Welcome to Dream Interpretation for Dummies, where Dear Abby meets Native Americana. Come to the campfire, peer into the yawning grave, and take a dive into the collective subconscious… or maybe just explore some weird clown imagery. We’ll wait for you here.
Howdy Note: This dream has been very lightly edited. Everything you are about to read has already happened, is happening, will happen…
Dear Howdy,
A little bit of preface for this dream: I'm about to have a book launch for my memoir Easy Beauty and I bought a dress for my launch that was a sort of ambitious and delicate dress and is the most expensive dress I've ever owned (which isn't saying too much as I'm not a wealthy woman, but still... more than someone should pay for one outfit).
In my dream, my husband told me that my mother wanted to alter my launch day dress a bit so that it would fit me better, but instead of altering it, she just started to cut it apart. Then my best friend Kate was going to help fix it but kept cutting it to make dish/wash rags. This went on and on in the dream until everyone I knew and cared about had cut rags out of this very expensive dress and I no longer had it to wear to my book launch, and I wasn't even angry, I was just so sad and confused and kept saying, Why? Why would you all destroy my dress before I could wear it? My husband was the only one who didn't destroy my dress. He was the messenger only.
Is this enough? It is all I remember.
All my best,
CCJ (Chloé Cooper Jones)
Dear Chloé,
Thank you for the gift of your dream. It is very fortunate that I am at the seat of my power. I am sitting on the porch of my mother and stepfather’s house in rural Oklahoma, in the town I grew up in, and subsequently left, and will leave again. There’s so much to say about this place but now is not the time. Suffice it to say that this is the place where I originated (this time around) so I am charged with whatever weight that has and will have and has had.
Now, into your dream we go: You are afraid of your own power. Was that too harsh? I don’t mean it that way. Sometimes the messages come out bluntly, and then I have to hone them. You have a gift, that much is clear, but you only let it come out occasionally, when you’re writing, perhaps. You are afraid that if you unleash it, it might overtake you completely. I understand this fear. I’ve lived it. In the waking world, you decided to take a risk—financial and otherwise—on this dress. It is the most expensive dress you’ve ever owned, you describe it as ambitious and delicate. You want this dress, you deserve this dress, and for now, at least, you possess it.
In Dreamland, however, the worries, anxieties, and fears that you’ve kept at bay surface full force. They say, Not only will this be taken from you, it will be taken from you in a violent and humiliating manner. In the dream, your mother and your best friend are the first to cut, but not the last. They are the totems by which the rest participate. One by one the people you care about most betray you. Your husband serves as the messenger in this dream, another kind of betrayal. It hurts. Of course, it does. Why are they doing this to you? What has motivated such cruelty?
The answer, in this case, lies within. I don’t presume to know everything, but I do know what it is like to undertake the project of revealing oneself through words, without backing, without the support of generational wealth. There is always uncertainty, there is almost never a clear path forward until there is. You are on the precipice of a great thing, many great things, and yet you doubt. Your Dreamland loved ones are mere symbols of the ways we betray ourselves, the ways in which society has taught us how to betray ourselves. The dress, of course, is all the things tied up in one—the garment itself, success, the book, money, opportunity. My first caution to you is this: You already possess the dress, so do not feel like you need to hang on to it for all it’s worth. It will always be yours if you will have it. My second caution is this: Sometimes a dream can be a warning, against someone, against something. But in this case, I do not think your husband, your mother, or Kate have some kind of hidden treacherous agenda. Instead, they serve as a warning to trust yourself and your power. Do not let anyone take that away from you, not even you.
I hope this helped. I hope the dress fits like a glove and is everything you, ahem, dreamed of. I’m sending you a dream about an unnameable purple flower in the middle of a field, let me know if you get it.
See you on the other side,
Sad Boy Howdy
Fancy a trip to Dreamland, pardner? Send your best to sadboyhowdy@gmail.com!