The dream: "The night of the inauguration balls, with Michelle Obama glittering in her one-shouldered Jason Wu, I dream I'm wearing an construction-orange tunic with a big black "x" on the back. The tunic is admired by Dick Cheney, and I give it to him. It's almost like a mantle-passing."
Two questions came to me to ask, one right after the other.
The first: pretend I'm a man from Mars, and you were describing Dick Cheney to me. What's Dick Cheney like?*
The response: "Dick Cheney was the vice president of the U.S. under George W. Bush. To me he was cunning and leering. He was the real holder of power in the administration."
The second: characters or objects in dreams can reflect different parts of the self, so ... let's take a look at the Dick Cheney part of you. Let's give the Dick Cheney part of you a voice and let him speak for himself.
The response: "To be honest, I don't really want to think about a "Dick Cheney part of me" - but maybe that's precisely what I need to be looking at, especially now that I look at how I just described him ... the real holder of power in the administration ... huh ... whatever this is in me, this Dick Cheney part, is the one that holds all the cards. "
*This comes from Gayle Delaney's interview method of dreamwork.
2 comments:
Hi Suz,
For someone who thinks of Cheney as a kind of "dark power behind the throne," having him show up in a dream could be a reference to that person's "shadow side." The controlling force behind the scenes, our innermost desires that we're not proud of, the ways in which we manipulate others to get what we want.
I love the "imagine I'm from Mars" analysis technique. It's such a useful way to break things down from dream code into a language we can understand.
Best,
Anya
Thanks, Anya, for bringing up the shadow! Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's interesting that, the way, you described it in your comment made it click for me: Dick Cheney is a shadow to be reckoned with.
Brings me to this interesting thought about working with one's own dreams ... I wrote something down and didn't make much of it at first - but "hearing" those same words uttered by someone else, framed and arranged slightly differently, caused newly significant meaning to shoot to the surface.
At another layer (there are always so many, with dreams) there is some "Dick Cheney" afoot in my waking life - navigating some touchy family waters is requiring a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuverings.
And yes - it's really interesting what the "man from Mars" technique brings up sometimes. Thank you again, Gayle Delaney :)
And thank you again, Anya!
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