I dreamt last night of a large group, a crowd, meandering
around a plaza, waiting for something. That something was a speaker, or a
leader of some sort, though really the ambling was aimless and random. Around
the plaza was a garden, filled with large raised beds of strawberries, squash,
peas, beans, tomatoes, and other assorted shoots and vines. I traipsed about
the mob a while, entertaining the notion that I might fit into any number of
cliques or groupings, but found no easy inlet, and settled for joining a group
of friends near the garden. As I approached,
hundreds of snakes, garters and blue racers, wiggled their way through the
grass away from me, as though fleeing a giant. As I neared my group of friends,
they nodded and told me to mind where I sat, to avoid sitting on snakes. Just before I sat, I brushed the grass, and
several small snakes skittered away, and I sunk into the soft green of the lawn,
squishing several small snakes and sending others sliding away. We watched the plaza like a stage for a while,
but nothing was said amongst these friends I’d found, and I soon grew weary of
their silence and sought my own in the garden. In the center of the garden
between the raised beds was a fountain, and beside the fountain, a large fluffy
couch. I ambled along the edge of the raised beds towards the fountain, and the
number of snakes seemed to increase with every footfall. Now they were
slithering up my legs and onto my arms, falling off as I lumbered onward, and I
was uncomfortable with them, though they were not biting. I kept brushing them off, and the vines of the
nearby plants transformed into serpents that snagged onto my clothes and
climbed my limbs. I raced onwards, hoping to sit down on the couch and be safe,
away from the gardens, but as I set down, I sat into a pile of snakes thick as
spaghetti, and they began twisting around my arms and constricting me –
thousands of tiny snakes no longer than my pinky, or some a cubit in length,
twisting around my arms. Then they began biting. Countless pinpricks and little
stabbing needles up and down my body, but the sheer weight of the snakes
prevented me from standing up or escaping from the cushions of the couch. They
were in my hair and around each finger, on my legs and in my shirt and pants
and latching onto my forehead.
What’s strange about this dream is that it didn’t feel like
a nightmare. There are a lot of different opinions on the topic of dream
interpretation, but many of them cycle around topics of: surprise (it’s
surprising being bitten); phallic (general serpent shape, I suppose); opportunity
and being overwhelmed (especially with hoards of serpents – a lot of snakes can
mean opportunity but also being overwhelmed); and anxiety. Having a lot of
people in a dream, especially nameless, faceless individuals, is often
interpreted as reflections of yourself. (Even with named, faced people, many
interpretations often conclude those are patterns of yourself)
I took it to mean some different things, but mostly that it
was an odd dream, and an odder interaction with it on waking. There has been plenty enough going on in life
to keep me overwhelmed. That’s certainly not a negative, yet I’m still
exhausted and ready for a rest on a couch without snakes.
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