A Snake Puppet and waking with a numb arm
Morning of November 9, 1981. Monday. Last reviewed and supplemented on Friday, 28 July 2017.
I become aware that I am sitting on the left arm of a couch in what seems to be the Loomis Street house. However, there is a feeling that the orientation is rotated in layout from the south wall of the living room to north wall of the dining room, so that the left arm of the couch is on the east side rather than the west side. It is not known if my dream implies that the living room and dining room have exchanged their locations as I am not focused on much other detail. I do see that there is a small side table on the left of the couch, which has at least a lamp and a rotary telephone. Still, it might be implied that I am in the dining room rather than the living room as I am vaguely aware of what could be the kitchen entrance farther off to my right rather than what would otherwise be the entrance from the porch.
An unknown male is sitting on the couch to my right, but not that close to me at first, only close enough to just reach me with his left hand. He seems to be an unknown and unfamiliar door-do-door salesman, possibly in his thirties.
He has a large snake hand puppet which covers nearly his entire left arm. It is not that realistic, though not as simple as a sketchy cartoon-like model.
He does not try to convey the idea that the puppet is talking though he does makes its mouth move. He does not seem to express that he knows that I know it is just a puppet. Perhaps he does not realize that I know it is just a puppet. (This is not certain.)
At another point, he mostly seems to remain behind the left side of the side table on the opposite side of me (to my left), reaching around with his left arm from the front. I make no attempt to acknowledge him or communicate in any way. Although he does not seem threatening, I remain annoyed, because I feel he is being childish, especially as my dream self identity is probably about twenty years old and such an approach is not what I would consider entertaining or even amusing. Although it seems he would have had to teleport to change position in this way (as I did not see him walking or moving to my knowledge), I do not think about his location changing as such and curiously, I do not see him as an imposer, only an annoying person of whom I do not reflect as having any backstory in this scenario.
When I awake, my left arm is numb, due to having my weight on it. (This is not a common event.)
I do not believe that this dream is relevant to my conscious self's day to day reality, and therefore, I do not believe that it has an "interpretation". Here is why I believe this:
I believe that my awareness of the lamp on my left solely relates to my potential to become more aware in real time within my dream. I believe that the telephone on my left relates to either potential real-time communication with other levels of my consciousness or possibly thoughts perceived as originating from other people. I do not believe that there is any more to it than this because the experience is in real time, and is not a "recording" to "interpret" after the fact. (After all, in real life, you would go by what you experience as it is happening, not make claims that features like lamps or tables were something else the day before.)
The fact that I am "sitting on the left arm" of the couch rather than its seat implies liminal awareness that there is compromising weight on my left arm as I sleep.
The personified preconscious's form as a door-to-door salesman implies a persona or feature that I would perhaps only see once, or at least not very often. The puppet is on his left arm, which means he is, in a rather odd and indirect way, trying to relay that my left arm is in a problematic position.
A puppet in a dream, in previous dreams, has been validated to be an "invitation" for my dream self to take control of my dream (though this same symbolism has also been validated as such in non-lucid dreams in most cases). In this case, it seems more about waking up and gaining control of my left arm.
Biological waking symbolism (more specifically, paresthesia waking symbolism) is the foundation of this dream and there is no reason to read more into it other than perhaps signifying the snake as a healing factor in getting my arm to move correctly again. The fact that the snake is not that realistic may be because my arm does not have its full natural use at the time.
Note that I have studied a lot of dreams in which a snake features. A snake often has completely different meanings in different dreams, which only the dreamer of the dream can come to correctly resolve.
