If we were to give the session a title it would be: Lemon Drop Soup to the Superhero

• 48 participants – about 34 female/ 14 male
• We lost count of dreams.. and associations..

Themes:

• Eating and defecating – the need to take in and evacuate, to process experience
• To get it out and clean it up.
• The need for direction.
• And the fear of direction, of the military.
• The image of the lemon drop soup, sweet or sour?
• Cartoon figures – superheroes – fantasies of power

First dream.  A police woman, a cop, bribing the next cop, and so on – a bribery chain. Association within the dream to Nazis. The dreamer went to see her therapist (in the dream) told her the dream in a lot of detail, they had to stop the session, and then they were walking the same way.    The dreamer told the therapist her associations, the first cop was Columbian and so was the therapist; and she was a cartoon character.  The therapist went another way, and the dreamer also took a wrong turn, to a military camp, a lot of male soldiers eating, and she was frightened as a woman, turned left, saw some military women, felt safer.  

Dream: meeting people he knew six or fifteen years before, catching up, why had they not connected for so long?

Dream: A long farm table. Someone at the other end, could they join their families at the table?  The other person’s son was on Nantucket Island – was this before or after Covid-19?

Association to Children watching cartoons.

Dream: Also dreaming of  people not seen for a while. A good friend/colleague was the director of an important institute. The dreamer was cooking, on the terrace, felt at ease. There was someone to direct something.  

Association: Men lost in war who may never come back.

Dream: Her mother had passed away in a different city during lockdown – what to do – panic. A need to attend to people, 7/8 of them, eating food and defecating. They were all dressed in white.

A bus stopped; tourists got out. The dreamer had a big white bag, full of goods. She brought out a statue, made of gold. Took out some crystals, rose quartz, which she sold – her money in a white wallet.    

Association of the white references to nurses and hospital.

Association of sharing a table, to a dream of who can or can’t give, receive service, buy food in a restaurant.

Association to eating/defecation, the white bag, the angry man who gave the dreamer a flip phone but it did not work.    The association is to the White House: infested, falling apart.

Association to the colleagues, who did not recognise the dreamer. The experience of lockdown. Feeling privileged, the infection rate is high, but not ill, the virus passing by – but also fearful, that this state may not last long.

Dream: Looking to take up a PR  job in a marketing company. Competing with younger people. Lining up with Mary, who used to have the job before the dreamer – they would need to get clients so that the company could afford them both.    It is New York City.    Lots of all day breakfast outlets: an owner was  Iraqi, said he didn’t have customers, but there were some. The dreamer sat down, had no money, but he wanted her to eat, laid out her place. She said she would have some lemon drop soup.

Association:  Contamination – hospital. The lemon drop soup, something you would eat when ill.

Association: For some people, it is about survival. Without waiting for authorisation. Lockdown being eased.

Association to the eating/defecating: Bunuel film – The Phantom of Liberty.

Association: Also to Hospital, you might be eating and someone in next bed defecating.

Association: 18 years ago, going to train, learn to survive, have faith, a Buddhist process. Taken in a bus to the city.

Dream: Given a phone to complete a task, but the phone was old-fashioned, required a reset, and the dreamer could not do the task. The person who gave the phone became infuriated, huge, 8-10 ft tall, with spiky hair, muscular, and became more upset at the dreamer because he had made a mistake. But then the [incredible hulk?] started to fight with someone else.

Association to The Matrix – the movie.

After a previous matrix last week Thursday, the dreamer had a nightmare, and she was raped, and so was her daughter.

Another nightmare: of redeployment, and driving for 3 ½ hours to find the new venue. Worried that she was getting dementia, and asked a colleague psychiatrist, who offered to give her a test. Woke up in a sweat.

Association to the lemon drop soup. Is it sweet or sour? Soup is salty.

Dream:  Walking down a hallway at college, two colleagues passing. What greeting to give to these colleagues? They walk past without seeing her. 

Association to ghosts.

