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sion_a was persuading it not to dig up the only tree in the garden, a tiny and neatly-shaped tree in the middle of a vast well-kept lawn; he had made it dig up the tree again and mark it with a scent that told badgers not to dig there. As the badger performed this obviously unwelcome task it was wailing in a most distressed way, but I stroked it a lot and it calmed down. At first I was being very careful to stroke it with my sleeve tucked over my hand so that I could not catch any diseases from it, but soon I decided that I wanted to stroke it properly. Its fur was soft and warm. I would be happy for more of my dreams to involve the comforting of badgers.The night before, I dreamed about my boss. In the dream, I was supposed to be going on some kind of road-trip with her, and we were still at the stage of packing my car with all the things we needed. Throughout our preparations for the trip she was being very affectionate, we were hugging frequently and protractedly, and I was very excited -- about both the journey ahead and the way she was acting towards me -- but not aroused; just delighted and optimistic. Perhaps the excitement held the potential to be sexual, but in the dream it was bright and uncomplicated. I was taller than her, in the dream, and she rested her head against my chest as I held her. In real life I have never been able to hold anybody like that. At five feet and one-and-a-bit inches I am moderately unlikely to find a lover shorter than myself; even most women are taller than me.
It feels somehow fraudulent describing the emotions of dreams, because of my nagging suspicion that I may be merely projecting waking feelings onto them after the fact. However, when I wake up, while the dream is still fresh in my mind, the emotional afterimages seem very strong; so if I am adding to them rather than remembering them, I am doing it subconsciously and instantaneously on waking. Besides, what does it mean to 'actually' experience an emotion in a dream? Would my body register the same physiological changes in the dream as it would if I experienced that emotion while awake? Is that what defines an emotion? Is there any art to find the mind's construction in the body? It's my body, and I don't mind.
But a dream of fair woman has turned my mind to female matter. I think of the first woman I kissed; I could not call her face to mind in any detail (I remember pre-Raphaelite ringlets and a tender mouth) but I remember the feeling of wonder and delight. The sensation was sweet, but it was the symmetry that held me spellbound: we were mirror-images, for that moment reflecting only one another, sealed in a separate world. With a man I am a space for him to fit into; with a woman I am a positive form, my curves and lines in counterpoint to hers. With a man I have a sense that together we have created a single indivisible whole, greater than the sum of its parts; with a woman, a sense that we are two, divided yet multiplied like the images in opposite mirrors, meeting in the middle of infinity. Neither is a lesser or greater harmony than the other.
It can be hard to believe in anything when all I see is patterns.
