Dream: When life is a parade!
Sunday, 5 AM: Dream Setting, my office in the Academy, with my couch against a wall, when all of a sudden the couch started to seemingly push itself away from the wall, revealing a hidden door, opening, with someone coming through the door into my office. And it was, he was, the first in a procession of an increasing number of circus like performers, mostly wearing red, who colorfully, exuberantly, take over the space, singing songs, putting on a show; quite a musical actually, reminiscent of the Music Man…
Waking reflections: I was struck with how it was like a musical production, and the fact that historically I have not been a fan of musicals. While writing the dream down, I associated the emergence of the singer/dancer, as if out of the woodwork with the Rilke image of “…that which steps, festively clothed, out of the great darkness.” (from his essay on Love and Other Difficulties.)
Comments: With all the heaviness in the country, and in each of us, this was a fun, magical, refreshing interlude, reminding me of the existence of resources in psyche which can come in when needed. This dream felt a bit like my delight in reading the Rilke image:
“Therefore this too must be the standard for rejection or choice: whether one is willing to stand guard over the solitude of a person and whether one is inclined to set this same person at the gate of one’s own solitude, of which he learns only through that which steps, festively clothed, out of the great darkness.” (my italics)
Secondarily, I did recently enjoy watching the movie The Greatest Showman which was amazing and likely helped populate my dream images. I watched West Side Story earlier this year and found it very powerful – and still highly relevant.
In terms of family of origin, as a family we did love to sing. I did grow up in Mason City, Iowa, birthplace of Meredith Wilson, best known for his play/movie The Music Man.
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Healing Within the Blur 
July 12, 2018 at 4:55 am
What a delightful dream and the Rilke quote a perfect commentary. I love Jung’s concept of the compensatory function that dreams can play, balancing the psyche in a kind of homeostatic balancing act as occurs in the physical body. As you said “…a fun, magical, refreshing interlude, reminding me of the existence of resources in psyche which can come in when needed.” This to me is the most potent magic of dreams. I also adore musicals and could use a dream like this myself at the present time.
July 12, 2018 at 11:25 am
Thank you for your lovely reflections Gloria. On the theme of parades and the collective stress of figuring out how might one best live in a post-truth(?) world, I am also appreciating William Stafford’s frame on the importance of being authentically present with each other:
“…And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider-
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.”
See: “A Ritual To Read To Each Other” by William Stafford from A Scripture of Leaves, p. 10, Brethren Press, Elgin, Illinois, 1989.