The Fox's Secret

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 »

I was never very good at basketball (I collected more fouls than points) and I can’t stand the Los Angeles Lakers, so I would not have guessed that I ever would have dreamed up a scenario in which I was playing professional basketball for that very team.  While Sigmund Freud used to believe that all dreams were “wish-fulfillment”, I can definitively say that this particular dream was not.

What I do see in this dream, however, is a lived out dream experience of two of the charges that are often leveled at academics and scholars: 1) that their research is “reductionistic” and 2) that their research is “deconstructionist”.  It should be noted, before continuing, that some researchers would wear these labels with pride.  However, it seems to be the case that both of these terms have come to have a negative connotation, and I suspect that the negative connotation has the same underlying cause in both cases.  When someone uses these terms in a negative way, what he is really trying to say is that “x” method of study or analysis breaks something down to the point where it loses all human meaning and value. The dream vividly illustrates what is often meant by both charges.

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In this post I’ll be discussing ways that I might analyze and interpret the dream described here.  In short, I began the dream as a WWII-era soldier in the wrong place, trying to blend in with the German army.  Then I was in a terminal-care facility or hospice, telling all the patients that things would “be okay.”  Then one of the other workers, who looked like Weird Al Yankovic, caught on to the fact I was becoming afraid that things weren’t okay and decided to scare the hell out of me.  The lights go out, everything’s pitch black, the bottom drops out and I fell into a void of swirling lights and heat and panicked until I woke up.  That should serve as a good refresher for those who’ve read it already while remaining confusing enough to those who have not read it that they will click on the link above and read it for a first time now!

First off, a good question to ask is why I might try and find some meaning in any of this at all.  After all, it is a rather bizarre series of events that don’t form a terribly coherent plot.  Weird Al is transformed into a demonic figure.  I spend part of the dream wondering why everyone speaks Russian and German in English.  There’s a creepy hospital where my job is to tell dying old people it’s all okay.  Then the falling…shouldn’t I just be glad I woke up and forget all about it!?

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