Dreams 1-21-16

I am helping a friend who is a former student of mine and now a teacher himself, by reading a lot of short comments about poems, and sorting them into categories by quality. He has two dogs who are constantly all over me, wanting to play. I can’t get anything done that way. I close myself in a bathroom to work, and then in a study with a desk, typewriter, and such. My friend sees the situation, and takes his dogs into another room where he explains to them that they must leave me alone. When they come out, I am working at a table in a library. The older dog walks across the room behind me, quietly, but looking at me as a little boy would look to express his thoughts that he understands but does not think that I am doing a good thing by neglecting him.

[I’ve mentioned before that “the dog” is one of my totemic animals, and so I pay attention when one appears—and in fact, the final image is of his being both dog and boy—all the more totemic, as it seems to me, indicative of our existing in multiple modes of reality. He seems to have a point, does he not? “Sorting by quality” and “close myself” might be important.]