The Fox's Secret

In this post I want to share a very short and memorable part of a longer dream that has already faded from memory.  The narrative itself won’t take much time but I think that there is a great deal to unpack from this very brief moment.  Here is the narrative:

I am sitting in the second row of seats in a van.  I am next to the sliding door to the back part of the van and it is already open.  There are two men and at least one young adult/adolescent.  The two men are in the front two seats and one of them is my dad.  I am not sure who the others are.  Both my dad and I get out of the van and I realize we are in a parking lot on the North Side of Pittsburgh.  We are next to a parking garage on our right.  Looking to the left, I see Three Rivers Stadium.  At first this feels normal, but then it occurs to me that Three Rivers Stadium is “no longer there.”  Of course, it IS there, standing right in front of me.  I try to tell my dad that it’s not there and he laughs at the obviously absurd statement.  I say that I mean it shouldn’t be there, that it’s gone, that this has to be a memory or a dream.  He shakes his head in disbelief and tells me to prove it.  There is a breeze blowing.  ”See,” he says.  ”I feel that.  Do you?  Just like a normal breeze?”  And he is right.  Everything looks and feels perfectly real and normal.  There is no way to prove I am dreaming.  The pavement feels solid under my feet, the breeze I can feel on my face and I can turn in every direction and see what’s around me.  A perfectly seamless world without gaps.  I say, “It’ not a breeze, it’s the memory of a breeze.”  Then I look at the parking garage and the bland N1 sign designating what lot it is expands to more letters and symbols and spells out “A fool parks here.”  I remember the fool being important in my dreams and I hold up my hand to cut off something my dad is saying as I go to find the fool.  I go around the corner of the garage and I hear laughter, but it is a woman’s laughter and not what I had expected.  I then hear another woman laughing.  I look up at the higher levels of the garage and I know it’s coming from up there but I can’t see anything.  Then I wake up. Read more »

So far I’ve posted narratives and interpretations of my own dreams. I’ve tried to demonstrate some of the ways I’ve learned about myself through reflecting on my dreams and the ways I have used dreams as insights into my own life and as inspirations for creativity. It is my hope that others can then find fruitful ways to apply similar methods of interpretation and reflection to their own dreams in order to gain these similar kinds of benefits. But I’ve been writing far too much about me!

It’s far easier to see how this kind of interpretation can be used in general if you can see how it applies to more than one dreamer. Today I want to give special thanks to “taciturnu” over at Beliefnet for allowing me to share her unique dream narrative, the suggestions I made for interpreting it, and the conclusions she reached combining my interpretation with her own self-reflection. I think that it will serve as a good example of the kind of work I hope this blog will allow others to do in the future. Here is the dream as taciturnu described it: Read more »

I realize that I have not posted in awhile.  December was a busy month.  The Fox Foot had final papers to write, final exams to grade, and then a cross country trip to spend time at home for the holidays.

Coming up this month, I plan to offer my interpretation of the “Escape” dream and how I think it relates to the “Ranting at Jesus” dream.  There will also be some new dreams to post and my reviews of a book about the political aspects of dreams and a book chapter that sees dreams as crucial adaptations for human problem-solving.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve updated the site, in part because I’ve been unable to come up with a satisfying piece reflecting on the previous dream narrative in which the Fool returned for a fifth time in the past year.  So instead of continuing to spin my tires in the mud of that particular dream, I’ve decided to go ahead and post another.  This is a dream I had about a month ago, and I think it’s interesting on a number of levels.  It continues with the theme of religion and religious truth (and falsehood) and it also comes back to a central struggle of mine that increasingly revolves around the seeming futility of academic and or intellectual pursuits.  But now I’m interpreting before I’ve narrated the dream.  So without further ado, here is the dream in which I escape from a cult on a hill:

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The Joker returns.  This marks the fifth dream where this archetypal figure has visited me while I sleep.  My recollections of this dream, and a later dream the same night that seemed to be a continuation, are below.  I apologize if it’s hard to follow.  I will try and fill in some detail with my interpretation which will come later: Read more »

The previous two entries both involved religious themes and the appearance of divine figures.  I’ve decided to stick with that theme tonight and post a dream that I had in the spring of 2002.   It’s a dream that had major ramifications for my waking as well as my sleeping life.  But I’ll say more about that in the next entry.  As usual, I prefer to post the dream narrative itself, leave it open to the reader’s interpretation, and only then post my own.

One night I got home at four in the morning, having been out drinking again. The first part of the night was filled with those bouts of drunken sleep from which you remember absolutely nothing. When I woke up the first time, it was probably around 9 in the morning. The bedroom window was open slightly, enough to see that it was a very overcast day. There was a gentle rain falling. I can still hear the sound of the rain today. When I went back to sleep, I had a dream that forever changed me, in what ways I’m still not sure. Read more »

After a good bit of reflection, I think I have a pretty good handle on what I can take away from the dream I described in the previous entry.

I do feel disappointed in myself spiritually.  I have many values that I do not live up to and feel that I am often wasting away a great deal of potential.  In some ways, the rejection itself is not done in anger, but in a “tough love” sort of way.  It’s my spiritual self saying “No, it’s not okay that you’re not living up to these ideals–or even trying hard to live up to them.  Falling short is one thing, but you’re not even trying.” Read more »

So in my previous entry I described a dream. Since there is a danger that some people (who will remain anonymous) might take it too literally, I’ve decided to offer up my own beginning (or continuation) of an interpretation that will never really end. The reason I left it un-interpreted to begin with was so that any readers out there in the world could interpret it themselves, maybe even suggest interpretations (non-literal ones) that I hadn’t thought of. In fact, if you haven’t read the previous entry, do that now, then read the rest of this one.

What is it like to fall?

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How do you answer a question like that? Well it’s like…it’s like having the ground taken out from under you. So like floating? No, not really. Like…rushing toward something, knowing it will hurt. Hurt. What is hurt? What is rushing? What is toward?

What is it like to fall?

But the question came to me in a dream. From a baby. Not a real baby . A dream baby. A spirit baby. As the others (who had been watching the baby) drifted away to let the baby sleep, I remained behind, wondering if this baby was having a dream within my dream. Then it opened its eyes and asked, “What is it like to fall?” Read more »