J F Vernon Blog

I’ve started doing something regularly again which I began years ago: treating a dream not as a weird film clip to be forgotten, but as a personal message from the unconscious — and then interrogating it with discipline, not superstition.

That distinction matters. I use a Jungian approach, as John Freeman explains in his introduction to Jung’s Man and His Symbols. It isn’t about grabbing a dream dictionary and “decoding” symbols as if they have fixed meanings. Rather it’s about assuming the dream is a living, individual communication, and then circling it from different angles until the meaning coheres using a spiralling method. The dream doesn’t yield a single “Aha!” line. It yields a shape. 

It may take a couple of hours with around thirty questions and then as many further probing questions until the dream reveals its meaning and purpose.

The dream

I was in a pub car park with a mate, trying to test-drive an absurd handmade craft-vehicle. Mine wasn’t even reliably a car — it might have four wheels, or five or seven, and it was open-topped and organic, like chewing gum bubbles. We got the engines going, but instead of driving we morphed and slid, mostly in curves – sliding around like blobs of lard in a frying plan. Then the ground turned to banks of snow like melting marshmallows. Two blokes arrived with a gangster vibe, meaning us harm. They got into the worst of our vehicles to give chase. I escaped the car park, my mate following, but then I stalled in a mound of that marshmallow snow. The pursuers got out and came after me — but I and the vehicle seemed to blend into the snow.

I woke befuddled, and my first impulse was to dismiss it. This was too Dali-esque to decipher. But I’ve learnt to “collect” dreams, even the silly ones. Because the silly ones can reveal the most, and be of the most value.

And so I entered the confessional. I keep nothing back. This is a hugely simplified version of the exchange and my replies.

The method: question-led, not interpretation-led

Instead of leaping to meaning, I went through a structured Q&A — a sequence of prompts designed to draw out what the images mean to me. The questions started with the container:

Why a pub car park?

For me it wasn’t “a pub” so much as a cinematic test site. I immediately saw Back to the Future — Marty and Doc in the car park with the DeLorean, first test, engines starting, donuts, bravado without a real journey yet.

That “testing ground” framing mattered. It placed the whole dream in the psychological space of adolescence: experimentation, mates, performance, the thrill of trying things out without consequences.

Then we moved to the central object:

What is this vehicle? Why is it so strange?

I described it as jelly, bacon fat, translucent gelatine — evolutionary, alive, adaptable. I couldn’t even tell if it had wheels. It was invention without engineering.

At that point the question shifted from “what does a car mean?” to something more pointed:

Where in waking life do I feel like I’m moving in something invented, unorthodox, unstable, exposed?

And I answered it plainly: my mind.

My restless, idea-generating mind — brilliant at launching whacky concepts, equally brilliant at doubting them, and sometimes incapable of getting from A to B in a dependable way.

Already the dream was changing from a weird car-chase into a diagnostic diagram.

The spiral tightens: movement, ground, stall

Next came the motion of the dream:

Why am I not driving straight? Why all curves and sliding?

I realised that in many areas — coaching, cooking, drawing, relief prints — I can follow a road. But in writing I’m “all over the place,” like walking on ice in smooth shoes. The dream’s curving, sliding movement wasn’t just style. It was me, in prose.

Then came the image that cracked it open:

The marshmallow snow. Why is the ground sweet, soft, unreal?

I linked it instantly to what I’d eaten — ginger, chocolate, digestive biscuits — and the dream turned into a Willy Wonka terrain. Childlike. Sugary. Unstable.

And then the key question:

What in my life is sweet and yielding but can’t bear weight?

My answer surprised me by how immediate it was: my default to diaries and “what really happened.” The delicious sprawl of lived detail. The nostalgia. The endless possibility. Wonderful material — but marshmallow as a road surface.

That’s where the dream’s drama made sense:

I escape the car park (I begin well). I reach the road (I’m in motion). Then I stall in gloop (overcomplexity, indulgent terrain, loss of traction).

The dream wasn’t warning me about danger. It was showing me exactly where my writing breaks down.

The “gangsters” and the old strategy

The pursuers, interestingly, weren’t terrifying. They felt theatrical — like lads from another House at boarding school, part of a game with jeopardy but not fatal stakes. That was instructive too.

If they weren’t true threats, what were they?

When I was asked who they were internally, my answer was blunt: inhibitors. The figures that turn up when I’m trying to move forward and demand a reckoning: prove it, make it work, stop messing about.

And what do I do when I stall?

I blend.

I disappear.

I go to bed, into woods, into books, into streams, into whatever lets me avoid the confrontation of finishing. Fitting in. Keeping my head down. Not taking responsibility. An old, learned strategy.

The dream showed that pattern with perfect economy: stall → threat approaches → camouflage.

The turn: from dream meaning to practical solution

At this point the Jungian method did what it’s supposed to do. It didn’t leave me with “insight” as a decorative badge. It pushed toward action.

The dream’s message wasn’t “stop being creative.” It was: build the chassis. Stop trying to cross marshmallow terrain with a gelatine vehicle.

So the questions became practical:

Do I need strict narrative architecture? Word-count containment? A formal constraint? A genre decision? Deadlines?

