09-21-05 @ 9:13 am EDT

Just three dreams I've had recently, that I haven't yet had time to post in my dream journal. I thought they were interesting. Number 1 and 3 seem to tie in to each other, at least thematically; and Numbers 2 and 3 were nice and interesting while I was having them, though I do wish I knew the deeper meaning, or could at least have Number 2 again. -_-

Please forgive my annoying editorial style at the end of dreams; I just do this to try to figure out where they might be coming from.

8/18/05: Three Words For Wolf

I was trying to learn to speak Ojibwa. o_o I was sitting in the living room, on the couch, with an older woman who knew the language and was attempting to teach me--or rather, I was wheedling at her to teach me. I don't know if she was native but I sense she was at least connected to them. She was on my left. I kept asking her about the pronunciation of certain words. This was the best way to learn, by at least learning to pronounce the few words I DID know.

"How do you pronounce things?" I asked. "There are so many different spellings that it's hard for me to tell even with a pronunciation guide." I attempted to think of a good example of a word I knew with multiple spellings, then my face lit up and I wrote the word down on a piece of paper or a book I had in my hands, showing it to her. "Maingan. That's the word for wolf." I pronounced it exactly as I thought it would be pronounced, mah-een-gan. I thought that was right, but as soon as I looked up at her I saw the frown on her face and knew that I'd really mangled it. -_-

"Um," I said, with an awkward smile, "I'm probably butchering it, of course. Which is why I should learn how to say it right. But how do you figure it out? I've seen so many ways to spell it that I can't tell. See?" I wrote down on the page Myeengun. "That's another spelling I've seen. And I've seen others. Um..." I racked my brain, then wrote down another spelling I'm not as sure of in real life. It was something like Meeng or Maing...now that I think of it I think it might have ended differently, like with -as...maybe Maingas or Meengas or something. It was shorter than the others, may have had a double vowel, and might have ended with -as. Even in the dream I wasn't sure if that was REALLY a spelling I'd seen before, but it was supposed to be close or else a possibility--a way of saying, "Well, there are so many spellings that this COULD be one of them." The first two, I'm pretty sure were Maingan and Myeengun. I can't be positive at the moment but those either ARE two legitimate spellings of the Ojibwa word for wolf, or else they are very close.

I wrote these names down to illustrate my point that a word could be spelled so many different ways, how could one ever be sure how to pronounce it? I was even more flustered now because I had been going on what little I knew of pronunciation and I had been so SURE that it was mah-een-gan or in the latter case, mai-een-goon. (I say it that way in real life but I honestly have no clue!)

I can't remember this dream well as I took no notes. But I kept asking this woman questions. She would try to answer them but she was very short and seemed irritated dealing with me, especially since I was slow to learn. When I had to go over something more than once--or more like, when I had another question relating to the same subject--she would give me this really annoyed look, and at times even seemed to refuse to answer so I had to needle at her a bit. It was hard getting information from her. I felt kind of hurt because all I wanted to do was learn; why was she so impatient with me, when I was so sincere? I was trying to keep my spirits up and not be so annoying but I could not seem to keep her attention. We switched to another word at some point; this part I don't remember well. The word didn't look or sound Ojibwa and maybe it wasn't; I think it began with a T and sounded like it could have been Lakota/Dakota (Sioux) or something. I can't remember which of us wrote this word down but I think she tried to teach me about it and I wasn't understanding something; sorry this is so vague. It seemed to be the spellings and pronunciations that were wearing on me the most. I kept up a cheery attitude in the dream, but it was hard with how much I knew I was frustrating her. I wished I was smarter and could learn faster just so she would not be so exasperated with me. I felt she should be more patient, but at the same time I felt I was disappointing her. :(

I believe the book I had dealt with the language, too. Like a textbook. I don't remember much else. Just that we kept going over words and such and I was learning a TINY bit, but not nearly fast enough to suit her, and this bothered both of us greatly.

