Collecting Plums

This one (night before last) was a bit of a nightmare.

I found myself in a confusing location. There was, perhaps, some kind of festival going on, with people moving in different directions between performances. They may have been enjoying themselves, but to me it was just confusion.

There were strawberries and plums growing in the place. I wanted to pick some strawberries, but when I bent down to pick them, I found that each berry I went for was disgustingly half-eaten, no doubt by snails.

I turned my attention to the plums. First I went for the bright red plums, but every time somebody else got there before me. Then I noticed an abundance of darker plums, much less visible, dispersed in between the clumps of bright red plums. I felt a few dark plums and found they were nicely ripe for picking, with the right combination of firmness and softness.

I picked an armful of plums, but found it difficult to hold them without dropping them. If there were only a plastic bag. Yes, there's a store of small, green coloured, plastic bags, dispersed between bales of cotton pulp in a warehouse. I went into  the bales of cotton.

If I were been hunted by the Gestapo, I could bury myself in the bales, so as not to be visible. I went deeper in amid the cotton bales. Somebody was calling me. I bet they could not see me, but I wasn't sure, because, without turning round and looking back, I couldn't know whether I was fully hidden or not. Best thing was to keep still and wait. They passed on and I collected a bundle of plastic bags and returned to the plums.

There I found my wife standing beside my mother's grave. A woman was wanting to say prayers over the grave. I told her to push off, but my wife constrained me, telling me to be reasonable. The prayer-woman told me she wanted to consecrate the grave, but I told her it was consecrated already.

I needed to gather a lot of stuff from my father's grave. The prayer-woman said she would come too, and I followed her away from mother's grave. We must have gone astray, for now we were a long way from father's grave. She said, "Quick, we can get a lift on the truck," and she ran and jumped onto a truck as it was just moving off.

The truck was carrying large sheets of  corrugated iron. I ran after the truck and jumped onto a corrugated sheet, trying to climb up over it into the truck. I was having difficulty staying on and was in danger of falling off, so I grabbed hold of an iron cable with both hands. The iron cable hurt both of my hands as I clung on and the truck speeded off, but I had to cling on anyway or I would fall off. The driver of a truck-crane saw my plight, and, shouting to my truck driver, positioned his crane to catch my cable and hoist it and me so that I would be in position to drop into the truck.

Interpretation:

I guess what sparked the dream was an email I received and read just before bed-time: I had submitted an idea  for an input device for  wrist-computers for confidential evaluation to Lambert & Lambert. Their reply was in accordance with my expectations.

They mark inventions out of 107. Ideas that score above 96, they offer to finance. My invention scored 78, a decent mark but short of the mark to receive their financial support. They said my device was feasible, with high profitability, high consumer appeal and moderate competition. However, the prospect of a successful patent was only moderate, with "risk of being rejected or issued with narrow or non-useful claims." Where do I go next with the invention? My horoscope for the following day (Evening Herald, Sarah Delamere) is interesting and pertinent: "Ask for assistance, if necessary. Now is not the time to be too proud, so don't be. You must believe in yourself; equally you must be aware of your limits. Life is currently a fine balancing act. You must spot when you need help and engage in dialogue."

The red plum of successful patent, financed and marketed by a partner, is not immediately available. I am now thinking of the darker plum of publication.

What's this about my mother's and father's graves? Firstly, both parents are actually in the same grave, so the graves in the dream must be symbolic for something else. Forty years ago, I dreamt of my dead father coming back from the grave and had to kill him to get rid of him. This was the Oedipus Complex expressing itself in a dream: my need to shake off the psychological baggage of paternal dominance and become my own man. Now, my new dream is telling me that I must go back to my childhood to recover essential stuff.

As to the half-eaten strawberries: this reflects my actual garden. I grow alpine strawberries in my rockery. These are tiny, but intensely flavoured and they ripen continuously from spring-time all through the summer into autumn. If you leave them too long, the snails will get there before you, so it is best to pick them when they are red but still firm.

The general weariness of the dream actually reflects muscular weariness from having mixed cement for a garden project - a task that left my old muscles weary.

The pain in the palms of my hands reflect stretch-pains from practicing the Yoga prayer-pose.

The prayer-woman represents, perhaps, those people we have to allow into our lives, doctors, dentists, taxmen and the like, and whose input becomes critical at times.

Maybe.