06/12/02
Shannon's Visit
I had a short, not very memorable dream during my regular sleeptime. In it, it was either morning or afternoon, daytime, and all of us were at home. Ma and I were in the living room; Dad was somewhere about. It seemed as if the lights and TV and computers were off; we were just sitting there. There was a knock at the door and I looked at Ma as if to say, "There's somebody there!" (We don't get visitors very often.) On answering it, she (or I?) found it was my brother Eric and his wife Shannon. I knew that they were going to come visit us soon, but they had arrived several days early. We were surprised to see them but let them in. My brother might have lost some weight and was wearing a baseball cap. He's always been handsome...for my brother. ;P Shannon was pregnant, as she is in real life, yet she was quite far along and looked as if she could go into labor at any minute. We welcomed them in and everyone started talking.
I can't remember most of the rest of the dream but it concerned us trying to find something to eat. For some reason I was very hungry, and I think Shannon was too. Maybe the others as well. But there was next to nothing to be found in our house--not even snacks! Everything was bare! I think Dad might have been trying to cook something for us--I went into the kitchen--but then we were wondering if we should just go out and order something. What a lousy time to be out of food.
I remember I was never upset during the dream, which is odd considering how I felt about Shannon's pregnancy in real life. Neither did I feel ignored or as if Eric was being favored above me. I felt pretty good in the dream, which is unusual. On awakening I even felt Ma should tell Eric about it.
The Tale Of The Eros Bridge
I had a dream while napping last night, and it was more detailed, yet even on just awakening some of the details were muddled and now it's not as clear. For some reason, I was at a bridge. It was a big old railroad bridge way, WAY up over a canyon river(?). It was sunny and warm out; I don't remember a cloud being in the pale blue sky. The hills/mountains about the bridge were heavily forested and as I looked out over them I saw that the colors were starting to change, so it must have been early autumn. For some reason I think of the mountains around Tennessee/Georgia and such, which I glimpsed only briefly once when visiting my brother. I don't even think they make railroad bridges this high up; it must have been hundreds of feet in the air, hills sloping steeply upward all around. (I only recall seeing the hills to the sides of the bridge, not at the ends.) I don't remember exactly seeing what lay beneath it, but I knew it was a very long way down. Hence I was afraid!
Yet this bridge had a story to it. First, it was as if I were with someone and they told me the name of the bridge, which I can't recall, then the original name of the bridge, which was the Eros Bridge. I wondered why its name had changed. They told me why, and then I was walking along with a different person, a young man I believe (I was probably a teenager, and he was too), and now I was telling him this story.
I controlled things, to a small extent, though it was difficult. This guy kept wanting to walk on ahead of me, and I had to keep telling him to hang back. How rude he was! I was a demigoddess or fairy of some sort and we may have walked along a woodland trail before we came to the bridge. We both stopped a bit, then he went on while I stayed back. When he asked me what I was doing, I told him I was just looking at the bridge. "It has a story, you know," I said, and started to tell it.
I was melodramatic throughout the whole thing. I spoke in this high-pitched voice with a mock-British accent like I was a princess or something! I even felt I looked like one--elaborate, pretty pink(?) dress, long straight sandy blond hair, fine features. I can't remember what my companion looked like, though he may have had dark unruly hair. He never talked much, just seemed to want to keep going as if bored. I stood at the end of the bridge and started to tell the story as if I were a storyteller, and had not just recently heard it for the first time myself.
"This bridge was built a long time ago," I said; at this point I can't remember how old it was, but it was from around the Civil War or slightly afterwards. "It was built to help with railroad transport through the mountains, as the railway system was in its infancy. An esteemed war general(?) was involved in the building. At this time, the bridge was known as the Eros Bridge." My voice faded a bit and I looked out over the...water? "He was my father," I said quietly.
By that, I meant the god Eros, not the general (or soldier, whichever he was--I felt he was similar to Sherman or Custer or some such). This is how I knew I was a demigoddess. I felt my name was Psyche, but if I were to look logically at the dream, that makes no sense--Psyche, in mythology, was not the daughter of Eros but the lover of Eros. At another point, I got the impression of this having something to do with Romeo & Juliet--so perhaps I was Juliet, and this guy with me was Romeo. OR, that may have been something else entirely...keep reading.
I continued the story. "The bridge took a very long time to build, and the construction was very difficult," I said. I believe we crossed over it, though I have no memory of doing that; I just remember reaching the other end, and now I was clinging VERY closely to a large smooth wooden post at the end, left corner (right facing away from the bridge), looking back the way we'd come. The surface of the bridge wasn't the way a real railroad bridge would be, with open planks and ties. I seem to remember a rough patch of asphalt near the end...I don't think they had asphalt back then! Would a railroad bridge that old even last that long? Anyway... "By the time the bridge was finished," I went on, "the general(?) was so disgusted with the entire thing that he renamed the bridge. It gave up its name as the Eros Bridge, and was renamed..."
And that detail, unfortunately, is what I forget! :(
I do know that the new name was similar in meaning to the old one. So that inclines me to say something like the Cupid Bridge, or the Love Bridge, though I KNOW for certain (at least with the second one) that that was not the new name. It wasn't so hokey sounding, and seemed to be longer or more ostentatious than "Eros Bridge."
I remember when I spoke the name "Eros" aloud it made me think of the word "arrows," and I thought of arrows being used by the military or some such (I know, they didn't use arrows, but that's what I thought of--kind of strange in retrospect that I never connected arrows with the arrow-firing Eros himself!), so I saw that extra possible meaning. The old name, Eros, I saw as very simple, primitive, to the point of being blunt, yet I preferred it over the new name the general(?) had given it out of his frustration. (A strange thing, to rename a bridge you hate--I feel perhaps he did this to sort of supercede the old name, perhaps to take power away from it? I can't tell...) The name "Eros" was basic, to the point, and better conveyed what the bridge meant...whatever that was. I LIKED it in its primitiveness (sic!).
Another possible guess at the new name had something to do with Romeo & Juliet. Perhaps it had been renamed the Romeo & Juliet Bridge, or the Romeo Bridge, or the Juliet Bridge? Not likely on the latter two, as they're still too short, and not likely on the first one either, but it's a possibility. Perhaps it was even something like the Bridge of Aphrodite. The new name, like the old, placed an emphasis on romance and love. However, in the dream, neither myself nor any of the other characters involved seem to think ANYTHING of romance or love. It was almost as if the words had a different meaning, or as if the real meaning was dulled. We could understand the meaning of the words, and make out synonyms, but we couldn't seem to involve ourselves with the emotion itself.
In any event...I continued with the story, such as it was. In the dream, I drew it out much longer than the way I have it typed here, as I was trying very hard (too hard) to sound like a dramatic storyteller--and at one point the guy started to walk away, and I had to call to him to come back, I was still telling the story!
"The general(?) wished to remove himself entirely from the bridge project, he was so tired of it," I said, "and so as his last act involved, he renamed the bridge. Thus it gave up its old name as the Eros Bridge." This whole time I was clinging tightly to the pole, peering down. I kind of wanted to cross the bridge again, but I was absolutely TERRIFIED of the heights and possibly of the water(?) below! Still, I felt I was doing a pretty good job of hiding the fear from my voice.
I would like to continue with what was left of the story...but my alarm clock went off. I tried to keep myself in the dream to finish the story, but my one listener was losing interest, and I had to wake up...there wasn't much left to the story anyway, but it was still annoying to have tried so hard to tell it all, only to be interrupted anyway at the last minute!
A very strange dream. "Eros Bridge"? No idea what that one is about. /:(
2002 Dreams
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