A dream and a vision of shooting stars*

These two observations are interesting because of their common structure; the two cases are about people of different nationality; one of the girls is rather plump, the other is schizophrenic. In spite of that, in both cases, we have the image of the golden rain in the foreground and that of personal desire in the background; in the dream there is a signboard in the sky bearing in large letters the word ‘love’, in the vision it is the beloved himself.

Plump Miss N. tells the following dream to a small group of people:

I was by my bedroom window; the window was closed, there were lots of stars; I was looking at them casually; suddenly I saw several shooting stars. I found the sight magnificent; it was never ending, it went on and on. I went on admiring them. Suddenly I saw that they were not shooting stars, that it was rain, rain-water running down the other side of the window, driven against the other side of the window by the wind. It was like the reflection of starlight, with the water falling in a continuous motion, like rivulets of gold, threads of gold, not really threads as it was a flowing movement, not a linear one.

She was astonished when she woke up. The contradiction of stars and water, rain, both being present in the same dream struck her. When she discovered that it was nothing, ‘only water’, she was disappointed, but she drew comfort from the fact that it was nevertheless very beautiful. One must always make a wish when a shooting star appears; but she was always too late for it. This time she said to herself in her dream: ‘If you are too late for that one (star), there will be another’.