Lockdown dream of walking alone, avoiding natural danger, then waltzing with friends, 4th July 20207/7/2020  I am walking alone in the country, trying to get to a village. I am wearing a red skirt and red jacket. The short route to the village isn't possible as the sea is coming over the path. The longer route is difficult, and involves climbing and takes energy. I go across a thin rope-and-wood bridge, and ignore the advice of a group of people who I don't know to take the dangerous short route. I am alone and look at the remote village.
I am then at my destination, in a big hall, the sort of venue a wedding would be held in. My friend P is there, she is wearing a thin black dress and tells me her favourite music is the waltz. She tells me my friends are going to be there and a crowd of people start dancing to a waltz. In the discussion the dreamer spoke of her life as an artist under Lockdown, how she cannot go to her art studio, that she has had to put off a trip to see a friend in Paris, and that her plans with P for buying a house in France have been put on hold, that hoped-for house would be a place for music. In the discussion we and the online participants remarked on how the dream has two halves, one of being alone, even with a bridge for one person at a time crossing, and one of being with friends, dancing.
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 Dream told at event organised by the Dream Research Institute at the Center for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education, London.
I look out of my bedroom window on a sunny day and see traffic on the road outside. It is a busy road with shops opposite and a post office on the corner, with a red post box. I go outside and cross the road to see a Victorian pram with a lacy white sunroof and a white frilly quilt. It is blocking the pavement, and not parked safely. There is a baby girl in the pram, dressed in a pink dress. She appears well looked after, but I think ‘where is her mother?’ I then see my mother in a baby car seat, in the road, it has a sunroof and my mother is small, the right size for the child seat. She is dressed in her everyday clothes with a blue cloth, like a dusting cloth, over her face. She is not moving and I think she is asleep. I know it is dangerous for her and the car seat to be in the road. I am then at a man’s house, in his wealthy farmhouse-type kitchen. It has lots of wood, and an oak table, with pots and pans hanging and horseshoes on the wall, and a coffee table. He is my intended partner, my love, but his ex-wife is there as well. I am having a friendly discussion with her, she is lovely, and I get on well with her and feel love for her. I ask my intended partner, ‘are you sure you want to leave her?’, and he nods yes, indicating that there is something wrong with her, or not right between them, and that he is no longer with her. I then go back to my house. In the road there is the child’s car seat, which has been pushed into the gutter. I can’t see fully inside it because of the sunroof but I can see my mother’s tan coloured skirt and brown top, she still has the blue cloth over her face. I have been waiting all day for her to wake up but now realise that she has died. I then hear the baby crying. I know that my mother is the baby’s mother. I pick up the baby to look after her, all the while having a sinking grief feeling about my mother having died. But the baby is giggling, she is happy to see me, and so I take her into my house. She tries to feed on my right breast but I have no milk. My 12-year-old daughter is there and she asks if the baby is ours. I am smiling and thinking that, as the baby has no mother, we can keep her.  Dream of an art and design student who had chosen at the start of the Covid-19 Lockdown not to go back to her home, where her parents live, but instead to go to live with her boyfriend and his parents.
I was walking down the short garden path to the back door of my home, where I lived all my life before university and where my parents live. I went in through the back door but know that it is a female teacher's house, I am unsure who she is, and I knew I should not be there. It looked exactly the same as my family home; a fairly small house in a village in the country. As I walked through the hall to the front of the house, I noticed a very small monkey, about 2 or 3 inches in height following me. It was gold or some kind of metal, but it moved as a live monkey would. I remember feeling worried about it, like it was going to alert the homeowner or attack me, but soon I found out that it was not a threat and that it just wanted to be around me. It was quite playful really. I went to the mantelpiece in my kitchen and the monkey followed me. It opened its mouth and hinged its whole face back. Then I had a paint brush. I dipped it into the monkey’s mouth, its head had golden orange paint inside, and I started to paint small gold details onto a black remote control rectangular box that was on the mantelpiece. Then the female teacher’s husband pulled up in an old car in front of the house. I quickly ran away through the house, as I thought he might hurt me or take me to the police, and I went out of the back door. Then I woke up.  This was a very life-affirming dream. In it the dreamer was watching a robin inside a person, possibly inside the dreamer. The robin was scratching and picking with its beak and feet at black, tar-like Covid-19, all around the lungs. The robin was working to move the black Covid to a pile, so as to remove it. The robin was also looking for small worms to feed to itself. The lungs and heart could be seen as the skin was letting through some light.
The painting and discussion took about 1h45m and we discussed how in waking life at the moment, in gardens or on walks, we, including the dreamer, often see robins and they are very friendly to humans. In the dream the robin was healing the person. The dream-sharer lives in Scotland and was waiting to go back to teaching in a school, her husband and daughter are both key workers. Dream of walking onto beach, finding new home in cliffs, then crowds arrive, 23rd May 20205/25/2020  Dream of Tom, a doctor who has been speedily graduated so as to start work on the wards.
