Conversations

I began.

"You know, last night, I dreamed that I was in a convienence store and out of gas. It was a little like a tent, the store....I mean it had a dirt floor and people sitting around like it was where they belonged."

No response.

"I had a hundred dollar bill in my purse, but it had been ripped up into several pieces. I thought that if the store would paste it together I could get five twenty dollar bills for it and pay for some gas"

No response.

"As it turned out, the store had a little machine that could put all the pieces of any money bill into and it would mend it and affirm that it was a real bill."

No response.

"The clerk put the pieces of my hundred dollar bill on a plate and pushed 'start'. I watched in horror as the bill became mangled in the machine's teeth."

His eyes began to waver.


"At last, the clerk said she could not accept my torn up bill. She was kind, but, final. I went out to find the truck gone."


My David said that he did not want to hear any more dreams for a very, very long time.

I said,
"I would listen to your's and consider it a window into your subconcious mind."

He turned on JAG.

I had a shower.

Love,
Betty

Not exactly what you would call a happy, upbeat dream. Hope that wasn't a window into your subconscious mind, Betty. David may have been frightened by that possibility.

I have never had the precise dream you described, Betty, but the theme is very familiar. I have a problem, a possible solution becomes apparent, and seems to be working at first, but then it suddenly goes all wrong, and I end up with even more of a problem than when I started.

I really recognized the pattern when your truck was gone, too.

Ann

My husband has a recurring dream that the airline calls and needs him to work, but he can't find his suitcase or paperwork or uniform. One time he told this dream to some other pilots and most said, "OMG, I've had that same dream."

Why can we never quite solve those problems in our dreams? Is it because we aren't supposed to solve them, or life is difficult without all the answers, or something is never part of the past?

Carol

Tom's dream sounds like the school dream I used to have frequently. I've learned it's fairly common.

I am back in school, it's several weeks into a new semester, and I discover that I'm enrolled in a class I wasn't aware of, and haven't been attending. Or at other times, I get to class and realized I don't have any materials, and am completely unprepared.

Ann

Is this a take on the coin machines that eat coins and spew out paper money?

Dear Shelagh,
All the grocery stores have those machines where you can take your big bag of assorted coins and dump them in and the machine sorts them all out, takes a percent for it's self and gives you a slip of paper to redeem at the cash register. Kind of a Midas Touch Machine? We keep all our coins in an old coke cooler and when we are really wanting something that we cannot afford, we sit in the floor and count and wrap. When the new house was done, we wanted a big screen tv. We counted and wrapped and had 1100.00 in change. Mostly pennies.

I have a lot of these dreams where I cannot find my vehicle, or I am working somewhere and never get the hang of it. It must be a subconsious fear of failure. These strawberries will arrive on Wednesday. I know I have worried about how they will get planted all at once. Sometimes I feel completely inept.

Like Ann and Carol and Tom, it is about not being prepared for what needs to be done. We are all such responsible people after all, and no matter how old we get, our subconscious stays around 10 years old.

Love,
Betty

I have a lot of dreams where I am actually getting ready to go to some event, but I never get there. Things keep coming up and I wake up before I ever get where I'm supposed to go, which is usually some neat place, and some of my intrusions have been trying to find the right clothes or to fulfill requests from other people. Sort of like life, but sometimes I can't even figure out where I'm supposed to be going.

Carol

The strawberries are your hard earned dollars all torn into tiny pieces and you are worried that, when it comes time to piece all those bits back together, there will be fewer dollars than you tore up. If the UK is anything to go by, we can't get enough strawberries and we want them all year round. They are flown in from all over the world (including Florida to California). Let the big growers ship out their strawberries, Betty, and you can provide for the local market. There is room for everyone.

I love strawberries. At breakfast this morning I had my husband get some extra strawberries from the buffet at the hotel where we are staying, while I ordered oatmeal off the menu. I took them from his plate when the waitress wasn't looking.

I am so sneaky.

Carol

Dear Carol,
I have emptied closets in my dreams trying to find something to wear. I leave stuff in a heap on the closet floor with the intention of sorting it all out later. Like you, I never actually go anywhere. Always there are strange people I do not know in these dreams who talk and laugh and have a good time. I wonder where these strange faces come from. they are certainly not people I know.

Love,
Betty

Ah, Shelagh and Carol,
I need the faith of a mustard seed. That is for sure.

Love,
Betty

To me, dreams are perplexing. I imagine that somewhere in my life each of the scenes in my dreams have flashed before my eye in real life.

I wonder if dreams connect these fragments of fleeting visions and our minds embelish them. The strangers we see in our dreams, perhaps they are the fleeting glance with which we beheld a person who was in a room or passed us on a street. Even the streets we dream may be a conglomeration of places we have walked. The eye is the camera and the brain records.

I wonder if writers record in a way their own mental history disguised from themself as imagination.

Words are the key. The only key we have to each other's mind. Some will say that a painter will show his soul on canvas. But it is few that can interpret it the way his mind meant it.

Words, pitiful as they are, at the real key to understanding one another.

Love,
Betty