This morning I had two short dreams. One was about my mother, who passed away nearly a decade ago (funny, in my dreams I'm never aware that Mom is no longer living -- not explicitly, anyway; the one exception, remarkable for the vividness of the dream, happened several years ago; in that dream, I was at work or school when I was summoned by the principal/boss; I was to be interviewed by a psychologist to help with some research project; the psychologist asked me a series of questions, then directed me to go to a certain spot outside, because Mom had been brought back for the occasion; I eagerly went to the place, rounded a corner -- and there was Mom, welcoming me with a big smile, gloriously radiant as if lit by a light stronger than daylight, full of health and vim, and looking just like she did in life before she became sick. I was ever so glad to see her again, was grateful for the opportunity, and then the dream closed like an old iris shot in silent movies; I like to think that this was in part a veridical dream, that Mom is in a place where she's happy and at peace, and that she really had come back for a visit to console me).
In the first dream of the morning Mom had to go away on a a trip. She packed her suitcase and left (on a train I think) -- and never came back. She was incommunicado and we were worried, not knowing where she was or what could have happened to her. Then someone informed us that Mom was in "Alama" or some place that sounded like it. I looked up that name and similar sounding variations later when awake -- just in case -- but nothing meaningful came up. But it's interesting that Mom's death was metaphorically addressed as a case of a person who has gone away.
Actually, this sort of indirect reference in dream to Mom's death has been made before, when several years ago I dreamt I saw Mom lying asleep and inert in a dark room. But what I think now is that my memory of Mom's death has somehow become adopted in my unconscious as a symbol of the "feminine" part of my soul, the anima, whose dark half has manifested itself from time to time over the years in forms that are literally dark, such as a black-haired woman wearing a black vinyl coat (a poetess from New York, at that), an Asian girl with long black tresses, literal black women on a few occasions, and once even as a black kitten. I have named this persona simply The Dark Woman.
Then, in the second dream the opposite happened. I was sitting next to the Dark Woman's counter-persona, the other half of my feminine soul, which I have named The Sunny Blonde, for that is just what it looks like -- as a literal light woman with bright blonde hair (although it also once appeared as a white kitten). Interestingly, on this occasion it had taken on the likeness of an actual friend of mine, an alumna from USC and UCLA. In the dream I was trying to engage her in sex, planting light little kisses on her face and lips, and she was responding in a playful, coy sort of way. Whether I succeeded in seducing her or not, I cannot say, because I woke up with a full bladder before the conclusion of the seduction.
In retrospect the two dreams together seem to be a staging of some vaguely positive development in my unconscious. My mother's image was cast in a dual role; as a missing person, one who is "gone dark" because she is deceased in waking life, and also as a symbol of the negative aspects of my unconscious, the parts that are dark, untamed and unaddressed. The "shadow", if you will. Then I was embracing the Sunny Blonde and endeavoring to become intimate with her, just like those male and female deities embracing in carnal union in the Vajrayana Buddhist thangkas. Acknowledgment of the dark, followed by working toward the light -- would you not say this is a wholesome, healthy sign, regardless of the specific message?