This may be related to something in real life. Yesterday I spotted an odd e-mail to my mother and it hinted that we may be related to the Chippewa (Ojibwa). I'm not sure of the specifics though, and it might not be correct. I've also been thinking about a bad incident earlier in the year regarding an Ojibwa-themed message board I belonged to, where in a few posts and just a few days of membership I managed to turn a lot of the members against me; I mentioned that I write (fiction), and apparently they all got paranoid and thought I was there to spy on them and write stuff about them! I tried explaining myself and NOBODY ever complained to my face that they felt threatened--I didn't even have a clue until the webmistress asked members not to feel afraid to post. I apologized to everybody, clarified that I was NOT writing anything about them, and asked her if she would like for me to quit the group. She was very nice and said that it wasn't necessary, I was welcome there. I had some trouble with the site and was unable to access the group for a while. Next thing I know, another member, when inviting me to a different group, informed me that in my absence I had been banned from the first group because apparently a bunch of members had complained to the webmistress about me writing stuff about them (something I had NEVER done), and they were too afraid to post now--when all I had done in that group was try to liven it up by adding OJIBWA-RELATED LINKS! This still infuriates me that NOBODY bothered taking the issue up with me personally, I wasn't even given the chance to defend myself, and that I even OFFERED to leave the group voluntarily, was told I didn't have to, and then was banned anyway without my knowledge! I feel the webmistress, whom I had really looked up to (she's Ojibwa), was very deceitful and hypocritical about this, and I'm very angry that there are others out there like me (including one who had written to me personally to say that she felt I should be welcome in the group--BEFORE all this stuff happened) who might end up looking up to her without knowing what she's truly like. This was months ago but it still stings a lot and I wish I at least had a way to warn others about her, or at least prove that I had no bad intentions whatsoever. That really soured my online experience regarding natives and now I am very fearful of asking about ANYTHING in ANY of their forums, including the second one I became a member of, lest that happen again. So perhaps my difficulty learning in the dream had some relation to that? :(

8/24/05: Lake Of Mine

This was a very nice dream while I was having it; I was sad when I awakened myself. :(

I don't remember the beginning (I had several dreams or bits of the same dream as I napped upright on the couch), but it ended up with me sitting at perhaps a picnic table, on the shore of a great lake, at the edge of the woods. The trees were dense and let little light through but there was this sort of sourceless light that lit everything at least a bit; they seemed to be pines, with their branches higher up, so there was lots of space to walk beneath and between them, and a needle-carpeted floor, no weeds or undergrowth or stuff. I sat with the lake to my right side, but it must have been part of a bay or something as the lake bent at almost a ninety-degree angle behind me. It was evening and the sun was either setting or getting ready to set; the air was golden and warm, and it was so peaceful, and so nice.

I was at this picnic table or whatever it was and I was doing something that involved a book--homework, or else reading. It wasn't stressful. But I was kind of unfocused and got up to wander around a bit. I almost had the feeling of it being time to get ready to go to bed (even though I sleep during the daytime), you know, when you gather all your stuff and go inside. Only it was also a feeling of already BEING inside. Hard to explain but keep reading. I left my book on the table and wandered toward the water. I knew that this was Lake Michigan. I stood on the shore and then turned my head to look off to my right, across the water.

Kind of ahead of me yet slightly to the left loomed the vast shape of the Mackinac Bridge. The perspective was wrong; it's like the near end should have been much closer to me on the shore, as the bridge faced me almost head on, the towers visible from the front and almost lining up with each other. But I knew it was far away and far far off to my left. It was lit golden by the setting sun and the towers were warped somehow, stretched wider than they really are, and kind of squished flatter like somebody had taken an image of the bridge and stretched it at the sides. It was also much bigger than it should have been, considering the distance. It was slightly hazy too and I knew the distortion was because of the warmth of the air or whatever. I was a bit surprised as I hadn't known the bridge was right there. It was pretty as I stared at it. This is confusing and inconsistent as I knew this was Lake Michigan, BUT, if it was, the bridge should have then been to my RIGHT (where the lake seemed to turn in toward me). Since it was to my LEFT I knew I could not be on Lake Michigan but on Lake Huron. Then in the dream it's like I realized that if I wandered around in the water a bit, I'd actually wander from Lake Michigan into Lake Huron waters, so I must have been at the Straits of Mackinac, where these two lakes meet. When you face north from the Lower Peninsula, the water left (west) of the bridge is Michigan, and that to the right (east) is Huron. This didn't present a huge inconsistency in the dream though.

