Moby Dick and Other Dreams.
The transition between waking and sleeping was subtle enough. I was stretched out on the couch and the next thing I knew Susan was leaning over me with what looked like a vintage illustrated hard cover of Herman Melville's iconic novel, Moby Dick.
I rose up and took the book that Susan offered me. I thanked her and stepped from the living room to my office. Suddenly it seemed that my eyes had been almost sealed shut. I could vaguely see through my eyelashes. I circled around in the center of my lit room, still confident I could find my desk. Yet I was pestered by my restricted vision. I asked myself, How in the hell am I supposed to read this book if I can't see?
I set Moby Dick down on where my desk should be. It finally occurred to me to rub my eyes with a tissue. On cue, a tissue was conjured into my hand. I rubbed my eyes gently, and what I called "eye snot" as a child fell away. Old Saint Paul could see again and I settled down to read about Captain Ahab's nemesis.
All I could focus on were the illustrations in the book. There was the titular white whale roaming the ocean, either fleeing or prowling after the Pequot.
However, I remembered the highly detailed and turgid chapters that were bracketed by the launch of the Pequot and Captain Ahab's final confrontation with the White Whale. Again, on cue, I found the illustration.
I drifted awake and found myself reclined on the couch again. Again Susan leaned over me. This time she was ushering me to bed.
As I prepared for bed, I asked myself: Why Moby Dick? Why did I dream about this story of a man's fatal obsession of avenging himself against a force of nature? Is there anything in my life that parallels Ahab's quest to destroy the White Whale?
Does it have anything to do with the screenplay I'm writing? No, I reconsidered, I was grappling with writer's block. As I said a few entries ago, many of my written and illustrated works remain unfinished due to a crippling perfectionism. As a result, I retreat from my quest rather than chase it down.
If that was the case, was the dream telling me to chase down my script, even if it is a resounding failure? Ahab failed to subdue Moby Dick, but he spent the last moments of his life trying to bring down his pale shadow which wandered the sea.
I shook my head and smiled. Clearly, I have read too much into this dream! It was a fantasy cooked up by a mind who desperately needed sleep. It plucked at random the memory of a book I had read years ago.
What then of my obscured vision in the dream? Was there a significance to that? Was I wandering around for a goal I could not see? Was it the manifestation of the very real anxiety I have felt from time to time of violently losing my vision in an accident? Or was it my body informing me I had to rub away some pestering eye boogers before I went to sleep?
As I climbed into bed, I recalled the first time I was made aware of Moby Dick. It was a Tom and Jerry cartoon named Dicky Moe. Tom and Jerry were shipmates with a pale, blob faced, red eyed Captain Ahab that muttered over and over again, "Dicky Moe, Dicky Moe, Dicky Moe!" As a wee child, I repeated the cartoon Ahab's rant until my mother gently corrected me, telling me the correct name of the whale was Moby Dick.
Dream analysis is always a fascination.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if dream analysis is a thing in psychiatric circles. To me, it's more of the realm of shamans and soothsayers in ancient times. I think those guys and gals were basically bullshitting the people who came to them who swore up and down they had visions and portents of doom. The savvy oracle thought, "Hell, I'll just tell this mark that he's destined to be hit by a turnip wagon unless he sacrifices a peacock to (god or goddess of your choice)."
DeleteI think psychoanalysts claimed they could interpret your subconscious motives through interpreting your dreams, but I think modern psychology had debunked Freud and Jung if I remember correctly.
Still, I have fun trying to piece together image A with image B, or what Sherlock Holmes (appearing in my dreams with Tom Baker's face) meant when he asked, "Who took the clothes off the man in the corner?"
Ultimately, I think dreams are just the detritus that your brain pushes out with a metaphorical push broom. It's cleaning house. All your anxieties and stressors are unrelated clutter of sights and sounds that were stuck in some catacomb of your neural net. There are no dire proclamations of war, plague, or assassination coming through the Gate of Horn as Neil Gaiman called it. It's all just junk.
Of course, William S. Burroughs and David Bowie liked to cut and paste random lines of verse to create a new work of art. Maybe I'm doing the same thing with my dreams: Cut, paste, voila! A disjointed work of art.
A short story I wrote that was published in my high school arts annual was the result of an anxious dream I had about school. It was just rags and cuttings that I turned into a crazy quilt of literature. Maybe I'll put that up on my blog at a later date.
Pleasant dreams!
I just meant analysis in a general way, not specifically Freud and Jung. I briefly dated a guy at OSU who was a psych major with an encyclopedic knowledge of Jungian symbolism and the “collective unconscious”, so I tried learning some of that, then decided on my own that it’s mostly just bunk.
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