Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Leonardo da Vinci once asked, “Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?” and Joseph Campbell once said, “Myths are public dreams and dreams are private myths.” Sigmund Freud said dreams were “the royal road” to the unconscious. Yet for all the deep thought, speculation, and analysis surrounding this particular life of the mind, dreams remain a mystery.
I’ve had a recurring dream in which I find myself back at college, living in the dorms, and always experiencing a crisis—a late paper, a missed exam, or a lost book. In one version of this dream, I had forgotten entirely that I had taken a course until final exam week. These dreams take on a patina of anxiety and fear, never nightmarish, but always anxious. On waking up, I usually (with mixed feelings) have to remind myself I am not in college anymore and that I have no late assignments to do.
I have no idea where any of this is coming from. I am retired with no schedule or deadlines (other than The Pen in Hand). I have fond memories of my undergrad days but (at least consciously) have no misguided longings to go back to the days of my youth, so I don’t know why these dreams keep popping up.
Last night, I had a weird variation of the college dream. I was in my dorm room, trying to find the syllabus for a course and suddenly—as happens in dreams—I suddenly found myself at a horseshoe marble bar in the dorm. I was having a coffee when three young women arrived. One of them smiled at me and another—out of nowhere—came up and kissed me. The third woman–with the sweetest little smile–whispered, “Duck for love.”
It was such an odd thing to say that in one of those weird dream moments where the dream and conscious selves intersect, both sides of my mind recognized the weirdness of it. After I woke up, it seemed so different from my previous dreams, it began to bother me.
What did it mean? Why would anyone say duck for love? What could it mean? Duck—love means trouble? Or is it a tribute as in duck, bow—love is passing by? Or in a more convoluted interpretation, might it mean that ducks represent some sort of erotic significance?
What was the significance of one of the young women telling me to duck when I was kissed by one of her friends? Maybe it was some kind of warning. The woman who kissed me was a stranger but her eyes (if I might say so) were full of love and longing. Was the fact that there were three of them important? Maybe sort of a trinity—or maybe the opposite of that. Remember the three witches MacBeth encountered.
I realize that doing this is a deep dive into the darkest of rabbit holes. Even assuming that a dream is implicitly meaningful might be flawed logic, but most experts seem to agree that dreams are conduits between the conscious and unconscious—the ego and the id. Joseph Campbell, author of The Power of Myth, said dreams are personal myths and myths are public dreams. Maybe I was internalizing the public myths—finding the Fountain of Youth or being warned of the femme fatale, or perhaps my psyche wanted to translate my desires into the symbolic language of myth.
Whatever it meant—or didn’t mean—“duck for love” struck me as a phrase that, while enigmatic, was still somehow pregnant with meaning. The inversion of the phrase is “love-a-duck” is an exclamation of dismay or frustration. Mandarin ducks are common symbols of marital love. All of the above might mean something—anything—or not, and in the intensely personal and complex vernacular of dream language, it might mean any number of things for me.
While a “dream” is the term to describe our nighttime excursions into the unconscious, the term is also used to describe hopes and aspirations. There is a nice parallel here; after all, Freud described dreams as wish-fulfillment, the consummation of desires, which is exactly what an American dream (for example) is all about.
On the other hand, dreamers or daydreamers can be a pejorative term. They are often seen as lazy good-for-nothings who refuse to work for a living. And those who dream of being a musician or actor or novelist are sometimes discouraged from such an unrealistic ambition. How many parents, concerned that their child may be headed for ruin in their quest to be a rock star, push them away from their dreams.
So, is my “duck for love” an aspiration? Or a representation of a hidden desire? Or was I simply playing a joke on myself? Somewhere in the depths of my being is an answer. It might be trivial, or it might be important. I’ll probably never know.
If they are anything, dreams are probably most representative of our unknowability, our inscrutability. Pieces of our hopes, motivations, drives, desires, and fears are ultimately unknowable. We watched the film Michael Clayton recently. One of the characters, a cynical attorney, said, “People. People are fucking incomprehensible.” As are our dreams—they are incomprehensible even to ourselves.
So—duck.
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