On Show
I am a preteen age girl, attending a country fair. I am naked and I have something like a harlequin pattern painted on my skin. I have a dog collar around my neck, and I am being led around the fair, on a lead, by an older man. People have…
My Muse
Dream
A young girl comes to see me. She is in her mid to late teens or early twenties. She is petite, very pretty, with a large Jewish nose (which does not detract from her beauty). She is also a virgin. She takes all her clothes off and poses nude for me while I paint her portrait. When I have finished we make love. We become lovers and she becomes my muse.
Photo by Olena Sergienko on Unsplash
Dream notes and associations
I had this dream back in January when I was in Canberra for 3 weeks cleaning out the family home to get it ready for sale (94 year old Mum had moved into a retirement village)
The young girl actually did exist. She worked in the local IGA Supermarket where I went to buy my lunch each day. She either served me in the deli or processed my sale at the checkout, depending on where she was working on the day. Over the 3 weeks we struck up a friendship of sorts. It wasn't very busy in the shop so we would have a bit of a chat; how our day was going, the weather, the bushfires etc. Nothing deep and meaningful. She had a very pleasant, friendly personality and she was very easy to like. She had a very pretty, petite face with an enormous Jewish nose. It was a very pleasant interlude during a day spent clearing and sorting stuff at the house. It was a nightmare of a task. 71 years of accumulated living and nothing had been thrown out. I wasn't doing the job alone. I was joined by my brother and his partner.
My feelings throughout the dream and on awakening
Erotic, beautiful, romantic love. It had a soulful feel to it as well.
Lindsay
I forgot to mention that at the time I was also reading “The Island of the Day Before” by Umberto Eco. The setting is the middle of the Pacific Ocean during the 1500s. Roberto the hero of the story is the sole survivor of a ship that was sunk during a storm. He survives by clinging to a piece of the ship’s timber. He eventually bumps into another ship that has run aground on a reef. The boat is deserted but is well provisioned so he sets up home on board. There is an island nearby but it is out of reach. Too far to swim (he can’t swim) and he doesn’t have a rowing boat to row there. In order to maintain his sanity, every day he writes a letter to this peasant girl he knew when he was 15 and was in this besieged castle in Italy. This was his first experience of war. He was besotted with this peasant girl but he never spoke to her. He was the son of a minor Italian nobleman. So everyday he writes a letter to this girl describing his experiences of his day. When he has finished writing the letter he reads it out loud so he can remember how to talk. This peasant girl becomes his muse even though she is on the other side of the globe and no nothing of it.
Hi Lindsay, this is a beautiful example of entanglement playing out between our dreams and life events. I love the parallels you draw from clearing out your family home to Roberto’s isolation on the reef and of course the muses that emerge for you both.
Still none the wiser as to what it is about. I cannot see the parallels between Roberto’s isolation on the reef and me clearing out the family home. But in reference to the dream and clearing out the home: clearing out the home was a very stressful task especially working with my brother. The house was full of junk which had to be sorted, my mother was worrying that we would throw something valuable out ( and we probably could have). Also my brother is a perfectionist in everything he does and expects the same standards from everyone else. He can be a bit of a martinet in that respect. I do get on with my brother very well I just prefer not to work with him, if I can avoid it. So I would look forward to this interlude in the day when I went to the supermarket and our little conversation with this young girl/ woman. (I’m not sure how old she was). Anyway I am about to add some more dreams which may help to tease this out further
I see the parallel as the stressful situations you and Roberto were experiencing (Roberto being stranded; you performing the stressful task of clearing out the home) and the women that you had contact with and who transformed into muses for you both during the process.
Okay that makes sense.