I looked down at the water and wistfully thought of going into it. Then it struck me like a bolt--I COULD go down into the water! I mean, here it was, waiting just for me! Surprised yet delighted, I stepped down toward the shore. I was now facing the water, yet the woods were to my left; the lake bent at a corner here like the edge of a pool, and stretched on ahead of me and to my right, but I never got a good look at how far the woods progressed; I only saw my table sitting nearby. Let me clarify that all a bit: If the lake was a square, I would have been in the lower right-hand corner, with trees along both sides stretching away from me, and the picnic table located on the bottom side. (The woods went down almost to the beach, with only several feet of shore.) I stopped where the grass (?) changed into gravel, as the Great Lakes shores are often pebbly. I could see the first foot or so of lakebottom descending and it was covered with water-smoothed rocks. Then it seemed to get steeper or slope more deeply and I could see absolutely NOTHING beyond that first foot or so. :/ Just darkness. I had no clue how deep the water was and that made me nervous.

I also didn't want to slip and fall; I was reminded of my slip and fall on a boat landing at the UAW Family Education Center when I visited Black Lake with my dad in real life a while back. During that incident, I was handling both of our digital cameras, and of course, both ended up getting soaked. -_- They malfunctioned and I was devastated...but they resumed working properly the next day, so it turned out okay. :/ Still, I now see the necessity of REALLY watching your step when heading into a strange lake. There was no boat landing here but maybe the pebbles were loose. But I don't think I had the cameras so aside from hydrophobia I can't think of why I was so careful. I didn't sit down but I seemed to be grasping onto the grass (?) of the bank behind me as I lowered myself carefully toward the water--more skewed perspective. My feet very carefully slipped into the water and I started toeing around beyond the first foot or so of gravel as I did not want to step off into nothing! o_o

At that moment, though, it's like my vision grew clearer, and though it was still dark, I could see more gravel on the bottom beyond the first visible foot or so, and knew it was not quite so deep as it had seemed. I eased myself into the water and started walking around. It was so nice and warm. The gravel didn't even hurt my feet. In fact, now that I looked again, I could see the darker bottom of the lake resolve itself into a sandy bottom with just an occasional pebble here and there. It felt so good as I walked around in it, splashing it with my feet. It was just like how Lake Huron felt when I stepped into it in real life at the city beach a couple of times earlier this summer--so warm! I dug my toes into the sand and nudged it around and walked around and around in circles. I glanced further out to the side and considered wandering out even further since the water was so shallow in this part. I hated the thought of having to get out and go back to my reading or whatever.

"I can come back here," I murmured, suddenly realizing that leaving the lake was merely a matter of almost stepping into another room--even that conveys too much of a separation or a distance from it. It was the feeling of this lake being "right outside my front door," almost as if the WOODS were my home. "This lake will always be here," I thought, with surprise. "It'll always be here, just for me. I can come back to this place any time I want, and it will always be here waiting. Whenever I want it."

This was EXACTLY the feeling I got--I was totally alone here, but that just meant that this part of the lake was MINE, mine to do with as I wished, my own "secret" safe place to return to at ANY time of the day or night--it was as simple as taking a step outside--even though there was no house present--I can't convey accurately the proximity of this lake to where I "lived," wherever that was. I can only try. It was a feeling almost like, I could be sitting in my room at night, and if I wanted to go to the lake, all I had to do was step right outside (even though my room has no door), and go right to it, like it was mere steps away. I had a similar feeling in real life a while back when I thought, "I could leave ANYTHING of mine--ANYTHING--sitting right here in the grass beside the garage, and when I come back in the morning, it would still be here, safe as anything, since this part of ground is OURS." I had thoughts of leaving books or my blanket behind almost as if the ground were the floor of the house--and aside from dew or rain or insects, it's basically true, even the grass and dirt in this little plot belong to us and they're there whenever I want to walk around on them. That's how the lake felt in my dream. Always there, whenever I wanted, and there was no inconvenience whatsoever in visiting it. As simple as just stepping outside whenever I felt like it.

