Res Ipsa Loquitur (phrase)- Latin, Legalese: "The Thing Speaks For Itself." . . . DREAM JOURNAL

I found a very good dream book at the library: "The Complete Dream Book: Discover What Your Dreams Tell You About You and Your Life" by Gillian Holloway, Ph.D. What makes this book so much better than the many mediocre or just plain bad offerings on the subject? For one, the author bases the material on dreams collected from modern people, not folklore. For instance, I used to dream of eating glass: turns out that this is not an uncommon dream among modern American women. Secondly, by drawing from real-life dreamers, the author adds fresh perspective to old themes. As an example, I have often had that classic "teeth falling out dream." The best interpretation I could find was that it symbolizes loss of power. All very well and good. But "The Complete Dream Book" elucidated on this: the teeth-loss dream is connected to compromises made in waking life, with teeth symbolizing "fidelity to self."

Brief Lucid Dream

A week or two ago, I had a short lucid dream. I dreamt that I saw squirrels who lived in the valleys between ocean waves, or "sea squirrels." It occurred to me that this was the wrong habitat for squirrels and I realized I was dreaming. A construction vehicle moved towards the squirrels and I was able to stop it with lucid magic dream powers. Afterwards, I decided that I wanted to fly, but could not lift myself up very far. And then I woke up.

It is notable that the very bizarreness of the dream image is what allowed me to go lucid briefly.

Dream of Moscow

Moscow is an ongoing theme for me, sometimes with beautiful imagery, but other times with a shabbier, twilight, scary feel. Last night I dreamt I was in Moscow with a group of people. It did not look like the real-world version at all. To get to the city, everyone had to travel through a tunnel that went underwater, but we heard that the tunnel had flooded and that people had died. Everyone was running around in a panic. Then word came through that only one person had died, someone nobody in the group knew. So everyone calmed down. For part of the dream, I was being driven past interesting new Russian stores but the group would not stop. I really wanted to be able to explore the stores.

A Play

Last night I also dreamt that I saw a play written by Terry Pratchett. It was not based on any existing book, but rather an obscure new script that he had written. The people performing were awful: the play was a low-budget production with people who could not act, and a group of us were watching it on a small video screen. But the producers had handed out copies of the script, and it looked very well-written. I was looking forward to getting home to read it through and show it to my husband. Then the scene morphed and I was at a fancy restaurant with friends and a woman I had met at the play. Instead of sitting with them, I chose to sit with a group of alumni from my law school, but felt guilty about leaving the others at another table.