"there is no woman with black hair anymore"

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was outside. I was working with a group of people. We were near a structure kind of like a park house, like a visitors' center with log walls. There were a lot of people around. I think we were all workers.

Something had broken nearby. It may have been a sewer pipe. It had caused a big, wet, dirty mess. A young woman, kind of skinny and pale, with long, crimped, black hair, was our (or at least my) leader. It had been her responsibility to clean up this mess.

The mess may now have been cleaned up. The young woman was complaining to all of us -- almost like she was giving us a performance -- about how whenever there was an accident here, she was the person who had to clean the stuff up. It wasn't like the mess was her responsibility. But whenever something happened in the park, the bad effects of it always seemed to find their way to the young woman.

The woman mentioned a couple of these instances. The things she'd mention in each incident seemed suddenly to enter my field of attention, like it had been there the whole time, but I just hadn't thought about it until the woman mentioned it.

One thing was some kind of long, red hose, about 30cm in diameter, with a ridged or collapsible body. It may have had a red nozzle at the end of it. But something about the object was tattered, like maybe a tattered flag was hanging off of it. The hose hung over the roof of the building. I may have imagined pulling down and pushing up the hose to watch it expand and collapse.

Another thing was some kind of booth. The booth looked like a mix between a confessional and an automated fortune teller's booth. It opened like a cabinet on either side. There were steps leading up and into  it. The steps were made of some mesh-like steel material. Underneath the steel material was an opening which apparently went down to some kind of water system.

The woman explained how once she'd been standing in this booth, checking whatever needed to be checked at the booth. (The booth may have been some kind of phone or computer terminal, even though it was all wood and looked ancient.) Unbeknownst to the woman, the area was having water troubles. Suddenly, backed up water all shot up from under the steps and soaked the woman. The woman said the problem was fixed now, though, like she didn't want anybody to worry that the same thing could happen to them.

The woman said that next time an accident happens, she hoped she wouldn't have to be near it, and that it wouldn't work its way to her. I imagined another water trouble occurring: a bunch of gloppy, brown water flowing in the woman's direction. The woman said, "Next time I hear there's trouble, I'm just going to tell the trouble not to come anywhere near me."

I imagined the gloppy, brown water turning into a humanoid. I told the woman, "You're just going to tell the new trouble, 'Uh... Mr. Swamp Thing...'"

Everybody laughed. But now everybody -- and there was an enormous crowd of people now! -- was gathered around two people. One crowd circled around each person, and the two separate crowds blended together in the middle. At the far edge of the crowd was the woman, standing high, as if she were on some platform. I stood at the edge of the crowd near the building.

The two people had fainted. They were now beginning to wake up. One of them was a young, attractive woman. The other was a fat, balding man with frizzy-curly hair all around the sides and back of his head. I knew that these two people, or at least the man, were the new problem. I hoped there might be a way I could keep this new problem from reaching the woman.

The man was beginning to talk. People gathered closely around him so they could hear what he had to say. He was talking in an annoying way, like he was whining about everything. He stayed seated on the ground, with his legs stretched out in front of him.

The man spoke of how he had lost the woman he had been with. It seemed to me that the man had been in some perilous situation that had caused him to pass out or switch dimensions or something. He'd been with a woman during that situation. And now the man thought the woman was missing.

I didn't like something about the man's story. It seemed to me like the man wasn't really a man, but a creature like Swamp Thing disguising himself as a man. But he didn't even know that that was what he was. I had a bad feeling that he'd be drawn toward the woman who was our leader and then either cause all kinds of problems for her or actually reveal himself to her as the Swamp Thing.

I hoped to keep the man away from the woman, then, by convincing the man that the leader woman didn't exist. I knelt down and tried to speak something softly, like a hypnotic suggestion. But my voice came out singing, and the only thing I could think to say/sing was, "There is no woman with black hair anymore."

The crowd around me all laughed. The man seemed unaware of me. He began speak/singing, too. He spoke of the missing woman, but was now really only mentioning her hair color. His description of the missing woman's hair color went through a few variations. But the last two were blonde and blonde with black roots. I had a feeling that if the man kept talking about blonde hair, the man wouldn't bother the woman. But when the man started talking about blonde hair with black roots, that was getting a little too close for comfort.

***

UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images in this dream can be found at this entry in my dreamday journal.