I don’t remember very many of my dreams, but I do remember one I had last night.
The setting was a living room that looked sort of, but not exactly, like the one in my parents’ house where I grew up. There was blue carpeting, vintage 70s wood panel walls, and a brown leather chair and hassock like the one that was there when I was younger. It seemed bigger than the room I grew up in though, and the outside light came from different places and hit objects differently, giving me a feeling like when I encounter someone who knows me but I can’t place where I met them or remember their name.
There were three animals in the room: a baby pig, a baby chick, and a kitten. I was rubbing the baby pig’s belly while the kitten and chick ran around the room.
The second dog we had while I was growing up (who is still alive) was a Golden Retriever named Sophie. When she was a puppy, we kept her confined to the living room. Sometimes she would entertain herself by walking over to one side of the room, then rushing full speed, bounding over a couch and crashing into the wall side-first. Generally, she would do this when no one else was in the room, and we would know she was doing this after hearing a loud crash that sounded like a heavy box falling off the top of a book shelf.
In my dream, either the kitten or the pig (I can’t remember which now) started out like it was going to do the same thing, bounding into the wall. Only, instead of a crashing thud, the animal disappeared when it hit the wall and reappeared in another spot in the room.
The other animals followed suit, running into the teleporter and reappearing in other parts of the room several times. I felt something was amiss, so I warned them to stop playing with the teleporter. They ignored me, and eventually they went in and didn’t reappear.
When all the animals had disappeared, I searched the room and found the baby chick’s little orange leg under the couch.
Okay, on further thought, I think most of this can be explained by just a convergence of things that were in your mind recently.
1) The pig — That pig we see in midtown on the way to work
2) The kitten and baby chick — The bookmark I have with the kitten and the three chicks on it
3) The teleporter thing — We saw Jumper last weekend
4) Place that looked like your parents’ house — You were at their house last night
5) The animals running into the wall — Like you already said, your dog used to do that
The only part that’s unexplained is why the animals stopped reappearing and you found the baby chick’s leg.
I would chalk it up to representing anxiety or worry you feel about something… dreams can manifest that kind of nebulous stuff in weird ways.
My wife uses dreams in her counseling practice and does serious analysis based on what people report about their dreams. I’m NOT an expert (or even an amateur) but I’m pretty sure she would ask what you thought about each of the animals, how you would describe each of them (usually with 3 adjectives each) what you felt when you saw the teleporter, and what it was about the light that created the sensation of knowing someone, but not remembering their name.
Amber’s right about recent stuff in your life popping up in your dreams -but you can’t stop there if you really want to analyze a dream. Example: You saw a movie with a teleporter in it, the teleporting thing shows up in your dream. But what did it do in the movie, and what did it do in your dream? What was different (or the same) about the movie vs. the dream? And why THAT movie and not another?
She also tells me that dreams are usually NOT about the things in them, and almost always about the person having them.
FWIW.
Mike,
Thanks for the comment. I meant to respond to this earlier, but work got in the way.
Three adjectives for each animal:
pig: worried, restless, undersized
kitten: feisty, skittish, playful
chick: oblivious, playful, relaxed
In the movie, the teleporter was something that a character could open anywhere they wanted and could use to go anywhere they want. For someone who did not have the teleportation ability, following someone through the portal required a special machine that could keep the portal open.
In the dream, it seemed to just randomly open up when one of the animals (either the pig or the kitten) jumped at the wall like my dog used to do, and then it stayed open.
Why that movie and not another? Maybe because it’s one of only a couple of movies I’ve watched recently (the whole year so far)? It was a pretty awful movie. I felt no sympathy for any of the characters because they all seemed intent on using their power for selfish ends instead of to help people. The main character (aside from being played by a lousy actor) went around writing IOUs to banks he stole money from that he didn’t appear to have any intention of paying back. He watched on TV as a natural disaster unfolded that he might have been able to help out with and instead chose to teleport himself to London to hit on women in a bar.
As for the light, it was almost like a feeling of deja vu. Like I’d been there and should have remembered being there, but didn’t. I might have felt a little guilty about that.