Hammer-philia

In this morning's dream, I was sitting very squished in a car with a group of religious Jews. Among them, the men were wearing black suits with black hats and big beards, and the women had the wigs on with long skirts and sleeves that cover the elbows. The strange thing (and the reason I was even there in the first place ) was that one of the men was my husband, or at lest boyfriend. Let me describe his looks: a long, white beard, a black suit, and an aging face. Very sweet. (He really did look like a wizard...). Anyway, we got out of the car on a busy Chinatown block somewhere. (Don't remember what we were doing, but it was brief...) Anyway, as we were loading back into the car, and one of the very large older women in the group took my seat. I had nowhere to sit in the car. Being that I was the only "unreligious" one, I offered to go to the subway alone and let the rest of them go. I said "Don't worry about it, I'll leave, don't worry...." So there I went.

The subway was far from typical. First off I climbed up some ladder and went into a small opening that led to a long tube, something like one of those enclosed slides at a waterpark. Everyone around my only spoke Chinese, including the peoople operating the subway. I entered the fark entrance, and I remember how tight it was inside, and went cascading down the slide, arms crossed against my chest. I distictly remarked on how small the diameter of the space was. At the bottom of the "slide/subway", I was let off exactly where I began; I entered the subway on the wrong side and was faced with the fate of restarting the whole thing. I was drenched in water, my nice religious-girl clothes soaking wet, and had not even made it to the destination. I was wearing clothes that weren't what I would pick, standing waist-high in green murky water, surrounded by Chinese people who could not understand my questions.

To summarize: First rejected by the group (among whom I was already an outsider...), inappropriately dating or married to someone for whom I was martyring myself, ending up alone and having to travel in a different way from the rest of the group precisely because I was too flexible in my lifestyle (compared to them), and then ending up exactly where I began, only drenched in a dark pool in an area where I was once again an outside.

Themes and thoughts: To compromise and to assimilate is not everything. It leaves me feeling like I don't belong anywhere. Where I found belonging was with this old man, but in his milieu I did not fit in. My agility and good-hearted willingness to compromise got me into a situation where I was even more alone, but wet and underground and with no one to take care of me. One more note: This dream could really only happen to a New Yorker. THere is a sense of anomie that one gets, walking around as a "modern" among people and in streets where there are groups and subgroups of communities that are very specific. Strange dream, no?

Anyone like to analyze dreams? The floor is open....

---End of Dream---