October 16, 2013 – Twelve Angry Women (plus Three Other Not-Very-Happy)
My hubs will confirm this. I rarely have good dreams. I mostly have nightmares.
I would love to be able to say it’s because I lead a wild life – you know, drinking alcohol and coffee before bed, having watched a violent film while smoking cigarettes. If I did those things, I could expect to have nightmares.
But nope. In the evenings I drink herbal tea, respond to happy news from friends on facebook, write a story and try to illustrate it, and read a few chapters of an amazing book.
I think it’s my body’s way of doing yin and yang. Because my waking life is as good as it gets – food, shelter, clothing, education, health care, a hubs who loves me (and I love him), happy kids, great friends, green space, books, and so on – my sleeping life has to compensate.
*****
My dream last night started off with me showing up at a meeting. It was to do with planning for essential social services. Only two women were there, out of 12. I was late because I couldn’t find parking for the car. (This comes back into it later.) I asked them what they had been talking about, and they said they had just been throwing around ideas. I felt upset already because I’m more of a “take fast simple action” kind of gal.
And then they told me I’d been voted off the committee. I was SHOCKED! I asked why. And they said that everyone on the committee said they wouldn’t attend if I was there. Here are the reasons they disliked me so intensely:
1. I was too political
2. I’m too demanding
3. They don’t like the movies I watch. (I don’t watch movies these days. As if I have to justify this anyway.)
4. They didn’t like my business partner. (I don’t have a business let alone a partner.)
So they told me to leave and I told them I would write head office and complain. They laughed, “You haven’t even been voted on to the committee yet.” Sigh!
*****
I got outside and could not find the car anywhere. So I slept outside, presumably on a park bench. In the morning Anna Baby (oldest daughter) showed up and was pretty upset with me for not being home last night. She had run out of gas in Espanola and had called me. No answer. So she had to get Grannie Marj (who is 91 and lives in Belleville) to come and get her. Guilt, guilt.
I was so thirsty and Anna found a fountain with a tap. All it delivered was coca cola. Gah! But I was so thirsty and beggars are not choosers. For some reason, Laurence showed up at this point and helped me find the car. In the back there was a portable computer, and all of a sudden I realized, “I’m an employee. They gave me a company car and a computer and a credit card! They can’t just fire me like that.”
What was more worrisome was that I was responsible for these things until I returned them. So I returned to the “scene of the crime” to return the computer and keys and a credit card. And, you know what, the room was filled with angry board members. I knew many of them and could not believe I had offended that many people. But the proof was in the pudding, no?! Or, in this case, in the board room.
I reiterated that I was going to complain to head office, but it seemed like such a shallow threat. Twelve other people couldn’t be wrong.
Somehow I made it “home” – though I didn’t recognize the place. I was so hungry and found some fried stringy vegetables in the fridge. I put it on some stale bread and started eating it. It was so tasty.
Hubs said, “Pretty good eh? I just cut up the cabbage really fine.” (He complains sometimes that I don’t cut things up small enough.) “And I fried it.”
It was the best thing I had eaten in a long time. While I still felt under attack, I also felt very content.
*****
Varlam Shalamov, author of “Kolyma Tales” wrote somewhere that when the (dead) bodies shift in the crevasses of the Gulags, its reverberations are felt round the world. And perhaps I feel them in my dreams.
His tales of life in a Russian concentration camp in Siberia don’t make good bedtime reading, but I do recommend them. http://mitteleuropa.x10.mx/biblio_kolyma_tales_shalamov_varlam.html
Not being liked by 12 fictitious board members pales by any comparison!
I would love to be able to say it’s because I lead a wild life – you know, drinking alcohol and coffee before bed, having watched a violent film while smoking cigarettes. If I did those things, I could expect to have nightmares.
But nope. In the evenings I drink herbal tea, respond to happy news from friends on facebook, write a story and try to illustrate it, and read a few chapters of an amazing book.
I think it’s my body’s way of doing yin and yang. Because my waking life is as good as it gets – food, shelter, clothing, education, health care, a hubs who loves me (and I love him), happy kids, great friends, green space, books, and so on – my sleeping life has to compensate.
*****
My dream last night started off with me showing up at a meeting. It was to do with planning for essential social services. Only two women were there, out of 12. I was late because I couldn’t find parking for the car. (This comes back into it later.) I asked them what they had been talking about, and they said they had just been throwing around ideas. I felt upset already because I’m more of a “take fast simple action” kind of gal.
And then they told me I’d been voted off the committee. I was SHOCKED! I asked why. And they said that everyone on the committee said they wouldn’t attend if I was there. Here are the reasons they disliked me so intensely:
1. I was too political
2. I’m too demanding
3. They don’t like the movies I watch. (I don’t watch movies these days. As if I have to justify this anyway.)
4. They didn’t like my business partner. (I don’t have a business let alone a partner.)
So they told me to leave and I told them I would write head office and complain. They laughed, “You haven’t even been voted on to the committee yet.” Sigh!
*****
I got outside and could not find the car anywhere. So I slept outside, presumably on a park bench. In the morning Anna Baby (oldest daughter) showed up and was pretty upset with me for not being home last night. She had run out of gas in Espanola and had called me. No answer. So she had to get Grannie Marj (who is 91 and lives in Belleville) to come and get her. Guilt, guilt.
I was so thirsty and Anna found a fountain with a tap. All it delivered was coca cola. Gah! But I was so thirsty and beggars are not choosers. For some reason, Laurence showed up at this point and helped me find the car. In the back there was a portable computer, and all of a sudden I realized, “I’m an employee. They gave me a company car and a computer and a credit card! They can’t just fire me like that.”
What was more worrisome was that I was responsible for these things until I returned them. So I returned to the “scene of the crime” to return the computer and keys and a credit card. And, you know what, the room was filled with angry board members. I knew many of them and could not believe I had offended that many people. But the proof was in the pudding, no?! Or, in this case, in the board room.
I reiterated that I was going to complain to head office, but it seemed like such a shallow threat. Twelve other people couldn’t be wrong.
Somehow I made it “home” – though I didn’t recognize the place. I was so hungry and found some fried stringy vegetables in the fridge. I put it on some stale bread and started eating it. It was so tasty.
Hubs said, “Pretty good eh? I just cut up the cabbage really fine.” (He complains sometimes that I don’t cut things up small enough.) “And I fried it.”
It was the best thing I had eaten in a long time. While I still felt under attack, I also felt very content.
*****
Varlam Shalamov, author of “Kolyma Tales” wrote somewhere that when the (dead) bodies shift in the crevasses of the Gulags, its reverberations are felt round the world. And perhaps I feel them in my dreams.
His tales of life in a Russian concentration camp in Siberia don’t make good bedtime reading, but I do recommend them. http://mitteleuropa.x10.mx/biblio_kolyma_tales_shalamov_varlam.html
Not being liked by 12 fictitious board members pales by any comparison!