This realization filled me with joy and I considered sitting here reading my book or doing my work or whatever, or returning at any time I wished. The thought of this little place I could always return to, any time I wished, no matter what or when, gave me such a feeling of overwhelming peace. I splashed my feet around in the water some more and then--

--Told myself I had to wake up, and I snapped awake. -_- Which was weird because it wasn't a lucid dream but I still did tell myself I had to wake up or I'd be late to log online. I glanced at the clock through bleary eyes and saw that I still had a few minutes (I wasn't totally awake yet) and tried to slip back into that sensation of splashing my feet in the water, yet I don't believe I was successful. :(

I've been slipping back into a depressive state and feeling utterly alone so upon awakening the dream seemed to have great meaning. I would so deeply love to have a place, whether physical or imaginary, that I can turn to whenever I wish, for whatever reason, and it will ALWAYS be there waiting to calm me and make me feel happy again. There is no PHYSICAL place like this nearby, so I assumed that the dream could be hinting at an imaginary place, something entirely in my head. There are places like this, one in particular (and it IS bounded by Lake Huron), but when I feel this utterly depressed, even it doesn't manage to comfort me, and I've never been able to COMPLETELY lose myself in an imaginary place so that I can escape my bad feelings. Though I've long wished to. :( So after I went through that possible meaning I looked at a more symbolic meaning. The lake was shallow but dark and very large--Lake Michigan, one of the country's biggest lakes. (No clue why it was Lake Michigan when we live near Lake Huron--though again remember how the two lakes seemed to merge in my dream. My only personal association with Lake Michigan is that it borders the city where I was BORN, and where I LEARNED (college), but Lake Huron borders the city where I've always LIVED.) Maybe the lake represented the unconscious/subconscious. It brought me comfort in the dream, which is kind of odd as the unconscious is often regarded as a frightening thing. (And I'm afraid of deep dark water in real life--even in the dream, not being able to see at first how deep it was made me anxious.) But maybe the lake/unconscious in this instance has something to do with my imagination? Unsure. I only just now got to thinking about the possible meaning of the pine forest. Pines are not my favorite kind of trees (I like deciduous, especially maples), but I do like cedars and I have a white pine I planted myself--the day before the dream I anxiously plucked a number of caterpillars off of it. I love forests and they make me feel very peaceful so it's understandable that I felt at peace at the picnic table under the trees, no matter what I was doing (studying?--reading?). Yet in the dream my attention was focused on the water and not on the trees, which is strange. It seems the WOODS would have brought me greater comfort than the lake. :/ But again...the fact that the lake was bordered by trees was part of the comfort of it. If it were wide open I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much. It made it feel like a secret place, all my own. And in the dream the woods were almost analogous to the place where I lived. (Remember there was no house, and I was doing a daily household thing at a picnic table almost as if I were sitting in my bed.) I've also heard deep forests referred to as symbolizing the unconscious. So there seemed to be a lot of emphasis on the unconscious in this dream, for whatever reason. Why would my unconscious be bringing me such comfort? I'm such a messed-up person that I think my unconscious would actually fill me with many bad feelings. >_<

I can't adequately describe all this, how it made me feel. I'll try once more. Hundreds of years ago, there weren't such things as property lines, and you stayed basically wherever you felt like it, and that one little bit of land was YOURS. You could put WHATEVER you wanted on it and it belonged COMPLETELY to you. Yet you weren't so DIVIDED from it as people are from the land nowadays. Remember my thoughts of leaving my personal stuff lying out in the yard and knowing it would still be safe, because that land was ours. In the dream it was almost a feeling of having the trees as my roof, the ground as my floor, and the lake as that place right next to me which would bring me comfort, like merely going to sit at a favorite window. I wasn't enclosed by walls but I WAS enclosed in my own special place, I was close to it, and it was completely mine and always would be whenever I needed it. It was a feeling almost of a secret place I could crawl into when I wished--it wasn't secret, but it was all mine and nothing could keep or take it away from me.

9/6/05: We Fly In All Directions, AKA Interview With The Indians

This was quite an interesting and realistic dream, more so than such dreams usually are. I took note of it immediately after awakening.

Even so, the earlier parts are unfortunately lost to me. :( I do know that I somehow ended up talking with a woman about the Ojibwa Indians. I KNOW this woman was associated with them somehow and was considered one of them, but I don't get the impression that she was 100% native; maybe she was half, or some such. Whatever the case was, she was "one of them," and as soon as I discovered this I started asking her all sorts of questions about herself. I think maybe we had both been doing or waiting for something and as soon as I learned who she was I started out with, "Excuse me, but could I ask you some questions...?"

