Heartbrain (John Dotson’s dream of January 13, 2016)

I am engaged in various work activities in a given setting—here and there, this and that—when someone comes up to me to tell me that my mother is near. It is not clear if she has come to this workplace, or if she is on the phone, or if some sort of apparition of her has appeared. But my immediate concerns rise to maximum, regarding her. Somehow my concerns are obviously a question about her well-being, or just her being. When the messenger quickly and sharply tells me, “She has heartbrain,” I panic. It’s as if I have just heard a cancer diagnosis. Indeed, it is at first not clear to me if this diagnosis is of her problem, or in fact if this is my problem—if I have been delivered a death sentence, or death threat, and/or she has. But the ambiguity passes and I am soon aware that it is SHE who has the problem, and perhaps this is very, very serious indeed. What is going to happen to Mother? And then I begin to wonder, for I am not at all sure what heartbrain even means. A vague spatial image arises—a luminescent heart-like entity suspended in a dark skull. But I cannot grasp the actual condition or situation.