another dream and tarot and new england puritanism and layne

A few weeks ago Layne gave me my "tarot" reading. For me, bred in the heart of New England Puritanism, getting my reading was a rather large step to take, but I did so with eagerness because Layne is married to a friend, and she offered to do so as an act of kindness. If you read that essay you discovered that the "gift" card she gave me at the end of the reading, taken from a special deck of (gradually declining number of) cards after she got a "feel" for all the cards, was the "9 of Swords," the "Cruelty" card. Thus, my "gift" from Layne had something to do with cruelty in my past, my present, my future. It was tantalizingly indeterminate, and so I left it at that. Until the following brief dream.

The Dream

I was in a crowded room, that looked something like a very large bar but also had lots of windows looking out to a courtyard. There must have been a couple of hundred people in the room, and I was perched at one end of it on a barstool and was leaning my arms on the bar. I didn't know anyone there, but I didn't feel lonely. Along the wall nearby was the coat rack. But, unlike many coat racks, this one had, in addition to several jackets and umbrellas, two pairs of crutches hanging on hooks side by side. While I was sitting at the bar, I remember taking the crutches down from the rack and unscrewing three of the four rubber tips at the base of the crutches. I then replaced the crutches, now with their wooden nubs exposed, and sat at the bar with the rubber tips in my hands and proceeded to fiddle with them and peel off small layers of rubber.

I continued at this task for some time until I was gently interrupted by a tap on the shoulder. Looking at me was a kindly woman, about 70, who only said a few words to me. In the gentlest voice imaginable she said, "Would you mind putting the rubber tips back on the crutches? They belong to my husband, and he only gets around with great difficulty without his crutches." Struck (and stung) by her kind manner and the simplicity of her request, I took down the crutches and began to screw the tips back on.

But while I was doing so another image entered my dream. In front of me stood a man who must have been her husband. He was a short man, about her age, but weighed down by the cares of life. He wore thick glasses with cracked lenses. His facial features were severe, and miscellaneous hairs sticking out of his nose and his cheeks showed that even issues of self-care were challenges for him. But most striking to me was that he was wearing a kind of "cage" that people who have had severe neck injuries are forced to wear for a time. He looked at me and, without a word, he slowly took off the cage from his head and, in frustration, cast it down on the ground right in front of me. Then, I awoke.

Themes from a Dream

I know that I began interpreting the first part of the dream while I was already in the dream, but then, after I awoke, I "finished" my interpretation, much like I did in another dream. Even while I was sitting on the barstool in my dream, while fiddling with the crutch tips in my hands, I was thinking about my life. The overwhelming and intrusive sense that I had while on the barstool was that life had been unfair to me. I didn't dwell on any particular act of injustice I suffered, but I was feeling very much that I had been wronged. As I felt this feeling, I began to peel away the rubber on the crutch tips. I did so very unemotionally and as if I was completely unconnected to any person who might be in need of the crutches. All I knew was that I had been wronged. I didn't feel particularly angry or bitter about having been wronged; it was more like a fact that was part of my life, and a thought in my mind, as I was doing my little act of cruelty and vandalism.

After I awoke and continued thinking about the dream, I had two additional feelings come over me, the first relating to my conduct in the dream and the second touching on my reaction to it. I thought that the action of removing and then trying to wreck the crutch tips was indicative of arrogance, the kind of arrogance that assumes that its reality is the only "real" experience in the world. My cruelty was fueled by this pride, this sense that anything I do is all right because I, after all, have been put upon in some undefined way in the past.

But the strongest sense I had at the end of the dream was one of humiliation. I will never forget the look that the older man gave me. Our eyes met only for a moment, and I could barely see them behind the filthy and cracked lenses of his glasses. The look that he gave me, however, captured all the pain of a lifetime of this person's sense of rejection, of not fitting, of being shunted aside, of being ignored and put upon, of being dehumanized by people. And, of course, I realized, that I was adding the next verse to his lifetime song or, even more, that I was adding a "Da Capo," or double dots, to the end of the line, which forces the singer to go back and sing the chorus all over again. I was the instrument of the latest torture that he experienced.

And, then there was his wife. Even though his anguish stayed with me, the most lasting image of the dream was the kindness in her look, the gentleness in her words, the benignity that characterized her whole person--as if I was doing the kindest thing in the world simply by screwing the rubber tips back on her husband's crutches.

Conclusion

I will never forget this couple whom I never met. I keep the "9 of Swords" card always near me. I hope I am learning the lessons of the card and the dream.

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