If Pigs Could Fly

Last night I dreamed about a pig.

This was a dream as weird and real as the one about my dying ... not as crisply imagined but almost as clear.

I had traveled by bicycle and small open car through the streets of a city, weaving in and out of traffic and flirting at intersections with male drivers, until I reached the pub where I was meeting a group of people. The only two I knew were OWS and Kerry.

The entertainment was a cruel dart game in which a trussed pig suspended by a rope against a wall was the target. People threw darts, hitting the pig in the eye, on the nose, piercing its chest.

One man kept interfering with the game and getting in the way, but I don't think he was concerned for the pig; he was simply obstreperous, likely drunk.

One of the darts severed the cord holding the pig aloft and he crashed to the floor.

Kerry uttered the first words of sympathy, concerned that he might have broken his back, but then ameliorated the comment by laughing at the scrapes on his face, comparing him to a kid getting scrapes and bruises playing outdoors.

What am I to make of such a dream??

Did it come to me because I had been defrauded of money and felt hurt like a wounded animal?

If the animal represents the self, do I feel as if I have been trussed and tortured?

Am I trying to kill my essential animal self, the one that is deep within me, stripped of all human restraints?

I felt like an observer in this dream. I felt sympathy for the pig, but I did not feel as if the cruelty were directed toward me.

I dunno, but this little piggy is likely going to have to go to court, and I will have to come to terms with my fear of confrontation and my fear of courtrooms ... both of which are rooted in my childhood. I could never confront my father, and I likely should have. At first I didn't because I feared I would lose his love and it was all I had to sustain me in a world of strangers. Later I couldn't because my father was old and frail. And even then he still held power ... the power of my birthright. My fear of courts came later. It was in a courtroom when I left my first husband that a self-righteous, Catholic, francophone male judge looked down at me from a very high pedestal and publicly denounced me for leaving my husband. I felt intimidated ... and very very small.

I felt then the way I do now ... oh if only pigs could fly ...