The entire dream takes place in the dark. It takes place in the neighbourhood where I grew up. Every one is wading up to their thighs in water. A man (unknown) has been found murdered and there are two people (police inspectors, maybe or agents of some sort?) – one woman and one man – trying to find out how he died. They are wading along in the water trying to find clues, kicking at the debris of branches and floating objects.

As a dreamer I know all along how he died; He was bitten by a cobra (snake) and the snake is still in the water. (The strangest thing about the cobra was that it had no colour or odd pale white/pink colouring as an albino). Then all of a sudden the man starts hitting himself on the back as if he feels something crawling up his suite jacket. He pulls out the albino cobra by the tail and kills it by hitting its head against a garden plank (he kills it surprisingly easily and without being bitten). I feel very relieved that the cobra is dead, although I am disgusted at its dead floating body.

It has started snowing and suddenly I am wading over to the bus stop (still in my old neighbourhood) together with loads of other people. Many of them seem to be from India. The bus is not coming and we are all waiting for it, wanting to escape from something. Overly crowded busses just drive past without stopping. At the bus stop is a small shelter (not in real life) with very rudimentary beds (just planks on the floor). We all try to find a little corner to sleep in the shelter. I hear something and go outside. My mother has come and she points at the different busses passing by, saying; “-Oh, the number 730 bus; would that do you?” or “That was the 23. Can you take that one?” I point out to my mother that ANY bus would do, just as long as it is going in the right direction and stops to pick us up. I also remember wondering why she does not offered to drive me, since she has a car? Finally, I get on a bus, which takes me to the centre of the town where I grew up.

In the centre, we (me and someone?) walk to an old school or old building. In there students are preparing a party. The place is packed and it is more like they all have been evacuated because of a disaster or war, than it is a party. The air is full of smoke and a couple of young girls complain to me about how crowded and stuffy and disgusting it is in there. (I have a feeling that I am their teacher and they turn to me with all sorts of demands.) I mimic their constant smoking gestures as if I held an imaginary cigarette, saying; “It would be better in here if you did not smoke constantly, don’t you think?”

The feel of the dream is that of a catastrophe coming closer. Premonition?

What I felt while reading this was exhaustion. Wading through water exerts a lot of energy. So this part of the dream could represent a feeling of exerting too much energy---emotional perhaps?

The cobra is something deadly in this place that exerts too much energy. Can you think of something that replacing the cobra with would fit?

Then you have compartments of transportation that are overcrowed. This is like a disaster. I know here in the U.S. we experienced something like this last year. It was after a hurricane in which levels built to hold back water broke, and hundreds of people drowned and went missing. Many more had to wait days for transportation out.

Are you concerned that you may not be prepared for such a disaster?

Finally, the dream ends with smoke. Interesting. Fire is another type of disaster, the opposite of water.

So you have something that requires a lot of energy to go through, something poisonous to you, and something toxic to the lungs (breath in, take in).

Could be a premonition. Or it could be a metaphor for things going on in your life. I see your mother makes an appearance again. Could it be something involving your childhood or current relationship with her?

Hello and thank you for your response.

I belive you are spot on about exhaustion; it is what the dream is about and exactly what I am feeling.

I would love to know what the cobra represents and why it is an albino cobra (which I suppose is somehting quite rare, if it even exists?)

I think the feeling of disaster is the feeling of loosing control because I have so much to do, no time and I am exhausted. It is also fear that little things that I normally could handle are now turning into problems, like things tend to do when you work to fast or don't have time to reflect. No disaster has actually occured and there might not be any serious mistakes, but the feeling is that it could happen and I cannot prevent it. I don't think the dream has anything to do about my childhood; although my mother could be in it because she recently adviced me to stop working so much and said that I was becoming a "garbage bin" of tasks at my workplace, doing all that no one else can be bothered to do. She might be in the dream as a reminder of that or as a warning.

There was a detail that I left out when writing my dream because it seemed too hard to explain. In the little shelter with beds by the busstop there are a lot of people, but I remember one person in particular. It is a fat, bolding man (unknown) who recognizes me. He says; "Don't I know you?" In the dream I have met him before but I am embarrassed. I say; "Yes, you stayed at our house last time." Then he remembers where he knows me from. He has once stayed at my parents house as a guest and then he was badly insulted by my father. (Never seen him in awake life and I dont know how my father insulted him or anything more about him.)

Ill consider the smoke and the disaster some more. Thank you again. //Karin