Dreams

I don't know that dreams are a reflection of our life, revealing some deeper understanding of who we are, or providing a prophetic tie to our wakeful everyday life. In the past two years I've become more interested in dreams and after one dream that seemed to plague me, I bought a book about interpreting dreams. The book I bought has some interesting information about symbolism in dreams but mostly it just seems to skirt every thing that its says. Basically it says nothing definitive. I guess that what you get when you buy a five dollar book off the sale table.

Two years ago in the summer right before or after after the 2008-2009 school year started, I had an unusual dream that I eventually remembered. In my dream I was at school in the middle school science room. It was summer and windows were open. There was no a/c. It seemed like there was a group of us teachers sitting in the student chairs interviewing a candidate for a job or watching the candidate's presentation.

I was sitting in the back of the room, leaning back in my chair, and my arm was draped on the back counter. I remember that I was sitting by a particular male teacher known for not being the most involved or positive teacher at our school. I remember thinking that I wanted to sit by him because I was going to slack off and not really participate in whatever was going on.

So I'm kicking back in my chair and I notice that the room isn't particularly clean. The back counter, floor, and cardboard boxes under the counter are kind of dusty and there are some cobwebs around. I suddenly noticed that a cocoon formed on the inside pad of my hand. The cocoon is like the ones we use to have on the bushes of our Memphis home. I use to call the caterpillars "herbies". (When I described the cocoon to my friends, they said it was a bag worm cocoon.)

Anyway I pull this cocoon off my hand and a black worm like caterpillar crawls and burrows under my skin by my wrist. It starts crawling up my arm under the skin. I could literally feel it crawling. In my dream, I grab my arm trying to stop the progress of this creature while getting the attention of my fellow male teacher. He pulls out a pocket knife and he is going to cut the skin above the creature to try and get it to come out from under my skin at the incision spot. I think I'm O.K. with this concept as I'm squeezing my arm tight making a tourniquet. At this point I thankfully wake up.

I remembered the dream when I woke up and it was a little disturbing as I could still feel what it felt like when the creature was crawling up my arm. But I forgot about the dream. Later in November when Doug and I were putting Christmas lights up on our evergreens the branches of one of the trees gently scraped against my wrist (almost like a tickle). I grabbed my wrist and boom immediately my dream came flooding back into my wakeful mind. Let me tell you I was freaked out. I had to stop working, catch my breath, and calm down.

Once I was calm and rational, I continued to help put up lights but pulled my sweatshirt sleeves down over my hands. I was going to take no changes of creatures crawling under my skin.

What did this dream mean? I don't know. I thought of an invasion or being destroyed. My principal who kind of likes this dream stuff thought that the caterpillar and cocoon could symbolize a metamorphosis like a new opportunity or direction in life. She saw it as a positive not a negative. Maybe I was resisting this new opportunity. The five dollar book provided no insight. Did anything come of the dream? Not that I know of, except that it lingers in my mind. I do tend to avoid the science room at school and dusty counters.