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David Bowie was in my basement last night. He crammed himself right into the same little crawl space that I used to squeeze in when I was a kid.
But then I realized that the crawl space was on the upper left wall, instead of on the other side of the room, under the closet - that's where it really was in the house that I grew up in.
And suddenly David Bowie was gone. I looked to the right. I saw a mattress, and my wife was there. As I walked over to her, three pigeons began to fly around the room. Dirt and dust were everywhere.
I wake up.
Ms. Analyst doesn't say anything for a moment. Or for a moment after that. I don't really expect her to either. I learned a long time ago that after relaying a dream to her, following it up with a, "What do you think that means?" wasn't going to go very far. Inevitably the reply would be an openly inviting, "Well, David, I'm interested to hear if it brings up anything meaningful for you."
Skipping that step, I pause and start to go over What Last Night's Dream Means. Before I dig into the content, though, I realize I want to paint a complete picture of the lower level in My Old House - a big, mysterious basement in a Midwest, suburban, three-story home where I spent my childhood, teen years, and two more summers in college.
After laying out an intricately detailed mental map (...the laundry room chute where we hid our Halloween candy was on the right...the closet with the human skeleton on the door was on the left...my imagination often ran wild in the playroom, lined with my mother's art show posters...), I'm ready to connect some dots.
I think I'm simply telling this stuff to Ms. Analyst, but then I start to learn surprising new things as I go on, and remember more. More about that Old House I always dream about, where I grew up what seems like a million miles away, a billion years ago. The triumphs I had there and the anguish I experienced, all flow in our forum.
Ms. Analyst and I come to understand that David Bowie stands as symbol of open-mindedness, rebirth and success to me - plus I had seen "Fame" on VH1 Classic the previous morning. The crawl space he occupied in my dream was the same one that I routinely stuffed myself into at my older brother's suggestion - he told me and my five-year-old friends that if we found a secret button there, the door to a magical land would open up. I think we searched for years.
It was wonderful to see my wife in the dream, but what about the pigeons? Perhaps they are harbingers of chaos and disorganization, running roughshod over the order and serenity I long to provide to my family.
Interested in this theory, Ms. Analyst dials me into the bigger picture. "As we've seen, David, the images of unkempt surroundings continue," she says. "The night before you were in the broken-down apartment building outside your hometown. And two weeks ago you were being interrogated by security guards at a rock concert, inside a dingy back kitchen."
Often, when Ms. Analyst starts to reel off my different dreams and the trends she sees, I get anxious: I'm terrified she's going to reference a dream that I never had, that actually happened to one of her other clients. But she never does. My dreams are mine alone in the Pod. Ms. Analyst can recall a nightmare I had two years ago and extend its meaning into the present. Not only is that an incredible feat, it's often a huge help.
It's true that when things get puzzling or slow down in analysis, a solid round of dream work can make a huge difference. Mystical waves of data are flying at us from my REM cycles - it's up to me to grab them and throw them up on the big screen. Then maybe the two of us can see what it means.
From there, shift happens. My David Bowie dream, and our follow-through discussion, put organizational principles clearly in my crosshairs. That's a welcome development.
What do night visions bring to your dyad? Are they precious messages from the darkness, or do they fade in the bright light of the session? For me, progress can be the stuff of dreams.
-- Mr. Analysand
