I’ve been dreaming a number of very dark and scary dreams over the past month. In one it’s a cold overcast day when a young toe-headed boy loses his head in a guillotine while in another dream several young women are in a cold-water cistern that is draining rapidly and they begin to circle the drain before going under.

The toe-headed boy may be my own innocence being decapitated as well as the morality and values of the country that are being thrown out as the people vote against their best interest for people who promise them something they’ll probably never give. 

The women circling the drain may represent compassion, caring, and inclusiveness dying all around me in a world gone mad with populism.

It has become a very dark world where the light of the candle is sputtering and the fire near the hearth barely crackles, leaving the room to grow cold.

Politically and socially, it is the ‘winter of our discontent.’ In Steinbeck’s novel of the same name a man seems willing to give up his morality to his desire for success through unethical means. Our world seems ready to do the same and is taking frightening form in my dreams.

May the new year bring less frightening dreams as well as less frightening events.