In Dreams

Thank you all for the kind words, e-mails, and even the visits to my office (a co-worker spotted last week's article!) with your encouragement and kudos for my contributions to the Globe and Mail's blogging article last week. I think everyone has been very understanding and the support that I have seen and received in the last week has been incredible. I thank you. Each and every one of you for that. It means a great deal to me.

I wanted to write today and discuss a particularly vivid dream that I had the other night. So vivid was it, that it woke me and I remember my heart racing a mile a minute, fear's tendrils invading my space. Here goes...

I was in a small village by an ocean, friendly and accommodating. The type of town where everyone knows everyone else. But there was an underlying hurried nature and fright that was palpapable. There was a huge, ferocious, black bull, complete with nose ring, that was coming to terrorize the village. We could see it coming so we packed up our midday lunch (a picnic, including the traditional red and white checkered tablecloths) and we got into our cars. Most of the cars were convertibles; I had a red one. I drove, and my husband was with me.

We drove in a convoy, out of the village and up the main road. The road was an extremely steep hill; so much so that we thought the bull couldn't get up the hill. At the top of the hill, a few kilometres away from the seaside village, there was a large, old, white house on the right side of the road, with a vast property, surrounded by green grass. (I'm not sure why all the colours were so bright in this dream; that's odd for me to take note of these things.)

We parked the cars, in a neat row (side by side), on the grass in front of the house. Then we spread out our picnic on the grass and on picnic tables, and the villagers began to have lunch. I remember music playing and having a glorious time. We had drinks, and socialized, and it was lovely.

But the afternoon was marred by the sight of the bill coming up the hill and towards us. Getting away from this bull became the focus of my dream. I grabbed my husband's hand and we went into the house; we weren't the only ones with that idea though. Many people sought refuge in the house. Some sought refuge in their cars though... again, many of which were convertibles. The bull ran up to the row of cars and began trampling them, ruining the steel, twisting and crumpling the metal, killing some of the people who had tried to escape its wrath.

The bull then came towards the house, and managed to get through the door (it was wide). The bull came through the house, into the kitchen, and people scattered everywhere. We had run downstairs, figuring that the bull couldn't get down there, and we listened to the bull wrecking the floor above us. When we heard it move to the other side of the house, we ran upstairs again. Some people tried to coax us outside, but I wasn't having any of it knowing that the bull could get outside again. Not safe enough for us.

However, someone (I don't remember who) beckoned to me from down a narrow hallway. It was safe down there... the bull's horns spanned wider than the narrow hallway and thus it couldn't get to the rooms down there. My husband and I slipped down the hallway quickly, heading into the room on the right, to join a few other people. We heard the bull, pacing back and forth at the end of the hallway.

I remember going to the door of the room, peering down the hallway to my left, my eyes met the bull's and I stared at it, my heart racing, beating out of my chest with fear. The bull tried, but couldn't get to me. The bull rammed its horns against the walls of the house, the edges of the hallway, trying to get to us. But I knew I was safe. I knew that despite its best efforts, the bull couldn't get to us.

That didn't stop me from being afraid though, and I stepped back into the room, and peered down the hallway, watching the bull until it moved towards the front door again.

That's when I woke. My psyche was obviously terrified, but of course I realized there was no bull. There was no convertible. There were no deaths and carnage and no hill to the village by the ocean.

So what does this dream mean? What is that bull? Why the convertibles? Why was mine red? Why the narrow hallway? If anyone has any knowledge of dream interpretation, I'd love to hear your take on this. I've thought about this dream ever since; for the last four days. I've no idea what this might represent; all I know is that for some reason, it feels significant.