I
went into the backyard, and it looked bigger but similar to mine, even
though I was living back in Colorado with my parents. When I went back
there, they were there and these two men were performing construction on
the house. They were putting stain all over this brand new wooden roof
on my parent's tall and shiny house. There was a pitch to the roof and
all of this liquid flooding off of it, which I came to realize was not
water but oily -- the wood stain, and it was getting everywhere. I
noticed that the substance was flooding my garden bed near the house
with poison, and that all the plants were dead.
I
became infuriated and asked the two construction guys wtf and they were
muffling their responses, continuing to work, and the backyard was
increasingly flooding with wood stain. my other two garden beds were
going down two. I demanded they stop. One of the constuction guys looked
vaguely familiar to Slicky Slack, a scruff looking prostelytizer I knew
from AA, but I really never talked to. I turned to my parents for
sympathy and while my mom tried to show sympathy and soothe my anger she
also insisted this had to happen -- getting this roof stained was too
important to them. even at the cost of a dead backyard for a few years.
even at the cost of my garden.
I became
inconsolably angry. I lost all control and I punched the Slicky Slack
looking guy. He fell and I started pummelling him. As I was pounding his
face in I could see his head start to swell and bruise up. I could see
how totally helpless he was and so I stopped. But refused to acknowledge
what I had just done and so I just screamed about my garden. I started
to sob and sob. Moreso than I ever had since I was a kid. I went to
enter the house through the back door and I just decided I was only
going to keep crying harder. I had absolutely no breath anymore.
Suffocated in a crying fit, I finally woke up.
When
I woke up I was thankful to be ok and I got calm and told myself what
had just happened. That it was ok. I talked to myself sweetly and was
thankful that my garden was still there. I held myself and started to
feel calm and decide to go in late. do yoga, water the the living fuck
out of my beautiful garden, to take lots of detoxifying vitamins that
day, to take care of myself. But I kept laying there and started to cry
in bed about it again while I was awake. I did those things I vowed to
do and felt the better for it. I got really playful and light and funny
on the way to work. "Tea for Two" was on, Lester Young's sax was blaring
in my car. Me doing different funny voices at people who were doing
annoying things in traffic. I saw everybody as sweet. This middle-aged
woman spilled out of the Whataburger -- body not fat but a total mess
and that determined look in her eye of an addict who went all night and
now it was nine in the morning and no addict really knows what to do at
nine in the morning. When she reached the corner there was a short old
hispanic man smoking a cigarette and checking her out. I was thinking no
way he's just gonna be a mac and talk to her. And he did! And I was
thinking she'd show interest back because she looked really lost with
nowhere to go. But she reacted protectively and waited uncomfortably for
the crosswalk light to come on. It did not seem to phase this guy and I
admired so much that he just saw this woman he had interest in and
started talking to her on a dime. Anyway I drove and shimmied to the sax
and for some reason right before I got near the parking garage at work I
just let out a loud "yeeeeaaahhhhh!" and I thought that was like the
funniest thing I'd ever heard. I kept laughing about it later when I was
thinking about it.
An interesting note is that
I remembered the crying part of the dream really well, but it took me a
few hours of being awake to remember the pummeling the guy's face in
part. It's disturbing how I did such a violent thing myself, and the
whole victim perspective on the dream went out the window. I had one
thought -- although there were many levels to this dream including the
city council meeting on construction on my street that day, my childhood
experience and even last year's experience of my parents prioritizing
money/business/house constructing over some needs that I had, and the
identity of the man relating to my anger at AA. It's about my autonomy.
All that factors that threaten it. The garden is mine. It's fragile and
delicate and I will go to any lengths to protect it right now. It's not
only about the force I am capable of exerting when I go on the defensive
about it, it is about the very nature of its fragility and delicacy.
that it is the garden itself. And it's mine and it's beautiful and that
is true whether or not others understand it or not. Something so scary
was lost and dead and the soil wouldn't recover for many years and I
lost my whole breath over it at the end of the dream. I suffocated. All
due to construction. To a fancier fucking house. To meeting the material
standards of life -- which are rigid and destructive to the sweet
delicacy of the garden which I absolutely equated to my thing. My work
-- well, nature's work and my work. Certainly there's something in here
about the resistance to growing up as well. Certainly something about
the pressure's of working life and success pulling me at me in a
suffocating manner. Like I said, I was just so thankful to water my
garden and spent like fifteen minutes doing it this morning.
I
texted about the dream to a friend and started to tear up about it
again. Though was fascinated by it and knew that some of the floodwalls
that had been on my emotions all week had finally crashed down. I was
relieved about that. And I did tear up again now when I tried to write
about it. But I feel ok about it now that I'm at the end.
