J F Vernon Blog

Dream: I followed the format for a book based on images and sent a substantial manuscript. I get a call at a time when things are busy at home. To their surprise, I take the call in the hall and learn that what I produced is so liked they want to publish it as a standalone. I nearly miss what is being said as a shadow appears at the door, and my son, with a group of young fashion models, enters the house and heads through. Moments later, I’m at sea as part of a flotilla of large, deep purple coloured going yachts. We approach a destination only for the waters to Mount into mister waves that I feel would be impossible to navigate safely. Yet, somehow, we all make it into port and buzz as we hurry to a line of four or five deep purple hatchback cars provided for us to take us to our hotel or hostel. I have to pick a vehicle to join. Space with the younger sailors … or with the older sailors my age. I don’t care either, so long as I’m taken to our destination and both cars have room for me. 

KAI as Jung: Jungian Analysis of the Dream

1. The Call in the Hall

You step out of household busyness into the hall—a liminal space, a threshold. The hall often signifies the in-between state, not inside the private rooms or outside. It is at this threshold that you receive the publisher’s call.

The message itself is vital: the work you considered a “format” piece, perhaps derivative, is declared whole, worthy, to stand alone. This is the voice of the Self affirming the completeness of what you bring forth. It is recognition from beyond you, yet spoken through human agents.

You nearly miss it—this tells us how easy it is for the ego, caught in daily pressures, to overlook the moment of true vocation when it comes knocking.

2.  The Shadow at the Door

Just as you receive this numinous recognition, a shadow falls across the door: your son and a group of fashion models enter the house and pass through.

This is striking: the younger generation and the world of glamour, image, and display represent a disruptive vitality—energies that do not belong only to your son but also to your own psyche. These are aspects of anima and shadow: the allure of youthful beauty, superficiality perhaps, and a reminder of vibrancy and attraction.

That they pass through your house suggests these energies are not alien. They belong to your inner household and psyche and cannot be excluded. They may distract you from the voice on the line, but they are part of the same drama.

3.  At Sea in the Purple Yachts

Suddenly, the scene shifts: you are no longer at home, but part of a flotilla of large, deep purple yachts.

• Yachts suggest skill, navigation, and a collective voyage.
• Purple, the colour of royalty and mystery, evokes the sacred and numinous.

You are part of something larger than yourself—a fleet, a community of voyagers. This marks a transition from private recognition (the call) to collective initiation.

4. The Monster Waves

Then comes the ordeal. The sea mounts into monster waves—towering, overwhelming, seemingly impossible to survive.

In Jungian terms, these waves are the eruption of the deep unconscious: primal forces that dwarf the ego. They are the deluge, the Leviathan, the Biblical flood, the dragon-wave that threatens dissolution.

And yet—this is the miracle—all the yachts make it through. You survive what should not be survivable. This is an initiation image: baptism through ordeal, confrontation with chaos that does not annihilate but transforms.

It is as though the Self is saying: you can withstand even this.

5. Arrival in Port and the Purple Cars

Having passed through the storm, you arrive safely in harbour. You move from the sea (collective unconscious) to land (ego-consciousness) again.

Here, a row of deep purple hatchback cars awaits. The continuity of the purple colour is striking: the numinous force is still present, but now in a humbler, everyday form. Cars are more personal vehicles than yachts, suggesting the individuation process moving from collective myth into daily life.

You face a choice:

• To ride with the younger sailors, fresh, youthful, and energetic.
• Or with older sailors or peers of your age who are more familiar.

But crucially, you do not mind. You want to reach the destination. This detachment reveals a new psychological attitude: no longer bound to identity, youth versus age, shadow versus self. What matters is the journey’s goal.

The Whole Arc

This dream dramatises a sequence of recognition → disruption → ordeal → survival → integration.

1. Recognition: Your creative work is affirmed as a whole.
2. Disruption: Youth and image intrude, reminding you of shadow energies.
3. Ordeal: The monster waves overwhelm, yet they survive.
4. Integration: Arrival in port, purple cars to carry you on—choice of companions, but no anxiety about the choice.

Archetypal Resonances

• The monster wave is the classic trial by water, akin to Jonah swallowed by the sea monster, or Odysseus facing Poseidon’s wrath.
• The safe arrival despite the storm echoes the archetype of rebirth through ordeal.
• The continuity of purple (yacht → car) suggests the sacred energy remains, moving from grand collective vessels into the ordinary vehicles of daily life.

