Dream log January 15, 2011
I am at a residency party.
We are outside in a back yard. It is warm. My beau is there. We are talking and he leans over and kisses me, more than once. I withdraw, too public, shake my head.
He sits on one of those couch-like free standing old metal swings, with a fringed cover and faded striped fabric pillows. He swings.
People are laughing and eating and drinking.
I watch him. When he swings, his shirt opens a little and a cross is visible. It is tarnished silver and celtic style, with ornate engraving.
DS is sitting next to me. DS was the brilliant one in our residency group: before medical school he was a ballet dancer in New York City and had been a chef at some point as well. He did better on the practice boards our first year than all of the finishing third years. "Is that a cross?"
He waves my beau over. "Can I see the cross you are wearing?"
My beau laughs, "You ask something that personal?" But he hands it to DS.
"It's old," I say.
It has two large ornate amber beads tailing from it, carved and inlaid as lion's heads. The cross itself must be hidden, for the central piece is a large ornate crayfish, made of gorgeous coral. There is also a bird on the end of one of the strands. "A phoenix." I say.
"From about the twelve hundreds?" says DS. My beau nods. DS is holding the piece gently and with great admiration. I know that my beau has traveled and wonder when and where he got this. As I am waking, I am glad that I was nearly silent, because both DS and my beau clearly know much more about jewelry than I do. I have to remember that my beau is quiet but not to underestimate him.
Awake, I know that my beau does not wear a cross. It's after I'm awake that I think that the cross portion must slide under or inside the elaborate crayfish somehow. To hide it? My waking brain wants the cross to have some consistency though the dream brain doesn't care about that.
I'm glad the piece had four animals, even though the dream only had three people. And who are these dream men, elements of myself? Why DS, who I have not seen since 1996 and who has never met my beau? If anyone asked DS "How are you?", he would respond: "Flawless." And he's say that he hated children, but that was a lie. He played with children every chance he got.
The colors in the coral are with me, gorgeous. I like my dream mind. What is it telling me now? I don't know. Crayfish? Lobster? What does that symbolize? The phoenix arises from the ashes of burning and the lions' heads smile in amber.