She suddenly felt caught between two worlds, a heinous existence in what she knew as reality and a dire situation in what seemed to be a dream about the end of the world. The troubling part was that she didn't know which was better Eighteen-year-old Kali, a poor girl residing in a garbage-filled, decrepit trailer with her mentally ill mother, while being repeatedly abused physically and sexually by her alcoholic father, finds escape from the brutality of her everyday life only in her dreams, where she imagines a picture perfect home and a family who loves her. During an exceptionally viscous attack Kali is beaten into unconsciousness and wakes up in a warehouse with a strange man named Ryatt. Ryatt seems to know Kali, but Kali has no recollection of him or their surroundings. Kali soon learns that she has been dropped into a new fantasy, a viral apocalypse. Sliding back and forth between worlds, Kali tries to figure out what divides these two places, there are no doors or roads to follow to the other side. It isnt long before her grasp on reality and nightmare begins to falter. Which is better, her inhumane life or a world where everyone she knows is gone and the only people left walking are dead?
"This fascinating little volume explores the stuff that dreams are made of and the role the pandemic is playing in them. The dreams from Barrett's survey are riveting vignettes--from terrifying to touching to hilarious. Her decades of scientific research and clinical practice inform incisive commentary on what these dreams reveal about society's response. She offers simple exercises for managing anxieties over COVID-19 and for inspiring adaption in this unique period of history. A great read!" -Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club DREAM: I looked down at my stomach and saw dark blue stripes. I "remembered" these were the first sign of being infected with COVID-19. DREAM: My home was a Covid-19 test center. People weren't wearing masks. I'm taken aback because I wasn't asked to be a test site. I'm worried that my husband and son (who actually lives out of state) will catch it because of my job as a healthcare worker. DREAM: I was a giant antibody. I was so angry about COVID-19 that it gave me superpowers, and I rampaged around attacking all the virus I could find. I woke so energized! Since the COVID-19 pandemic swept around the world, people have reported unusually a vivid and bizarre dream lives. The virus itself is the star of many--literally or in one of its metaphoric guises. As a dream researcher at Harvard Medical School, Deirdre Barrett was immediately curious to see what our dream lives would tell us about our deepest reactions to this unprecedented disaster. Pandemic Dreams draws on her survey of over 9,000 dreams about the COVID-19 crisis. It describes how dreaming has reflected each aspect of the pandemic: fear of catching the virus, reactions to sheltering at home, work changes, homeschooling, and an individual's increased isolation or crowding. Some patterns are quite similar to other crises Dr. Barrett has studied such as 9/11, Kuwaitis during the Iraqi Occupation, POWs in WWII Nazi prison camps, and Middle Easterners during the Arab Spring. There are some very distinctive metaphors for COVID-19, however: bug-attack dreams and ones of invisible monsters. These reflect that this crisis is less visible or concrete than others we have faced. Over the past three months, dreams have progressed from fearful depictions of the mysterious new threat . . . to impatience with restrictions . . . to more fear again as the world begins to reopen. And dreams have just begun to consider the big picture: how society may change. The book offers guidance on how we can best utilize our newly supercharged dream lives to aid us through the crisis and beyond. It explains practical exercises for dream interpretation, reduction of nightmares, and incubation of helpful, problem-solving dreams. It also examines the larger arena of what these collective dreams tell us about our instinctive, unconscious responses to the threat and how we might integrate them for more livable policies through these times. Deirdre Barrett, PhD is a dream researcher at Harvard Medical School. She has written five books including Pandemic Dreams and The Committee of Sleep, and edited four including Trauma and Dreams. She is Past President of The International Association for the Study of Dreams and editor of its journal, DREAMING.
Alice + Freda Forever is a gut-wrenching story of love, death, and the dangers of intolerance."—Bustle In 1892, America was obsessed with a teenage murderess, but it wasn't her crime that shocked the nation—it was her motivation. Nineteen-year-old Alice Mitchell had planned to pass as a man in order to marry her seventeen-year-old fiancée Freda Ward, but when their love letters were discovered, they were forbidden from ever speaking again. Freda adjusted to this fate with an ease that stunned a heartbroken Alice. Her desperation grew with each unanswered letter—and her father's razor soon went missing. On January 25, Alice publicly slashed her ex-fiancée's throat. Her same-sex love was deemed insane by her father that very night, and medical experts agreed: This was a dangerous and incurable perversion. As the courtroom was expanded to accommodate national interest, Alice spent months in jail—including the night that three of her fellow prisoners were lynched (an event which captured the attention of journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells). After a jury of "the finest men in Memphis" declared Alice insane, she was remanded to an asylum, where she died under mysterious circumstances just a few years later. Alice + Freda Forever recounts this tragic, real-life love story with over 100 illustrated love letters, maps, artifacts, historical documents, newspaper articles, courtroom proceedings, and intimate, domestic scenes.
This book by dream expert Leon Nacson is more than just a dream dictionary or a thesaurus. It is a definitive dream decoder. Finally, you can simply and effortlessly discover the true meaning behind the symbols in your dreams. Unlike traditional dream dictionaries, this book presents the meanings behind modern-day symbols such as mobile phones, boom boxes, and DVD players. For example, spiders are becoming more common in dreams because we spend more time on the World Wide Web these days. Traditional dictionaries might simply describe spiders as symbols of danger and entrapment. Ultimately, this book will become the benchmark for accurate dream interpretation.
Greatly expanded and updated from the 1977 original, this new edition explores the evolution of the modern horror film, particularly as it reflects anxieties associated with the atomic bomb, the Cold War, 1960s violence, sexual liberation, the Reagan revolution, 9/11 and the Iraq War. It divides modern horror into three varieties (psychological, demonic and apocalyptic) and demonstrates how horror cinema represents the popular expression of everyday fears while revealing the forces that influence American ideological and political values. Directors given a close reading include Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, David Cronenberg, Guillermo Del Toro, Michael Haneke, Robert Aldrich, Mel Gibson and George A. Romero. Additional material discusses postmodern remakes, horror franchises and Asian millennial horror. This book also contains more than 950 frame grabs and a very extensive filmography.
The most authoritative and comprehensive book available on dreams and dreaming. Enter the fascinating world of dreams, their mysteries, their meanings: to dream of a bird flying freely represents hopes and aspirations; to dream of winter means a time in life that is not fruitful; to be visited by someone in a dream can mean that there is information, warmth, or love available; to be searching in a dream is an attempt to find an answer to a problem. These are just a few of the 10,000 dream images and interpretations contained in this volume, a book that can bring insight, clarification, and guidance.
Enter the fascinating world of dreams, their mysteries, their meanings: To dream of a bird flying freely represents hopes and aspirations To dream of winter means a time in life that is not fruitful To be visited by someone in a dream can mean that there is information, warmth, or love available To be searching in a dream is an attempt to find an answer to a problem These are just a few of the 10,000 dream images and interpretations contained in this volume, a book that can bring insight, clarification, and guidance.
SURREALEUM DREAMS is a dreamscape of adventure between the world of being awake and asleep. The two become undistinguishable as Arianne reaches maturity and learns that she will be the Keeper of Surrealeum Dreams and coexist with Michael, her consort. The book is fascinating and explores the interaction of peace and comfort, complacency and disregard, and anger and fear, each being represented by Ariannes surrealbud children. The book is fun and a joy to read for children and adults alike.
Throughout history, people have had a complex and confusing relationship with mushrooms. Are they fungi, food, or medicine, beneficial decomposers or deadly poisons? Marley reveals some of the wonders and mysteries of mushrooms, and the conflicting human reactions to them.
