Dream Journal (Sub-category: Weird and possibly meaningful)

[hrj]

Dream with a "meaningful" feel to it just before waking this morning. I should note that I don't believe the actual supporting characters in the dream are intended to represent themselves, but on the other hand I haven't managed a reasonable "reading" of it yet.

I'm packing a car for a trip -- the car appears to be my as-yet-unbought new car. There are large amounts of SCA camping gear strapped to the roof (I specifically noted my camp tables and pavilion fabric) and I'm being accompanied by my mother and at least one brother (identity unclear). In addition to packing the car, I have large amounts of food to prepare for something and the only offers I get to help with it are of the form "I'll cook something, but it'll be something I feel like cooking, not your carefully planned-out dishes."

We get on the road and as I'm pulling onto the highway, things start falling off the roof of the car: long swathes of tent canvas, tables smashed on the pavement. I pull off and investigate and it turns out that someone (identity unknown) had undone the lashings to get access to something on the roof and then hadn't tied things down again. I start ranting and raving.

I'm still ranting and raving when we arrive at the house of some (identity unclear) fannish friends. My memory has gotten fuzzy but evidently the trip was for the purpose of attending some sort of convention at which I was some sort of guest, because the next thing I know, my mother (I repeat the reminder that supporting characters do not appear to be representing themselves in the dream) is harranguing me for being autocratic and egotistical, one piece of evidence for which is that evidently I'd asked her to write up a several-page biography of me for the program book (in addition to bossing everyone around about the packing and cooking). And as I'm trying to explain to her that it's normal for guests to make their own arrangements for a bio to be available, and that the page count was so that they could edit it down into the available space (rather than having to write more to fill the space), our fannish hosts start harranguing me about something entirely different which, again, turns out to be based on a complete misunderstanding not only about what had happened but about the context in which it occurred.

And I wake up with a looming sense of trying to get something done while everyone around me not only is failing to support me in the project but is hindering the work by careless actions and thinking badly of me for reasons that are not only unfair but outside my control. Woah.

Possible interpretation: I've been feeling a little bit guilty about not being as energetic in doing grunt work and research for the Perfectly Period Feast as others are (I'm still struggling to get my new clothes finished and doing the readings for my own role), and there has been a small problem with some people having mistaken understandings of what the feast is trying to do that have resulted in prickly feelings. So if you rearrange the dream roles such that I'm one of the persons "failing to support" and the main leaders of the feast project showed up in the dream as "me", then this might be a reasonable working out of my feelings and anxieties around the event. My meaningful dreams don't ususally transpose point of view that way -- it would have been much more straightforward (and in line with previous dream manifestations) if I'd had the usual imagery of preparing for a trip and not being packed, not having tickets, being too far from the airport, not having my passport for an international flight, etc. etc. Curious.

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Tangent

[j-i-m-r.livejournal.com]

I once had *all* of the tourney gear on the top of the car come off on the freeway in the middle of Friday afternoon traffic. The gear was well lashed to the cartop carrier and stayed in one bundle. It was the mechanism that connected the cartop carrier to the top of the car that failed. Fortunately the car behind me had good brakes :-)