I am at the house in Jackson the way it was when I was a child, with a carport in back and the shed chamber above it. John and Mom do not seem to be present. We are carrying stuff, perhaps toys since some of the items I identify as primitive videogame consoles with thick cases of sparkly pink plastic, out to the driveway in front of the icehouse.

One of the items is a stackable plastic chair which I need to clean up because it is coated with something like paint or mud. I am carrying a cloth with which I wipe the coating off the chair but my cloth soon becomes soiled and the coating gets on my hands as well. Then I noticed that my cloth is becoming threadbare and developing holes, and is not even fabric, but paper.

Looking over towards the Model "A" shed I see a large green Komodo Dragon facing me and I comment to Daniel that it could be a problem because it might attack me. Shortly afterwards it did attack but it was slow and I was able to clamp my jaws onto the tip of its lower jaw when it tried to bite my head. Holding it with my jaws, I call out to David to get my gun to kill it, then realize he might be able to find the gun so I tell him to get a knife from the kitchen. He brings a long kitchen life and stabs the lizard several times in the abdomen. A copious amount of purplish blood followed by water pours out of the wounds, then more water gushes out of the animal's anus. The dragon shrinks and deflates until it is only a couple feet long and an inch or two thick and it appears that it will die, but then it eats a small amount of something so I know that it will live, though it is no longer dangerous.

I am going to go birdwatching, and perhaps also show some of the birds to Sarah, so I grab a bucket and go over to the Model "A" shed where I here a couple of chickadees and see a Wilson's Warbler in the grass and a Yellow-rumped Warbler on a board. The bucket is how I record the sightings, perhaps by putting a slip of paper in it for each species.

I start walking down the road to the field with Eric on my left and Sarah on my right. Susan is down in the cabin but I decide that I don't need to let her know before we go. As we are passing the barn, Eric asks me incredulously, "Is there anything you can't do?" I reply that I never really played golf or football, either kind.

First of all, this dream displays some interesting parallels to a dream several years ago which is also set at the house in Jackson as it was when I was a child and which features gray slime which I wash off my hands. I identified the gray slime as the conservative Christian belief system which I was in the process of rejecting. In this dream my hands are soiled not by gray slime but by a yellowish coating on a chair I am attempting to clean. Similar but different, the coating may also be a belief which I adopted as a child (the context of the house in Jackson). I have no clear association with the chair, though it is a type adults might use at a social gathering where extra chairs are needed - inexpensive, easily stored, sized for grown-ups. That supports Darchelle's suggestion that my inadequate attempts to clean the chair might represent my efforts as a child to hold or resolve my mother's emotions. My failure to accomplish that may have inspired efforts as an adult to fix my ex-wife's pain, a project at which I also failed. The childhood failure may also have contributed to a sense that I was unable to love others, predisposing me to seek a remedy in Christianity.

That's where the Komodo Dragon comes in. It is a symbol from another dream several years ago, in which it also represents Christianity. In this dream, the Dragon tries to bite my head (a system of thinking or belief) but I disable it by biting back (changing my thinking?) before recruiting David to kill it. David probably represents part of myself; he and I have talked about how God would answer little prayers but not big ones such as asking to be healed, an experience which engendered skepticism about the whole system of belief. The blood, which looked like grape juice, and the water are reminiscent of Christ's death on the cross. The resurrection of the Dragon after receiving something to eat recalls Christ requesting something to eat after He was resurrected. In prophecy the Dragon is the enemy of Christ but in my dream I conflate the two; Christianity for me was both harmful and beneficial, placing before me an ideal of love but reinforcing within me my own self-hatred. Looking back, it seems to me that I was not able to freely love myself and others until I first rejected God, so in a way, the sacrifice of God in my life, as represented by killing the Dragon, was a prerequisite to emotional healing. The green color of the Dragon is associated in a more recent dream with the ideal of perfection, the idea that the perfection which I sought through Christianity is possible.

The perfection idea is echoed in Eric's question. When I graduated from college (which is where I first began watching birds) there was an expectation about me that all pads were open to me; I could enter any career, excel in any endeavor, succeed in any pursuit to which I set my mind. Christianity, to which I turned in my failure after college to fulfill that potential, reinforced (although in the area of character rather than achievement) that idea that I could be whatever or whomever I chose to be. My answer to Eric reflects a different understanding, an acceptance of the reality that I cannot do everything or be everything and that's okay.

The dream appears to trace the development of that understanding, beginning with the idealism of childhood, concluding with the pragmatism of maturity, and recognizing the role of my experience of Christianity in that process.