Dream beheading redux.

It's been a month since my last dream entry about the beheading of Ariana Grande.

If you've taken a look at my older posts, such macabre dreams aren't new--I recalled before that I was only nine when I dreamt of a rogue militant group called K-19--and they're rather infrequent. They're intriguing nonetheless, for the obvious reasons. So I thought I'd bring up a dream I had three years ago, which was more random and intense than the Ariana Grande dream.

The dream played a bit like a prime-time drama, taking place on U of L's campus, on a cloudy winter day. I was the observer in this dream as well. I watched as a young female student, about in her late teens or early twenties, walking across the parking lot near the bank and the Playhouse Theater. I wasn't sure where she was going, but it seemed she was headed for the bookstore.

Suddenly, she looked up and saw an unidentifiable figure in front of her, and had a look of fear on her face. After that the dream skipped scenes, and the next thing I saw was the girl's headless body flailing around and convulsing as it moved toward the bookstore, where it banged against the window and fell back on the ground to its death. I saw the gruesome action from inside the bookstore, where others noticed the flailing body and panicked.

I remember posting this on DreamMoods, and got quite a bit of interesting feedback. I wrote that the dream had reminded me of a Wikipedia article about three Indonesian girls who were ambushed and beheaded on the way to school back in 2005, which I mentioned in the DreamMoods post. (Here's an article from BBC News.)

I recall that one person responded to me with some pretty good insight:

"You mention reading a similar story on online...It is very possible the story shook you at an emotional level that you were not aware of while awake and the dream was expressing the true depth of horror you did not entirely experience while awake. I find that through out the day, there are moments that push little emotional triggers, sometimes they are fleeting moments like whispers and thoughts that go in one ear and out the other, and then they decompress at night. Usually for me the last dream I have before I wake up is directly relevent to an emotional trigger of the previous day. 

"symbolicly[sic], there are two things in common - 1) the school setting 2) the decapitation. It is an image of denied education, of intellectual oppression etc... At an emotional level, there is the horror of the violence of the denial itself, but then their is also the grief of joyfully being on the way to school to make something of oneself and then forcibly being denied that right/ yerning[sic]. 

"I think the story you read not only wounded our altruistic sense of humanity, but also feminist instincts."--name of poster withheld

It made good sense to me at the time. I have long identified as a feminist, and at the time, I was dissatisfied with what was going on at the government level--particularly the Republican party's desire to strip away women's reproductive rights and overturn Roe v. Wade. I was worried that because so many people hated President Obama (and still hate him), a president might be elected that year who would allow those dangerous restrictions to become the law of the land.

I was also worried about the novel I was writing. It embraces an issue that is very important to me, as it is to many self-identifying feminists, and I was concerned about how I could best convey my message to a reading audience. The events in Washington fueled my desire to keep writing my story. Still, the story was fragmented (as first drafts actually should be), and being an aspiring author, I let the process confuse me. Add that to my obligations regarding school, work, and life in general.

So I guess you could say I was taking "sudden hits from all directions"--the nature of an ambush.

Three years later, I still haven't finished my first draft, as life eventually got in the way. But I haven't given up. Women's rights are still on the line more than ever, as Republicans have now taken both the House and the Senate. It's more important than ever that I finish my story.

I'm starting to think that the Ariana Grande and the young woman in the 2012 dream may be one and the same in the archetypal sense--they may both represent that young, fresh new aspect of myself that is being destroyed in each of these dreams, first by multiple responsibilities and worries at once, and then by my own personal confidence issues.

I have a feeling that this year will be a year of significant change and introspection. I believe that in spite of their dark nature, these dreams are pointing me in a direction toward something amazing, and I have a lot of work to do. Just writing this is inspiring me to get up and make something happen.

Reviving the dream blog...with the help of Ariana Grande.

I know--seems this blog is coming out of nowhere, but it's been here a while...

Life has gotten in the way over the years, and I've eventually lost interest in writing down my dreams. In an effort to renew my quest to delve deeper into myself, I have decided to revive my dream blog as well, as some of my dreams have begun to catch my attention again. One in particular, as of late...


The Execution of Ariana Grande

Yes, you read it right...

This dream was the other day. I dreamt that Ariana had been taken hostage by extremists* and beheaded on video. Instead of sawing through her neck--as has been done to others in actual waking-life execution videos--the headsman severed it with one clean swing of the blade. To make things more disturbing, Ariana was sobbing the whole time, and began screaming when her time came.

At some point in the dream her boyfriend saw it, but I couldn't catch his definite reaction.

I woke up kind of out of it, but in a bit of deep thought, as I had just had a fucked-up dream about a 20-something pop star I otherwise am not too crazy about.

This dream actually bothers me in part because lately, I've been having this feeling about Ariana Grande. Maybe it's because she's so young and her career had begun to skyrocket not too long ago, but I have been having this feeling that something unfortunate might happen, something that could severely impact her progress. The dream only amplified this concern.

Of course, the chances of Ariana being abducted and executed in waking life are slim to none. The beheading is symbolic, usually symbolizing poor judgment on the part of either the dreamer or someone else:

"To dream that you or someone else is being beheaded signifies poor judgment or a bad decision that you have made and regretted. You are not thinking clearly and are refusing to see the truth. You need to confront the situation or the person despite the pain and discomfort you might feel in doing so. The dream also suggests that you have the tendency to act before you think." (from DreamMoods.com)

Here's the catch: This interpretation is likely referring to beheadings as punishment for crimes being committed.

I decided to think of this dream in relation to current events. When a group of extremists behead a hostage on video, they usually hold a major figure or a collective group (e.g., the U.S. President, the western world, "infidels") responsible. The hostage becomes an innocent victim of murder.

In the context of this dream possibly being prophetic, the dream extremists could symbolize an issue perhaps caused by someone in Ariana's circle, and this issue (say, a rumor that, God forbid, Ariana's boyfriend--Big Sean in waking life--turned out to have been married to another woman and dated her behind his wife's back) causes the public to condemn Ariana, potentially costing her everything. Hence the beheading.

More likely, however, this dream is more about me than Ariana, and the beheading is due to my own poor judgment. Ariana, then, symbolizes an aspect of me, a hopeful part of me that's youthful and blossoming. Perhaps the execution is my way of suppressing or "killing" this new aspect.

I'm sure Ariana will be fine, and she'll continue to flourish. But this dream still caught me off guard, and truth be told, anything could still happen. So I guess I'll be keeping an eye out for something to come up.

*I won't specify if they were Islamic extremists. With all the Islamaphobia going on in the States, I do not intend to inadvertently contribute to it.