I said yes to all of them.

And then the deeper admission arrived:

I also resist endings. I enjoy the journey. I have other horses in the stable.

But the dream was blunt: the car park is a place for testing, not arriving. And arriving is exactly what I want.

Because I already know what finishing feels like. I’ve done it before in film: brief → ideas → treatment → script → shoot. And once it’s shot, the work becomes independent of me. It exists. It’s out there. That feels fantastic.

So the dream’s “solution” wasn’t mystical at all.

It was a reminder of a professional discipline I already possess — and a nudge to reapply it to my novella.

Treat The Form Photo like a commissioned short film.

Impose the limits. Define the brief. Build the structure. Set the word count. Fix a delivery date.

In other words: stop doing marshmallow donuts and drive the thing.

That’s the point where dreamwork stopped being analysis and became a plan.

The initial questions in full

1. The Setting – The Pub Car Park

A pub car park is neither fully public nor fully private. It is a threshold space. A place of sociality, performance, risk, and intoxication — but also of parking, waiting, beginning.

• What is your personal association with a pub car park? Youth? Fights? Laughter? Male bonding? Risk?

JV > it felt and looked like that scene in Back to the Future where Marty and the Doc meet to first test the Delorean Time travelling car.

• Are you about to depart — or about to show off?

JV > neither, we’re trying them out, getting the engines started, maybe doing a donut. 

• Does this feel like adolescence? Midlife experimentation? A liminal phase?

JV > adolescence/young adulthood 

And notice: you are hoping to test-drive something. Not yet fully formed.

JV > the car is like jelly, or bacon fat. Highly experimental. 

What in your waking life currently feels experimental, handmade, absurd — but full of potential?

JV > whenever I start to get whacky ideas. Or even when I’m having doubts about something I’m working on. 

2. The Vehicles – Handmade, Organic, Morphing

Your craft is:

• absurd
• handmade
• experimental
• organic, like chewing gum
• open-topped
• with four… five… seven wheels

This is extraordinary symbolism.

• Why is it not factory-made?

JV > it’s evolutionary, alive perhaps. Made from translucent  gelatine. 

• Why organic, pliable, morphing?

JV > flexible, pliable, adaptable, a one off, not of this world. 

• Why uncertain in structure (four or five or seven wheels)?

JV > either because it can morph, or because o can’t tell because of its strange shape. Is it even on wheels?

Does this resemble:

• A creative project?
• A new identity configuration?
• A masculine self not yet stabilised?
• A way of moving through the world that does not follow conventional tracks?

JV > both a creative project and a strange new way to move through the world. 

The vehicle in dreams often represents the ego-vehicle — how we move through life.

Does your current way of proceeding feel:

• Invented?
• Unorthodox?
• Slightly unstable?
• Exposed (open top)?

JV > all of the above. If a translucent slug had an engine of some kind and wheels. 

And what of the number of wheels — does multiplicity suggest overcompensation? Complexity? Improvisation?

3. The Friend

Your friend is described by ethnicity — Arab or Asian. Then the pursuers are also Middle Eastern or Asian.

Before we touch that, pause.

• What is this friend like in feeling-tone?

JV > no different to me! The same, but with a hit of a beard and a different skin colour. 

• Confident? Technical? Stylish (dragster)?
• Is he an aspect of you?
• Is he the daring, streamlined counterpart to your organic improvisation?

JV > given how much thought I’m giving it these days, I’d describe him as a mate from school, an acquaintance with the same interests. Like we have come up with this in the project centre and are now putting things to the test out in the car park one evening. 

What qualities does he embody that you do not?

JV > he’s not me! His background is different but we have this in common. 

Now more carefully:

When the unconscious gives ethnicity, it rarely means literal race. It points toward otherness — the unfamiliar psychic territory.

• Does this friend represent something culturally “other” within you?

JV > yes, but in the context of boys at a boarding school together, which is what it feels like, the otherness is inconsequential compared to the common interest. 

• A part of you shaped by different values?
• A global, outsider, or marginal identity?

Do not answer politically. Answer psychologically.

4. Movement – Morphing, Sliding, Curving

You do not drive straight. You morph. You slide. You move in curves.

This is not linear propulsion. It is fluid navigation.

• Where in your life are you moving in curves rather than lines?

JV > some things I am able to follow the road: relief prints, pen and ink drawings, cooking, coaching swimmers but with writing I am too often ‘all over the place’, like on ice in smooth bottomed shoes. 

• Does this feel playful? Creative? Or unstable?

JV > experimental

And then —

The ground becomes snow like melting marshmallows.

Snow is usually cold, crystalline, dangerous.

Marshmallow is soft, edible, childlike.

This snow is:

• Soft
• Dissolving
• Sugary
• Unreal

Is this regression? A childlike substrate beneath adult experimentation?

JV > yes, childlike, but evocated by the sweet taste of ginger, chocolate and digestive biscuits I’d been eating earlier in the evening. As if this created a Willy Wonker’s Chocolate Factory like world.  

Is something serious becoming strangely playful? Or something solid losing form?

