Le Rêve, oil on canvas, by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, 1883.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
A Disguised Version of a Repressed Wish
(a dream analysis in the manner of Freud)
I dreamt I went to the theatre
and purchased two tickets
– brown in colour –
to a play written by my grandmother.
I was fearful she would chastise me
for not attending opening night
but I couldn’t because of another engagement.
This points to, of course,
an anal fixation
and as yet unworked-through
Oedipal desires.
But what do these things point to?
Read more from Kevin Densley HERE
Kevin Densley’s latest poetry collection, Please Feed the Macaws…I’m Feeling Too Indolent, is available HERE
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About
Kevin Densley is a graduate of both Deakin University and The University of Melbourne. He has taught writing and literature in numerous Victorian universities and TAFES. He is a poet and writer-in-general. His fifth book-length poetry collection, Please Feed the Macaws ... I'm Feeling Too Indolent, was published in late 2023 by Ginninderra Press. He is also the co-author of ten play collections for young people, as well as a multi Green Room Award nominated play, Last Chance Gas, published by Currency Press. Other writing includes screenplays for educational films.
I used to have a recurring dream annually in early summer. A red cricket ball speeding across billiard table green turf into a concrete gutter in front of a white picket fence just below the Edwin Smith Stand at Adelaide Oval. Perfectly clipped off my hip Greg Chappell like. The camera of my dream’s eye capturing the inner glow of satisfaction at my first Shield century (not Test – there are limits even to dreams).
The rest of my recurring dreams all involve getting hopelessly lost and/or shit sandwiches (literally).
Haven’t had the cricket dream for ages, and the lost/shit dream is less frequent but still recurs.
That’s the problem with ageing – the good bits disappear and you’re left to try to cope with the shit.
Interesting, PB. I have occasional dreams in which I reassure myself that I have played some senior level games with Geelong Football Club or the occasional cricket Test for Australia – and, as a.Tonight Show host, interviewed the Beatles. None of which is true, of course – and none of which readily lends itself to symbolic interpretation, though of course Freud would’ve said they actually mean something beyond their literal surface.
Oh yeah, and I have those getting lost dreams, too…