She was quite friendly and talkative; she didn't mind my questions at all. I do not remember anything I asked her except my last question. :( But I was very inquisitive and she filled me in as best as she could. I mostly asked about how her people did things and about traditional beliefs and such. This was taking place in the basement of my house but it was also like waiting in line at some sort of specialty store, like maybe for crafts or something. I remember seeing a map somewhere in my dream, an old-fashioned map of the Great Lakes and/or Midwestern area...it was like cream colored with brown print. I don't remember if that was in this dream or one of the others. I think it was a map of the territory her (?) people had occupied. If this was the basement we would have been near that hole over in the corner where the water is; it's like a subpump or something, looks like a manhole. There was a high counter (not there in real life) that we were leaning on and if I was facing the wall behind the hole, that is, the north wall, she would have been to my right. This is why I get a feeling almost like we were waiting in line at a store.

We talked a long time. Eventually we fell silent a bit as I pondered any other questions I might want to ask while I had the chance. I finally thought of one that isn't something I'd probably care about much in real life, though it HAS puzzled me a bit. I turned to her and said a bit meekly, "Oh. Do you mind if I ask you a sort of personal question...?" She indicated no objections and I asked, "Do you live on a reservation or anything? I'm not even sure if we have reservations around here. Are there any?" I was apologetic because I thought it might be construed as insulting if I made it seem like I thought she lived on a reservation just because she was native, but the truth was, I was only curious. (And so in real life; I went to a powwow recently and was surprised by how many Indians there were. I NEVER see any in everyday life. I wondered if they all live on reservations??)

The girl (she was about my age, maybe a bit older?) started to answer, stopped and thought a bit, then turned to me and exclaimed, "You know, we really need a better way to communicate!" She was half joking; the point was, we were both going to have to be on our way soon, and I was asking her so many questions which she didn't have the time right now to answer; she didn't mind me asking, but she meant it would be more convenient if we had a better way to keep in touch so she could answer more of my questions later. I nodded in agreement; it would be nice to be able to talk with each other unhampered by time constraints. I took this to mean that she was open to us talking more later and I liked that thought. She started answering my question anyway. I don't remember what she said as she got only partway through her answer before she stood straight and seemed to realize something. "Oh! You know what?" she said. "My boyfriend should be getting back soon. He lives on the reservation. He can tell you everything you want to know."

(This made it seem like SHE didn't live on the reservation, but I never got the idea that she and her boyfriend were separated, or that she lived away from the others. I only got the feeling that she was saying her boyfriend knew MORE about what I was asking, was more involved, so I should ask him.)

Right on cue, the girl's boyfriend showed up. He was a tall lean Indian, likely fullblooded; dark skin, long dark hair which I think was parted in the middle and tied back in a tail or a braid; and he was wearing one of those varsity-type jackets, you know, the kind guys typically wear in school with the dark body and the light sleeves; it was kind of woolen like, maybe navy blue or black, with kind of neutral or cream-colored sleeves. Very casual-looking guy. He wasn't a BEEFCAKE HOTTIE or anything--he had a kind of prominent eyebrow ridge and kind of a weak chin, maybe thick lips, I believe--but he was still cute, and very self-confident. I liked him immediately. He was just as friendly as his girlfriend. His girlfriend introduced us and told him what I'd been asking and what I wanted to know. He held out his hand and I took it to shake it and he smiled at me.

Then he started talking, and it was this big long paragraph spoken entirely in Ojibwa. O_O I did not understand a word of it.

He finished speaking, and I just stood there smiling and nodding like I had any idea what that had meant! "What's that mean?" I asked as soon as he fell silent, and he finally blinked, seeming a bit surprised that I had no clue. Ugh, did I feel so stupid. >_< My earlier anxieties about bothering the woman came roaring back and I immediately knew these two must think I was the world's biggest idiot.

But he merely smiled again and offered a translation. This is very paraphrased--I will offer disclaimers after I give what he MIGHT have said.

He said, "It means, we all fly off in different directions, but as long as the weather is fair and our step is true, we eventually all come back to the same place."

