The Trees Up There

The Dreamer is outside of his old neighborhood, at night, in the backseat of the car with his Mother’s sister, Aunt Jeanne.

Jeanne is driving around the neighborhood. The Dreamer and Jeanne are looking for Mother. There is some forgotten correspondence between the two. Then the Dreamer’s Mother is spotted, outside of his childhood home. Mother is in a bright yellow vest, laboring hard, gathering, and moving fast. The Dreamer thinks to himself that she is “deadheading plants”.

Then the Dreamer is at a crowded college basketball game in the bleachers with his Wife. Then the Dreamer is sitting alone in the front row. He notices the empty space. Then the Dreamer is watching the game: there is an unusual basketball player, wearing pants and a leather jacket. He is not very coordinated, trying hard, but missing shots. Despite this performance, the Dreamer looks up at the scoreboard and sees that the game is tied. Then the Dreamer is outside, watching the game from a concession stand. An unknown male college student sits next to him. The unknown student’s girlfriend joins. The girlfriend has a large white horse in tow. The Dreamer gently pets the horse, and asks his name. “Old Hippy,” says the girlfriend. Then the Dreamer’s dog’s surgeon walks by and forces the horse to sit like a dog. Then the Dreamer is in a parking lot, looking for his car. The Dreamer looks at his phone and it is 1:00am. He also sees 10+ missed calls from his Wife. The Dreamer thinks, “I must have fallen asleep”, and “Wait, was I high?”. Then the Dreamer sees a stray white dog with blue eyes. The Dreamer approaches and wonders if the dog is going to bite. Then the Dreamer screams “I want to wake up!”. Then the Dreamer is in the parking lot, on his back, waking up. He sees a blood pressure gauge above him, and the face of the surgeon.

Then the Dreamer is inside an empty gymnasium. There’s an unknown woman, who is asking the Dreamer to join an initiative that sounds like multi-level marketing or fundraising. The Dreamer is not interested and let’s the unknown woman know as much. Then the Dreamer is outside of the school, in the parking lot: it is night. Then there is an Old Asian Man, who looks like Mr. Miyagi. The Dreamer looks up at the sky and is in awe of the stars. He sees the Milky Way, extremely clearly, in three dimensions: and it starts to move. The Dreamer remarks to the Old Man, “I’ve never seen the stars like this!”. Then the Old Man says “Now let’s get started.” The Dreamer begins to sing, pitch perfect, nonsensical sounds, and to dance in spirals like a whirling dervish. Looking up at the sky, the Dreamer cries out the beginning of a song, “The Trees Up There Are Waiting Out For Me…”.

Context: I have been thinking about my Mother, in connection with an exploration of the meaning of the feeling function. My dog Charlie was recently in surgery. Yesterday I was beating my buffalo hide drum outside, looking up at the stars, belting out nonsensical words and dancing around in joy, waiting for my wife to get home from work.

Associations: I associate my Aunt Jeanne with marijuana. I associate my Mother with physical labor. I used to like playing and watching sports when I was younger. I associate horses with my Wife, we have a white horse named Mikey. I associate Hippies with marijuana. I associate marijuana with medicine and my own past addiction. I associate the white dog with a dog that my Father and Mother in Law used to keep: it’s name was Juno. I associate Juno with the two-faced God, one looking inward, one looking outward. I associate the surgeon with a cold, factual, approach. I associate Mr. Miyagi with spiritual and physical discipline. This dream continues the basketball motif found in “It’s Front Row”, and the horse motif from the neighbor who was too rough.

Feelings: searching, confusion, frustration, ambivalence, euphoria

Interpretation: This is a medicine dream. The Dreamer is searching for the Mother and the medicine (of the dead-headed plants). The Dreamer goes through the non-linear process of search, spectatation, uncoordinated participation (in an athletic sense), consumption, and coordinated participation (singing and dancing). The Dreamer is afraid of being alone in this process. The Dreammaker is suggesting that the process is a labor, is not a competition, is medicine, is not about waking life riches, and is enacted, or embodied, best through spontaneous singing and dance.