Monday, November 25, 2013

Dream Interpretor

A few times a year I try to record my dreams when I get up in the morning. I always have vivid narratives, and am often being chased or doing the chasing. Here's one from last night that you can interpret for me:

I was walking down some prairie wagon trail, legs tired. From behind came two dirty men with soiled clothes and mangy beards in a wagon taller than me. In the wagon was a huge white female bison, head severed from the body. The wagon lurched and seemed about to fall apart under her weight. They offered me a ride and I could barely stomach it, but I knew I could not go on walking. They talked about the hunt, how hard she was to catch and shoot. They talked about how the head would fetch quite a price in town. When we made it to a small outpost I thanked them for the ride and, without anyone noticing, apologized to the bison carcass, crying. I ran as quick as I could up a nearby embankment covered in carrots and strawberries that I picked as I ran. My dog followed, wanting to stop to chat with women picking the harvest but I called it along as I tripped, struggled to run across a now open plain to the horizon. I was desperate to be alone and see the prairie one more time.

5 comments:

Unknown said...
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Patricia Hill said...

I would guess the dead bison was the prairie. While, in reality, it's not dead yet, it could happen.

Anonymous said...

What a powerful and symbolic dream. It evokes much emotion and feeling.I feel it has much to do with the state of life on the prairie and the prairie itself, in regard to the abuse and atrocities inflicted by man. The weight of the situation and helplessness you feel (fatigue and ill stomach), and having to listen to and be subject to viewing the graphic results (details) of man's atrocities makes you sad. For some reason (only you know) you hide your sorrow. You need to escape... running through the fertile and productive ground, with your trusted friend, (your dog - an animal), to seek solace in the wild prairie (as if it should soon no longer be).

Anonymous said...

The only --very disagreeable and disquieting-- dream I ever had with the loss of a head had to do with loss of agency, an inability to act on my own behalf. In that dream too, the head was kept, not as a trophy exactly, but as a symbol of what was lost or given into the power of another person.

Benjamin Vogt said...

Y'all are awesome! :)