Dark Reflection for Early Summer

After Friday's staff luncheon that marked both the end of the school year and, for some, the end of their school careers, I hurried off alone for the first bike ride of the vacation. Afterward, I retreated home to my evening routine: dog walk, drink, dinner, reading on the patio. That night, I had a dark dream that spoke to me. I woke, shaken, and wrote it down.

[Photo: This dark reflective window stands in the guard booth at the entry to the Martin Luther King Center, where I begin and end my 38 - mile bike ride to Stone Mountain most Saturdays in summer. On Memorial Day, however, streets and trail were quiet and empty.]

In my dream, I boarded one of Metro Atlanta's Rapid Transit Authority trains (MARTA); only this wasn't the familiar air - conditioned commuting train, but a coal mine railcar, rusty, grimy, open, and empty. I saw no other people until the car passed a booth where a young black man in uniform monitored the car's descent of a steep ramp to the end of the line. The car dumped me in a wasteland of red Georgia mud, gravel, and loose trash, then withdraw up the ramp.

[Photo: The bike trail I took on Memorial Day was one I ride often that passes a vast concrete wasteland in Avondale, under MARTA tracks. Elements of this familiar scene were incorporated in my nightmare.]

My feelings in the dream were bewilderment, disappointment, indignance, and growing fear that I could be stuck there and forgotten. When I climbed up the ramp and ducked through some bars and gates, the young black man was there, disapproving. I climbed out into an open - air cafe, crowded with convivial diners in brightly colored clothing.


From across the room, the young black man pointed straight at me and delivered this advice: "You've got to get out with people!" (I know now, as I write this, where I've seen his face before: He smiled and pumped his hand at the end - of - year luncheon when he stood with the maintenance staff to receive teachers' grateful applause. Joining us mid - year, he was the newest member of our staff at a luncheon honoring retirees.)


Psychologist Karl Jung always preached that dreams are our own minds alerting us to pay attention to aspects of ourselves that we've ignored. With eight weeks of vacation spreading out before me now, and the prospect of retirement coming close, I'm getting the message: even introverts need to stay connected.


Message received.

Of related interest:

• A Jung Man's Dream (01/29/2019) examines a fairy tale dream that reflected my inner life around age 30. The article includes links to other posts about novelist Robertson Davies, who referred often to Jung, and James Lapine's play 12 Dreams, based on Jung's own notebooks.
  
• Geography of the Self (04/02/2103) relates a chapter of John Updike's wonderful memoir Self - Consciousness to a principal of Jung's dream interpretation: in a dream, our homes become our physical selves, the contents our souls.
  
• Jung Over: Dreams the Morning After(03/09/2013) finds urgent lessons in disturbing dreams.