Disclaimers: I am CERTAIN he said something about us all flying (?) off in different directions, and about coming back to the same place. I'm FAIRLY certain he mentioned something about the weather. Anything else, I do not know. And in fact, what he said was longer than that, more words, more descriptive, much more thought provoking and quoteworthy. But that's the general gist of it.

He finished speaking and I was quite awed by what he'd said. It didn't occur to me in the dream to wonder, what exactly does he mean by that? I had not asked him a question, and he didn't give it as the answer to one--it was just like a greeting or a preliminary thing he'd told me without me offering anything. All he'd had to go on was his girlfriend's introduction of me. I didn't wonder about this in the dream; I do now though. I had just been asking about reservations, though I know I had asked more about how their people lived and believed things. But I hadn't asked him any of that. He just said all of this as soon as I shook his hand, like he knew I was looking for it. (Witness his surprise as soon as I mentioned that I hadn't understood it--like he'd expected me to know.) :/

Well, it was time for the girl and her boyfriend to get going. It was sad to see them go but I really did get the impression that they were going to be around and we would find another way to keep in touch so I could resume asking my questions at a better time. We waved goodbye and all headed for the stairs, though they went first--the stairway upstairs, not the porch one. I watched them leave and as I started to go I was thinking, I should post about this in my online journal. I even thought about the first sentences I'd type. "Holy shit. I talked to an Indian. O_O "

It's like I got upstairs ahead of them though, and it was late evening and the house was dark like only the kitchen light was on. (I get the feeling it was autumn or winter.) I got up the steps and hurried through the living room and toward the upstairs stairwell where I kind of hid out of sight. Now I felt TERRIBLY embarrassed and I didn't want to run into them again. They had been joined by some friends of theirs--non-native, I think--and they were all talking as they came up the downstairs steps. I peered out around the corner and could see shadows moving over near the kitchen; I kept hidden. For now I was suddenly filled with the fear that the whole time I had been asking questions, they'd been thinking of how stupid I was, how much of a "wannabe," and I was so worried that now that they thought I was gone they were laughing at me and making fun of me behind my back. I felt so terrible. -_- I'd just wanted to learn and I'd probably made them think I was a total idiot.

I worked hard to tune out the talking just in case they might say something I would find hurtful, but from what little I did hear they didn't SEEM to be talking about me at all, were just talking about everyday things like what they wanted to do that night; I don't think I was part of the conversation at all. Still, I kept hidden and felt so bad. I just knew they thought I was a moron for asking such dumb questions.

There was a tiny bit more of the dream after that, involving a small person (dwarf) being in the living room--I think it was supposed to be the black guy who plays "Diet Cola" in the Bacardi & Cola commercials--but I didn't pay as much attention and it didn't seem to have much to do with the dream, and I woke up right after that.

One thing I considered immediately was that the basement could have stood in for the subconscious/unconscious, but other than that and my interest in Ojibwa culture, no clue.

What made the dream seem realistic was how much of the boyfriend's speech I remembered, how clearly I could see him in my head (though I could not describe his girlfriend for the life of me, despite us talking together longer), and especially, how humiliated I felt after the conversation was over. Usually in dreams, unless it's a "watchers" dream, I interact with people quite freely without the feelings of utter humiliation that I get from the slightest interactions in real life. I talked with them both easily enough but as soon as they were gone, nothing could convince me that they weren't laughing at me, even the fact that they didn't seem to be talking about me at all. All the feelings of embarrassment and self-berating that I felt in the dream were just like those I would feel after interacting with somebody in real life.

I even briefly wondered if it was not a dream but some sort of "spirit interaction." Many native groups believe that our spirits travel when we sleep, and some of the interactions we have with others in what seem to be dreams are in fact interactions between our spirits. Was I really talking with the spirits of two real people? If I was, then I STILL wonder if they aren't laughing at me, at least, after they woke up themselves. o_o; But I probably flatter myself way too much.

I had THREE dreams about Indians last night [I originally wrote this entry 9/6/05], and the last dream above was only one of them. That's strange, because I usually don't dream about my major interests. (I can't remember the last time I had a dream featuring manitous, Apsiu, or anything to do with Egyptian mythology)