• 65 participants
• 15 dreams
• Dozens of associations

Dream 1: A house under construction could see old brick walls. Could see cement on household. Space for windows there but not put in. Frames, just empty spaces. Could see the empty spaces but no one there. I was flying in the air looking at the spaces.

Dream 2: I see a colleague (David Armstrong) walking towards me in a street with nice houses. He is looking serious and sad. Context is a change in a training program and tensions are about who was going to do that. I think I was trying to put some family members in the programme and DA my colleague wasn’t keen. I just wanted to get on with things. The dream saddened me.

Dream 3: Grandparents house in the basement where I played in the 1960  with my brother. Roosevelt came and I had to pretend I was his assistant. The basement morphed to the 90s. FDR was worried and left saying he felt vulnerable due to the virus Covid. People were dressed in clothes of 1940s. I said he will come back some day. 

Dream 4: Visitor in somebody’s house. People were getting me things to eat and I was looking for flowers. There is one mute boy who says he has flowers. I wear them on my head. Then I am in a clay workshop, very mucky. There is a statue of the Buddha in space and I sit in front of it.

Dream 5: Trying to lift something. Wife by my side. She said it was impossible, too heavy. When I was lifting the enormous weight I felt my back break. I woke up with pain and screamed. I touched my back, place a pillow below to contain the pain. Afterwards, there was no pain and I was able to sleep.

Dream 6: First chapter of Series Hollywood in Netflix. Eleonor Roosevelt appears sharing wisdom. The owner of the studio is in hospital almost dying. Patti LuPone takes over the leadership of the studio and she invites Eleanor Roosevelt to join the board of the studio. She wanted to portray for the first time Patti LuPone as a black woman and Ms Roosevelt supported this idea.

Some associations/dream-like images follow:

Trying to collaborate with an American white and black women; trying to construct the house in order to do some work but it is difficult to do in the midst of change; problems in the background, flying in deep air, feeling out of depth.

Association: I identified with the dream about seeing a colleague (DA) and not being able to get things done, requiring so many adaptations to do things, some possible some not possible.

Dream 7: Back in High school with my daughter, young at the time. I realize that I needed a ticket or to be invited. I turn to leave when a white woman with a light green purse is spotted by my daughter who asked to see it. My daughter says could I have it. I say I have got $10. The woman says it’s actually $11 and you probably don’t have it coming from your country.  The woman asks me where I was from, I say ‘here’. The woman asks- where is your ID?

I am transported into a place where I was missing a videoconference meeting with high school classmates. I realised I was late for a lunch and then I transformed there. People walked in and an African American student named Justin enters. 

Associations to names:

• Justin: Just-in; Justin / Justice; high school lockdown and threats from guns
• Armstrong / Neil Armstrong- first man on the moon. Who would be the first man to walk the moon after the pandemic?

The association to the moon generates another one to NASA and African Americans – to the movie Hidden Figures which tracks the true story of three bright African American women that made it for the first time to University and NASA in very high commissions. They were helped by two white men who helped them break through an unjust system.

Dream 8: I was married to Ed Sheeran. I don’t like it and was annoyed. I thought he was very young, not interested and famous. I woke up and realised and was relieved it wasn’t the reality.

Dream 9: I was supposed to do something at a wedding, I must put on a white dress. I was marrying someone I didn’t know at all.  It wasn’t in a church, I had read a card and do the action. Okay, I say, I don’t know who I am married to and I looked for a glass of champagne.

Association returns to the first dream, what is the nature of the frame: Frame of reference, Frame of mind or are we being framed? Marrying the unknown- New Deal and what is the New Normal post Corona life.

Dream 10: A leopard is stepping into the garden.  It is black with yellow spots, so his colours are reversed.  

Associations to ID and to skin colours:

• Carrying IDs.
• “Can the black person change their colour and can the leopard change its spots?” from the Bible- impossibility. 

Dream 11: Going to the mall with my husband. About to get into the lift with two men. I become really frighten. I shout and the husband holds the two men back.

Dream 12: My ex came over to pick up the girls. There is talk about a meditation show where someone is healed. The ex says that is a load of bullshit.  I will watch what I want and you can see your shitshow, that’ll be fine, I said. He touches me and I felt afraid. Then he licks me and I try to scream and woke in terror.

Association to pain and breaks in dreams:

• Breaking back and have terror. Links to a pain that is so strong, could I recover?
• Changing of close personal relations which breaks my hear: When grandchild visits she has to stay at 1 1/2mt. My granddaughter says she doesn’t like me anymore.

Dream 13: two white tigers together. One holds a garden rake. The other holds something too. They are very strong animals. 

Dream 14:  Walking in a beautiful long, green countryside. In front of me I see a man with a black beard and white spectacles, walking with a guide. He asked- did you bring the note cards? I said I wrote the letters but on regular papers.  Military people come and take a man away and put him in jail. I think we have to take this man out of jail. I decide to bring a beautiful big brown horse as a distraction instead of a bomb to free the man. 

Associations to:

• Persephone who is picked on a horse by Hades to go into the underworld.
• Helen of Troy and the Trojan horse
• Pluto, Jupiter, Neptune
• Camels, unicorns, planets
• The virus- so small like Planet of Pluto- so small and far away but so powerful
• Some thousand years ago we were more aligned with nature.

Dream 15: I was working through videos of the dessert in a magic session, with people consuming plants. I was then in the ocean with huge waves, had to escape from there. I was in a plastic bag full of water, it was difficult to escape I was part of the bag. Then I escaped and was in a dessert looking for a space for a meeting. Didn’t have a place, I knock on the door of the minister of education, they said there was no space. International Colleagues bring a collage with the image of a person.

Associations to:

• The plastic bags and goldfish – like in this matrix.
• All of us separated in our plastic bag with the virus, as a 3rd world war offering an opportunity for all the world to fight together but instead each country is fighting in his own bag afraid of other countries.
• The idea in the dreams that you can escape this planet – set up space stations, living on mars – is a form of betraying Mother Earth by thinking of going to live somewhere else.

Many associations follow that reflect Pairing basic assumption behaviour, i.e. coming together with someone or something to transform the situation for the better, which is a form of escaping reality and defending oneself by wishful thinking.

Many of the dreams reflected an intense confrontation with intimacy. In relation with the virus intimacy becomes problematic. The dreaming together is the closest we can have to a marriage with strangers.

Compiled by David Armstrong, Eliat Aram, Mira Erlich-Ginor and Monica Velarde

Image: Responsibility by Juliet Scott, 2019