Song of spilled blood

This is a mess of dream fragments. First I am in a large tent, which is constructed like it’s supposed to remain permanently pitched. I am blowing up a balloon, one of those big shiny balloons usually filled with helium. As I am leaving, an ex-girlfriend is here. I realize that I have set up my tent in a commune-type situation in a park(?). She is telling me that her and her daughter’s tents are not very stable, and I tell her that I have to go away on business and that they are welcome to use mine.

I am in a music store, listening to a CD and playing along with my guitar. The CD player is being operated by a dream character that I do not know. I hear a great song and decide in my dream to write my own original song by keeping the rhythm of this one. There is some talk of a DJ gig (Disc Jockey, not Dream Journal). I’m the DJ, and we have to pack to get to the gig.

I am at the gig.

Now I am packing my sound gear and guitar, with the help of my kids, into a van. My kids disappear, and so does my gear, and I am now in one of my company vehicles. A team leader, Mike, [whom I had fired earlier in the year in waking life], is driving. I ask why he is there. I don’t discern the answer, but I am alarmed that I have lost control of this team.

I see another one of my vans pulling out of a parking lot. An uninsured employee is driving. I ask one of the other employees why he is driving that van. It turns out, after I had fired one of the female employees, two others quit, and all three are working for a competitor. And they are still using one of my vans to get their work done. The betrayal is confusing to me, but I feel helpless. I am tangled up in an abnormally long seat belt. Out the passenger window I see a gnarled mess of metal and concrete at a nearby construction site. There has been an accident. Someone drove their car straight into the tangled heap.

I dreamed that I would be journaling this morning, and the title came in my sleep: Song of spilled blood.

I woke up confused by the name. But then it dawned on me. My last dream fragment reveals my unconscious concern over my job at work. I am responsible for the marketing in a large region, and sometimes it feels like I focus on one market at the detriment of another. I can’t be in more places than one at a time. When I finally go and check on another market, my team seems to have changed without my approval or knowledge.

I liken the feeling to a warrior chief who goes away to hunt for food. When he returns, the landscape has changed. He is no longer chief of the tribe. His tents have been pillaged, his women raped, his crops scorched, and his elders massacred.

Warrior Chief, by David Mann. Oil on canvass

Dreamsign Catalogue:

1. Inner awareness (0/4)

2. Action (1/10)

• And they are still using one of my vans to get their work done.

3. Form (2/12)

• My kids disappear, and so does my gear, and I am now in one of my company vehicles.
• I am tangled up in an abnormally long seat beat.

4. Context (3/12)

• As I am leaving, an ex-girlfriend is here.
• I’m the DJ, and we have to pack to get to the gig.
• A team leader, Mike, whom I had fired earlier in the year, is driving.