I AM A RHINOCEROS

To dream that you see a rhinoceros, foretells you will have a great loss threatening you, and that you will have secret troubles. To kill one, shows that you will bravely overcome obstacles.

The nature of the rhinoceros is to be alone, walk alone, live alone, intent on its own affairs and more or less oblivious of what does not concern these.

__________ __________ __________

Last night I dreamed of my father. I have not dreamed of him since the week of his death three years ago.

I tried to follow the jumbled pieces of the dream and I finally allowed myself to just be a spectator. I was working in a school, preparing a classroom. The setting changed to the Leatherwood United Methodist Church in the Land Between the Lakes area where my father grew up as a boy. I was sitting in a pew on the right side of the church with my daughter and sisters and we were watching the tragic comedy of his wedding to his third wife Annie unfold. She looked grotesque, she was wearing an overdone wedding gown too young for someone her age to wear and her face was painted with Tammy Faye Baker makeup that was running down her face. The acolytes were friends of theirs. They were drunk and promptly fainted with the backs to the altar. One was holding a large gold cross, the other a candle snifter. I remember thinking how inappropriate the whole affair was when sensing this my father turned to us. He looked like Orson Welles in "Citizen Kane" and he addressed us by succintly stating "I am a rhinocerous." I heard him say it twice.

I woke up confused. I was relieved that I was able to dream about him again. Since he died I feel like I haven't been able to fully accept his death. In the beginning this feeling was unpalpable as if his dying was yet another long absence from my life that I had experienced since childhood. As I drove into work, I realized that this dream was not about my father but something my psyche was trying to communicate to me. My father had merely been the messenger. I went to a dream interpretation site and typed in rhinoceros. I gasped when I read it's interpretation. No mistruths lie between me and my psyche.

I do have issues troubling me. I find myself in legal limbo in this never ending custody case involving my daughter. I have this unrealistic fear and anxiety that the police are going to pull up at my doorstep and take her away or serve me with legal papers. I keep my blinds closed and the sunshine and unknown intruders out. He has caused me to live in fear again. And yes, I want to kill that fear and overcome this obstacle. He has threatened to take away the one thing I treasure most. I know it's unrealistic. I know his words are false. I can't voice these fears to anyone and make them understand.

Right now I walk alone.

I am a rhinoceros.