Vega summer with Mary

Date: 7/11/2017

I was in my late teens living with my parents and had just adopted a new dog. She was Tanya, the excellent, smart golden retriever spaniel cross we had at that time, but in the dream her name was Emma, which was the name of my parents' next dog, an aggressive purebred golden retriever I didn't get along well with. In the dream I was very happy with the dog. The place where we lived was near Lake Erie (the place where I really grew up was right at the lake) but there was an extensive park extending south of us into the Lake. It was a bit like Long Point but larger and with more woods. It had a large inland lake and marsh. The place where we were staying overlooked this smaller lake. It was a rented summer house with a boathouse and brown cedar shake siding. In the park was a village called Tobermory. It was a Lake Erie type town, not rocky like Tobermory on Georgian Bay, but like the real Tobermory it had a harbor on the inland lake for fishing boats and pleasure craft. Mom and Dad were mostly peripheral. They were like I remember them when I was a teenager. But I did not trust my father. I was aware of recent, non-dream events, but I was not afraid of him. Apparently with Mom also in the dream I didn't expect him to behave badly. This is the first dream I've remembered since Mom died in which she did not seem old. It was the beginning of summer holidays. The weather was warm and humid. After I brought Emma home for the first time, my childhood classmate and friend Mary came over. She was going to be staying with us for the summer. This surprised me because she seemed so responsible and independent. In the dream her family lived practically within sight of us across a small bay. We heard about somebody using a hot air balloon to conduct an ecological survey of the park. There was a more high profile study of the same kind going on in the Amazon Basin using new research technology, and local people were excited to have a balloon study of their own happening here. In Tobermory people were fundraising to support the project. I wanted to get involved, but more in the research itself than the fundraising. Mary and I took out a small motorboat that belonged to my family. We stopped somewhere to go swimming. Then we rode in the boat some more. Mary asked what were my plans for the summer. I said I wanted to explore the park and do some writing. When I asked her plans she didn't answer at first, and I didn't press the question. But later we talked further and she revealed that she had been depressed. Now it made sense to me that her parents did not want her to be alone. I realized it would be important to include Mary in my summer activities. "I'm taking Vega," she said. It was an antidepressant drug. "Have you tried it?" I could remember taking it a long time ago, years ago. In my mind's eye I could see it written down in a calender. But I couldn't remember how it affected me, so I didn't have any useful information for her. We reached the harbor in Tobermory and met up with my parents. We played with Emma on the raft, throwing a stick in the water for her to jump in after. Then the four of us went out together in the boat. Then a strange spider appeared in the bottom of the boat. This was the only unreal, fanciful thing in the dream. It looked like a large scarab beetle but it was a spider. At the same time it looked like a stained glass depiction of a spider. It resembled something in the "Eaters of Light" episode of Doctor Who I saw last night: the glass discs they used to drive the monster back into the rift. I knew this spider could send out fluorescent tentacles to bite us, like the monster. We all knew these spiders were extremely dangerous. We started yelling and screaming. Next thing I knew we were all in the water. It reminds me of the time as a teenager when an entertainer hypnotized me on stage with a bunch of other students. When he told us we saw a wolverine, I ran backstage and jumped on top of an 8-foot closet, scraping my shin. No way I could have climbed there normally. I don't know what this has to do with jumping in the water, but somehow the wolverine was connected with the spider in the dream. I guess it has to do with being afraid of things that are imaginary. Then we were all back in the boat, and the spider was still there. It started to sizzle. This was a dangerous sign. It started shooting around the bottom of the boat. A mass of tentacles started to emerge from its underside. I picked up a piece of lumber and bashed the spider, killing it. The spider and its tentacles started to dissolve in the bottom of the boat.