that she had amassed such a huge collection of interesting clothes, and ended up spending too much time browsing. I finally settled on a black dress** and realized I hadn't left much time for the rest of my preparations.
At that point I looked in the mirror and realized that I looked better than I would have thought given my lack of cosmetics, and also that I was a very young-looking Asian girl with bangs. Apparently my sister was also Asian, and she looked much older and more sophisticated. I worried that, especially if I didn't have time for much cosmetic work, people would think we were mother and daughter.
I guess I had time to start on the cosmetic work, because the last thing I remember was putting a mascara wand back into a bottle of makeup because I was in a hurry and being frustrated that I had probably messed up both products.
I think it's weird that I have these clothing/preparation dreams so often. I love the clothing parts and wish I could remember the details when I wake up; the preparation parts I could do without, though. I wish I could come up with an interpretation for them that doesn't point to unhealthy appearance anxiety.
*That reminds me that I periodically have dreams where I'm supposed to play the piano for their church (something that happened a lot growing up) but haven't prepared anything and am trying to figure out how to muddle through. These dreams feature a weird combination of performance anxiety and hubristic overconfidence that I'll just be able to improvise something baroque-y.
**Why did I choose something black, with all the beautiful colored and printed options?
At that point I looked in the mirror and realized that I looked better than I would have thought given my lack of cosmetics, and also that I was a very young-looking Asian girl with bangs. Apparently my sister was also Asian, and she looked much older and more sophisticated. I worried that, especially if I didn't have time for much cosmetic work, people would think we were mother and daughter.
I guess I had time to start on the cosmetic work, because the last thing I remember was putting a mascara wand back into a bottle of makeup because I was in a hurry and being frustrated that I had probably messed up both products.
I think it's weird that I have these clothing/preparation dreams so often. I love the clothing parts and wish I could remember the details when I wake up; the preparation parts I could do without, though. I wish I could come up with an interpretation for them that doesn't point to unhealthy appearance anxiety.
*That reminds me that I periodically have dreams where I'm supposed to play the piano for their church (something that happened a lot growing up) but haven't prepared anything and am trying to figure out how to muddle through. These dreams feature a weird combination of performance anxiety and hubristic overconfidence that I'll just be able to improvise something baroque-y.
**Why did I choose something black, with all the beautiful colored and printed options?
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