“What a dream I had of you! A cow flew over us and crushed your nose – It went black. I had tapioca pudding handy, and applied it. The nose gradually blew out like a toy pig. What’s the interpretation? Horror and guilt both strongly present.”
This sleep dream was recounted in a letter written by Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West in May, 1940. (The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol. VI, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York and London, 1980, pg. 396)
This is a short, but deliciously sweet, sleep dream. We will never know what it meant for Ms. Woolf. But each of us can work with it to see what it might mean – for us. A flying cow, a nose, a pig, tapioca pudding: what do these dream symbols evoke for us? It is not particularly important for us to ascertain what exactly these symbols signified for the woman who dreamed them. For us, a much more interesting and titillating challenge is to work with this gem of a sleep visitation and discover, like viewing a work of art, what it stirs in us.