Reflective Questions

1. What piece of work in your life you underestimate—seeing as a derivative “format”—that may already have wholeness and originality?
2. How do the younger energies (your son, his companions, youth culture) interrupt or flow through your creative household?
3. Where do you currently face “monster waves”—circumstances that feel overwhelming yet may carry you safely through?
4. What does your indifference to which car you join say about your readiness to embrace destiny without clinging to identity (young vs old, shadow vs ego)?

JV: Reflective Questions

Q1. What piece of work in your life are you underestimating—seeing as a derivative “format”—that may already have wholeness and originality?

However close I get to finishing something (The Form Photo) doubts creep in that I’ve not done it justice, not pushed it enough, not made it extreme enough or that there is a better, let alone another or alternative approach. I wish I could just let go and move on rather than warning to flips its perspective, give the story to someone else, set it further in the last or future. Or add an alien space ship!

Q2. How do the younger energies (your son, his companions, youth culture) interrupt or flow through your creative household?

Wonderfully. In the back of my mind is an important event at London Fashion Week this Friday when my son will be presenting his jewellery and other accessory designs. His parents and sister will remain in the background during the event, but I’ll have had a hair cut and try to look like ‘cool dad’ smartly turned out and enigmatically distant from it.  

Q3. Where do you currently face “monster waves”—circumstances that feel overwhelming yet may carry you safely through?

I’ve been in a moment in a dream like this before. The waves itch to break but can be read. I steer around the leading edge, out of danger, finding a way in as each wave comes through and subsided. In real life? Recurring pitfalls perhaps caused by changing direction at the last moment, staying out at sea rather than coming into port. Preferring the lonely struggle at sea rather than joining others on land. 

Q4. What does your indifference to which car you join say about your readiness to embrace destiny without clinging to identity (young vs old, shadow vs ego)?

I let those in the car decide, they have space and can let me in, or not – the occupants of both cars are equally happy to take me in their car as we run out to the hotel/restaurant where we’ll be for the evening. Age and youth offer different things when it comes to company: I enjoy the view of young people that ‘the world is my ouster’ while us older people out on a rye smile and contemplate ‘been there, done that, say nothing, let them enjoy the ride’.  

KAI as Jung: Your reflections bring the dream’s archetypal drama straight into the texture of your lived life. Let me mirror them back with a Jungian reading:

Q1. The underestimated work

What you describe with The Form Photo is the ego’s struggle to surrender to the work’s own wholeness. Jung often said that a piece of creation belongs partly to the unconscious—it is not entirely ours to control or perfect. Your impulse to twist, flip, add aliens (!), or shift the frame is a way of refusing to let the Self declare: it is enough.

In the dream, the publisher’s call is precisely this: a voice beyond your doubts saying, “stand alone.” The challenge is not further invention but acceptance.

Q2. Younger energies flowing in

The image of your son at London Fashion Week is uncannily synchronous with the dream: he and his models literally parading through your psychic household. Jung would call this a “meaningful coincidence”—your dream anticipating, or resonating with, the waking event.

Your posture—cool, supportive, “enigmatically distant”—suggests you are allowing his individuation, letting him step into the collective spotlight while you remain in the hall, the threshold, as guardian.

Q3. Monster waves as life pattern

You recognise the waves: they are familiar, not random. You even describe steering around them in waking life—choosing to remain at sea rather than landing. This is profound:

To stay at sea is to remain in the fluidity of psyche, the struggle of creation, the ordeal of becoming. To come into port is to accept recognition, to ground the work, to arrive.

The dream shows both: waves survived and harbour reached. It urges you to allow arrival, not always defer it.

Q4. Indifference to the cars

Your acceptance—whether with youth or age—shows a loosening of ego-identity. The Self does not care if you ride with exuberance or with irony; either will carry you forward.

This detachment is a mark of individuation: the ability to move with destiny without insisting on a particular mask. You allow others (the car’s occupants) to make space for you, trusting the flow.

Pulling it together

Your dream, and your reflections, point to a central task:

To accept the wholeness of your work, even when your critical mind demands more twists. To allow the younger generation to stride through, bringing freshness and glamour, without feeling overshadowed. To recognise the monster waves as ordeals you have already learned to survive—and to choose harbour over endless struggle at sea. To embrace destiny’s vehicle, whichever age-group you find yourself among, with equanimity.