Association to eating and shitting. Marina Abramovic in Brazil: the performance artist facing her own fears, an exercise of eating the shit of the world, getting to the other side, liberated. A fear of contamination.

Dream: Going to a wedding, but didn’t have a date – there was a guy visiting, but he was visiting many women. Outside, there was a woman with a child and a canoe. They went to the beach. There were dogs swimming in the sea, her favorites, Rottweilers, but there was shit in the sea.   You have to pick up the shit to help you get to the dogs.

Lots of dogs in the street – then no dogs. Where have they gone?

Association to the Dirty Protests of the Irish political prisoners in the Troubles, who smeared the walls of their prison cells. What would a Dirty Protest to Covid-19 look like?

Association to lemon drop soup. The words go together nicely, each distinctly good words. Together they are ambiguous, sweet and sour – dropped.

Association:  Locked down, people eating together. Dead fish in the sea. The shit has to come out more.

Association: the oceans could become cleaner?

Association to meeting people we have not seen for a while, trying to recollect connections to friends far away.

Association: A t-shirt, says CLASS – all shit is the same, whatever class we are from.

Lockdown is psychological, the reactions inside of us.

Association to military rule over 12 years.

Remembering one’s father, the kindness, the love, and also the fear.

Association: The situation is bad, in Mumbai, the government bringing in the military to enforce discipline.

We don’t have the idea of the military being helpful. People being put back in their place.

Dream: The dreamer is engaged to a guy with a weird name – it begins with M – that she can’t pronounce. She spoke once with the guy, didn’t want the wedding. Could she call – call of the wedding?

Association:  A sense of the children – the dogs in the sea – and the children she visits in her neighbourhood, she can’t help them with their noses running or their knees scraped, can’t respond in a caring way.    Her dog is choosing to shit at home, which he only does when he is distressed.

Thinking about child abuse in homes.

Association: Black children and white children. Who can be touched?

Association to the taking care of children, nurses in hospitals, the role of women in war.

Association to the movie, Oranges and Sunshine. The deportation of children (from the UK to Australia and Canada). Very moving.

Association: A moving story from Italy of a woman kidnapped in Kenya, who has just been freed two days ago, found in Somalia, she has converted to Islam.

Association to black and white. The police, no different, when you look at them.

The movie, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Who is the enemy? Covid-19 or us?

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. Mother isolated. A friend had leg amputation not getting the help he needs. A niece, 15 years old, wants to be a tennis pro. Friend who has to go online and knows it won’t work. Business people working 14 hours a day… Helplessness, feeling left behind. Passing shit around.

REVIEW

What will we wish we had done? What will we wish we were awake to?

Not able to breathe – a need to get rid of this feeling.   Can’t keep it to oneself.

Wanting to do something and having to go through a struggle to get it; hard to get something good

Who is going to direct us now?

We are in this shit together..

The world of cartoons, the Flintstones – the old world.

The Phantom of Freedom – more shit needs to come out.  The gutters have exploded. In Spain, we’re wading through it.

We can’t eat or shit through the screen. When we come out of this, we will be wearing masks – like the women’s hijabs.

Turtles breathe in and out of water, through the head and through the anus. We have to learn to breathe underwater.

Shit is fertiliser. A gift.

Lemon Drop Soup – what is the new thing we might find out? We must get something out of this. Can be fertilizing.

A lot of fear, falling into chaos.

The beaches are empty, and there are more turtles.

Where are the new thoughts, creativity?

A need to process – cleanse.

Eating and shitting, the cyclical, clockwork nature of physiological functions is no longer in place; space and time reference have been altered as after trauma. The Phantom of Liberty, is possibly a phantom of freedom as people are experiencing more or less strict lockdown.

The psychological functions are shaken too. Looking for benevolent parents or scared of authoritarian military, a culture of dependency has taken place and sense of identity shaken.

Blog compiled by Tim Dartington, Debra Noumair, Franca Fubini and Eliat Aram.

Image: Responsibility by Juliet Scott, 2019