Another Dream of the Dead

Note: Two dreams in one day?! I actually had this dream last week when out of town for the holidays.

I have a new job at a lab on a campus. I am low person on the totem pole - washing glassware, keeping the lab generally tidy, being a gopher. It doesn't matter because I am delighted to be in a lab environment again. I saw or met a new student who I instantly wanted to be friends with. He was a bit on the stereotype side of being the sharp-tongued gay guy. He reminded me of a friend I had long ago in my waking life, someone I have always missed. It turned out the new guy was studying for his PhD under my friend L, who had gotten her PhD from and still worked with, my first husband, T. I ended up going to his lab to look for my new friend and seeing T. T was following me somewhere, and when we arrived he teased me about my butt. It was an effort to be good-natured. It was obvious he was still angry and hurt about the bust-up of our marriage, but it was also obvious that he was moving on with his life and didn't want to just hate me.

Note: (hey, 2 dreams in 1 day, now 2 notes in 1 dream!) This didn't have the deep, spiritual feel that my other dreams of the dead have had. I spent lots of time spinning this around. Journaling made me realize it wasn't so much about T as it was about me - how I'm still dealing with my guilt over his suicide. I am hoping that since T seemed to be able to forgive me in the dream, that I will be able to forgive myself in my waking life.

Disagreeing With My Dad (Just Like Waking Life)

My dad and I are discussing a report telling how the actress Jodie Foster has turned down a very lucrative deal. She was offered $5 million per year for 5 years for doing something, but she has to stay the entire 5 years or give back the money she's already gotten. She has turned down the offer because it doesn't align with her values. My dad is horrified. The idea of turning down that kind of money because she doesn't "like" the project, makes him sick. He insists that this is a luxury of the rich.

I don't agree with him. I tell him I would turn down the money if the job included going against my values, try to point out that maybe what's wrong with the world (and the economy) is that money has become more important than other values. He tells me I'm too young still to understand the importance of the security money can buy you, how that's more important than anything else. As in my waking life, I am 40 and have 2 children, but still he thinks my way of being in the world is childish, naive. He doesn't say it, but I know he thinks I'm just a "silly girl" with too many book smarts and not enough hard knocks.

Note: I usually love my dreams for the escape they provide. This was too close to my waking life to be very much fun.

Film Short with Christina Hendricks

I am at a big, outdoor party for something. Not a wedding but maybe a graduation. I am flipping through a magazine that belongs to my mother. I start to play a video that's in the pages. It's a short movie made by a woman I did a film with many years ago. The star is Christina Hendricks (the va va voom redhead made famous by AMC's Mad Men). It's sort of a fairy tale gone wrong plot. Ms. Hendricks is at the party, and I take the magazine to her to show her and tell her that I know the woman in it with her. She seems embarrassed about the short, like it was done before she was famous, and it's not very good. I start to agree with her - probably just because she's beautiful and famous. The film isn't great, obviously low budget, but I point out all the really interesting things about it. The use of color as metaphor is intense. The angle of many of the shots is unique and adds an element of unease that's not explicit in the script. The story itself is thought provoking. And of course Ms. Hendricks is beyond lovely and does an amazing job of selling it.

Note: While it sort of sounds like I was looking at a magazine with an e-reader since it has an embedded video, the video was actually embedding in a print edition. Which would be pretty awesome. The film maker referred to in the dream is a real woman who "friended" me on Facebook yesterday, explaining her otherwise random appearance in this dream. I have no idea why my mind chose Christina Hendricks.