Tag: therapist

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Dream Journal

Going to a Beachside Dentist, Much Preparation

I’m getting woken up for a dentist appointment, by a guy I barely know, who’s been asked to do it as a favor. I tell him I’ve got to write my dreams down first and I’ll be 15 minutes. (Coincidentally, I’m actually woken about 15 minutes later by a loud, stinky truck outside my bedroom window.)

I speak with a therapist in a little room pod, in preparation for the procedure. I feel the need rather quickly to break professional courtesy to actually talk philosophy with her as an individual. She seems visibly exhausted to be forced to engage as vulnerable and human, and to delve into her personal views.

Thereafter, a big black girl helps walk me to (or from) the seaside in the evening — where the dentist procedure will be. I expect it’ll be really nice to watch the sunset during the course of it. I notice that she has the same limp as I do at this moment, in her left leg, and I offer to massage it once we find a stopping point to take a break. She forgoes a chair for whatever reason, lying down, and I start at her still shoe-clad feet and move around to her stiff calves and thighs. I tell her to let me know if she wants more or less pressure. She keeps asking for lighter and lighter touches, as if the massage is making her more sensitive and tense, but she never expresses any desire for me to stop.

I gather shoes I’ll need during and after the procedure. One pair is green and yellow, like a thrift store pair from Brazil I had long ago. I spot an old classic iPod of mine on the ground, wrapped in earbuds. While picking up my mail, I notice that a postbox near the top (for the group hostel/school I’m associated with) has been overstuffed, too full to close. I inspect the economy size bag of incense inside, labelled “Frogge & Kastom”, pilfering a few sticks, feeling that they won’t be missed. I try not to feel too guilty about it.

Bang! The truck outside my window loudly backfires. I’m irredeemably awake.

Categories
Dream Journal

From Sleep on Brian’s Portland Futon

A therapist ends up detained because she refuses to admit whether a client has been to Bremen, or is Bremen — this WWI story is known as BremenX. I find myself surprised and grateful that a therapist would selflessly protect a client like that.

In a communal sitting room with beige-walled booths, I look in the mirror mounted on the righthand side and catch the friendly eye of two ladies also waiting there. Perhaps we are using the ovens, baking pie. It’s clear to me the mirror was installed at the angle it was for just this purpose. I’ve been hanging about for a long time, and I’ve noticed an abundance of redheads with elaborate spirally hair-does that remind me of this bug:

https://twitter.com/cassiegrimaldi/status/912796613575364609

There’s some (red?) minivan a friend of mine is driving, and it’s creeping slowly toward the freeway on-ramp adjacent to the community bakery. If I can catch it, I pull off a great sex joke. But, having to cross a barrier and get across a few lanes, I ju-u-u-u-u-ust miss it. Then I’m first in line for the on-ramp, though, and I get low to the gravelly road and turn on rocket boosters (not something I’ve really used before) to catch up. They’re shite for hill-climbing, though, and when I encounter a sudden left curve after a steep hill with zero banking, my SR-71 Blackbird (which is where I kept the rockets, apparently) goes careening off the ribbon of dirt into the galactic space through which it wends.

A demonstration: the dynamically resized livery of a train, attractive top-to-bottom color gradients (splendidly coordinated along the length of the train, with occasional repeats). It’s a coal-fired steam train, even. As one reduces the number of cars it collapses into only a single cowboy-soldier pumping a handcar bearing a square American flag.

My family has re-acquired our Kemper Court house where I grew up. In the wall between the stained-glass entryway and the kitchen nook there’s now a rectangular hole just big enough to slip through on one’s back. As I peek through, I note how strange it feels to live there again after it belonged to someone else for so long.

Standing on a hilltop gazing reverently at a snow-covered mountain, kin to Mount San Jacinto in the Coachella Valley. A mirror on a long handle held at arm’s length, revealing another mountain far behind me — holy mountains at opposing ends of the valley where I stand.

I relate this dream to Brian when he, apropos of nothing, called me up to his balcony to view Mt. St. Helens on this clear autumn day. When the view isn’t blocked, one can see Mt. Hood, also.