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Meanings


by Epiphany Ferrell


Seahorses safely carry the souls of sailors who perish at sea to the Underworld.  To see them in dreams indicates a connection to the subconscious, an uninhibited quality of following one's inner instincts.  To dream of peaches can mean that you take pleasure in simple country comforts. Or it could mean sex. Most things come down to carnality, it seems, and dreams are no exception — or that's how the teller of dreams told it to me.  Peaches, she said, can represent desire. Do you merely hold the peach in your dream, or do you bite into it, letting the peach juices wet your lips, your chin? It all means something, and most meanings have no more than a speck of innocence.  Have you dreamt of the moon? You might have a preoccupation with what is unreal, if your moon dream includes moon shadows.  Other meanings depend on the phase of the moon as you see it in your dream. Is she a harvest moon, swollen like a beer drinker's gut? Or is she a sliver of a new moon? Even bits of dreams, the dream teller said, should be honored as potentially important. On the other hand, she said, some dreams are merely irrelevant. I wonder how often she rehearses her smooth murmurs, those vague pronouncement lent significance by her outstanding delivery.  I can't help but admire how she lifts the ordinary into the mystical, how she transforms sleep into a spiritual journey. 

I dreamed the other night that you had become a worm. I dreamed I sat in a tent in the rain, with the rain smell, and the dirt smell, and the old canvas smell, and a kerosene lamp threw my shadow against the tent wall, and I lit matches one by one and you curled and writhed and eventually froze mid-curl. Now, what do you suppose that means?

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