In the dream Tom was walking with his partner through a forest of olive trees, which led to a sunny and sandy beach. Above the cliffs at the edge of the beach was a castle, round like the chess piece. They were looking for a place to live and were told that in the cliffs there was a comfortable cave in which to live, with a TV, purple bedding on the double bed, and paintings on the wall. They lived with a young boy in this lovely environment, but the beach started to become full of holidaymakers, with some sunbathing. Security guards in yellow high vis jackets arrived, and the beach was losing all the charm it had when Tom, his partner and the boy were there alone. In the on-line dream-sharing event we and Tom discussed the theme in the dream of becoming more responsible, which we and Tom related to his real-life sudden taking on of responsibilities.  The online dream-sharer here was working at a hospital in Melbourne, Australia, but in work that is not directly related to Covid-19. She is originally from New Zealand. Her dream was of slowly moving in darkness, realising that she is in a paua shell, a blue and green abalone shell, and then looking out of the side of the shell and seeing the ocean, some land in the distance, a then a playful, loving, brown seal pup. This was a very positive and joyful dream.
 Dream of US keyworker delivery driver Mason told online for one of our Covid Lockdown dream events. In waking life Mason was relocating across the US. Dream: 'I am trying to drive up the incline from a suburban house garage but the gears keep crashing and so I can't move into the road to join the traffic there. I release the clutch but find the car is not in gear and it moves backwards and stops. I get out to check that it did not hit the white garage door and am surprised to see that it has damaged the door badly. I get back in the car and see a man and a woman in an old white car looking at me almost with disgust. I feel embarrassed as I was not being able to drive the car, even though I should be able to do so and as it is my job to drive. The car was a brown Mazda Miata, which is not a car I drive in waking life and is a color I would not choose.'
 I am sitting at my desk in the hospital at work with blue medical gloves on. I have a purple woollen furry blanket from home on my lap. I am peeling quails’ eggs which are to be used to treat Covid patients. The phone rings and I am being asked lots of questions about the eggs as they are needed for patients. More eggs are being heated in a white medical bath, but they are soft and egg yolk spills when I try to crack them open. I push my red glasses up with my wrists. The phone starts ringing again but I can’t answer it as I am covered in yolk and bits of shell.
Second Covid-19 related dream, of a present of an activity pack, with Funeral Preparation Kit4/10/2020  I leave a room by revolving so as to get past a strap on the doorway. I go down a corridor to see my wife. She is in the next room and has a present for me on the table, a box about 30x60cm, and about 5cm thick with a clear plastic top. It has various novelties and small activities in it. In the middle is a table tennis set with green bats. On one side in the box there is an old black mobile phone, with a few other small components, and the words Funeral Preparation Kit. The kit is partly a joke rather than being serious.
[On the day before the dream the dreamer had heard of an acquaintance who had died in hospital, possibly with Covid-19.]  National Health Service nurse Libby Nolan, who is currently under quarantine with the virus and having breathing problems, shared online a nightmare she has been having. Her nightmare, had twice during her confinement, repeated but changed a nightmare she has had before. In this, she was looking through the open door of a house and could see strange trees with strange leaves and knew it was very dangerous outside and the danger would soon come into the house. She couldn't close the door as it was so large. Inside, she goes upstairs and to a large hall. A party was happening and everyone ignored her warnings and didn't look at her. She then saw a man with red trousers who is a composite of all past loves for her, he looked at her and knew what she was warning about, but with a smile looked at her to say without words that all was actually fine and that she should not worry. She went into a side room, which is a hospital room with a dead man on the bed and an old ventilator. Her deceased mother is there with a cat on her lap. The cat jumps onto Libby and onto her mouth and stops her breathing. Libby then woke up.
We are grateful to Libby for her dream, for sharing and discussing it, and for the work she has been doing and will return to for the health service. We thank also everyone worldwide who took part in the event, on Facebook Live. The painting is made onto two pages taken from Freud's book The Interpretation of Dreams. Online here the viewer can enlarge the painting when looking at it, so as to see details made during the two hours that the discussion and painting took place. For example, the stairs, the trees, the man at the party with his glass of red wine. The pages were chosen by Julia when she was first hearing the dream, on the basis of the shapes of the paragraphs found in Freud's book, but during the painting process she incorporates words that happen to be on the page. Some of these do have coincidental but eerie references to Libby's dream. Such as, in the trees, in reference to Libby only being acknowledged in the dream by the one man, red-trousered, who is based on her current and former loves: 'My beloved is mine, turn again to me my beloved..', and reference to her quarantine, 'sweet dove, already you are enclosed in my cavern', and on the left page (i.e, bottom half of painting) there are many medical references. |
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