5. The Threat – Two Gangster Figures

Two men appear. Harmful. Gangster tone.

They get into the worst of your handmade vehicles.

Notice that.

They take the inferior structure.

• What in you feels threatened by shadowy masculine figures?

JV > it didn’t feel threatening so much as part of the game, like acting something out in a movie. 

• What “gangster” quality do they carry? Ruthless? Dominating? Criminal? Primitive?

JV > there is some jeopardy, but I wonder if the consequences would be no worse than ‘you are it’. 

• Have you encountered such energy in waking life recently?

JV > only in reading a Ken Follett saga, or watching the sci-fi film Badlands. 

Are they:

• Internal critics?
• Cultural forces?
• Older masculine codes?
• The father complex in a new disguise?

And again — they are described as Middle Eastern or Asian.

Does the shadow appear wearing the same “otherness” as your friend?

JV > like my friend, but this could mean ‘boys or lads’ from another House at boarding school. 

Is there confusion between ally and threat?

JV > no, where on different sides of a game. 

Between unfamiliar ally and unfamiliar danger?

JV > there’s a little unknown. Will they play the game? Why wouldn’t they. 

This is psychologically important.

6. The Stall

You get out.

You escape the car park.

You are almost free.

Then you stall in a mound of this marshmallow snow.

• Where in life do you nearly escape — then stall?

JV > currently, or for a few hours until I had thought it through, maybe after this dream, I felt I was rid of, or through an important stage with writing or composing The Form Photo novella only to be dragged back by it. 

• What causes the stall? Over-complexity? Soft ground? Emotional softness?

JV > overcomplexity. 

• Is your experimental identity unable to gain traction in the real world?

JV > possibly. I like to try different ways of doing things. 

Your friend follows — but you are the one immobilised.

What distinguishes you from him in this moment?

JV > I’ve made it out of the car park, onto a use road, only to get ditched in a snow drift of marshmallow gloop!

7. Blending In

The pursuers abandon the vehicle and come on foot.

But you and your vehicle may have blended into the snow.

This is striking.

You do not win by speed.

You survive by camouflage.

• When do you disappear rather than confront?

JV > always: to bed, into the woods, along the side of a stream, to take a bath, or into a tv series or gripping book, or into a topic I’m enthusiastic about. 

• When does blending become protection?

JV > fitting in, blending in, can become or feel routine and boring after a while. Keeping my head down, not taking responsibility. 

• Is invisibility a strategy learned early?

JV > as I kind of running away, of ducking the issue, to escape capture in this instance – though the intention was to get away in or with this strange vehicle, not just to escape capture. 

Does the organic, gum-like quality of the vehicle allow you to merge with the environment?

JV > in this case yes, with this environment. 

Is there a wish to dissolve into the landscape rather than be hunted?

JV > it’s preferable. 

8. Affect – Most Important

Now step back.

What was the dominant feeling:

• Excitement?
• Play?
• Fear?
• Embarrassment?
• Exhilaration?
• Shame?

JV > frustration 

Did the gangster threat feel real — or theatrical?

JV > both. I didn’t want to hang around to see how they’d play it. 

Did you wake up relieved? Charged? Amused?

JV > befuddled, intrigued, and initially ready to dismiss the dream. But I’ve learnt to ‘collect’ any and every dream regardless or or in spite of what happens. 

The feeling-tone will orient the meaning far more than the imagery.

9. Structural Reflection

Let me tentatively sketch the psychological geometry emerging — not as conclusion, but as a higher spiral.

You and a companion aspect are experimenting with a new mode of movement through life — handmade, creative, unconventional, organic.

The ground becomes soft, childlike, unstable.

Shadow masculine forces appear, attempting to pursue.

You escape the collective masculine arena (the pub car park — social male world), but when entering the wider terrain, you stall in soft emotional ground.

Survival comes not from domination, but from blending.

This could suggest:

• A creative individuation attempt.
• A departure from conventional masculine structures.
• Encounter with shadow masculine energy.
• A regression into childlike substrate.
• A protective strategy of invisibility.

But we must not fix this.

Final Spiral Questions

Answer these slowly:

• What in your life right now feels like a handmade experimental vehicle?

JV > my mind. It feels forever informed. Forever restless and either getting bored eventually with one thing and then eager to try something else. For creative writing I’d like a vehicle or vessel I can believe in and depend on to take me from A to B rather than doing marshmallow donuts in gloop in a car made of who knows what. 

• What masculine structure are you leaving behind?

JV > blokes in cars? Chased by other men? Despite the peculiar vehicles it feels like a masculine world with some Barnie doll sweetness thrown in. 

• What soft emotional ground threatens to stall you?

JV > my default to diaries and what really happened, which is complex and structureless against the structure of a story which works. 

• Who are the “gangsters” internally?

JV > inhibitors.

• When have you survived by blending rather than fighting?

JV > fitting in rather than standing out. 

• Is this dream warning you — or encouraging you?

JV > it feels like less of a warning, than a dramatisation of reality. I try to set off in an unreliable vehicle and when out in the spot I break down or crash and have to take to my feet and hide