Emperor Palpatine orders Darth Vader to kiss his toes. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm watching Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine interact in a large, open room. The emperor asks Darth Vader to do or say increasingly humiliating things. I can feel what Darth Vader feels. He's uncomfortable, but eager to show his loyalty. 

But after a couple of these minor requests for signs of compliance, the emperor takes his shoe off and asks Darth Vader, "Shouldn't you be willing to kiss my toes?" 

I can feel how embarrassed Vader is, but he does it anyway out of fear. 

Then the Emperor says, "A truly loyal servant would let me take one of his fingers." He eyes Darth Vader's fingers greedily and smiles, like he might bite one of them off. (These are Anakin's real, flesh fingers, not robotic ones.) 

Now, I feel that the emperor may have crossed a line. Vader might feel compelled to rebel now. I can feel that Vader is still afraid, but he's getting outraged now. 

Then, I find myself living in a dorm-like room with a public shower next to it. I take my shower in the only available stall. When my roommate comes back, I ask her how a lesbian takes a shower, as though that might give me insight into myself.

I wake up and go back to bed, and I'm in a restaurant with exclusively black women. Every single table is taken. I go into another section of the restaurant, and I see one, single open table. I squeeze by a young white girl's chair and she asks me, "Do you have to sit there?"

I say with relative calm, "You want every single table, don't you?"

Then there was a whole sequence about making dumplings and pasta. I had a pasta machine, flour and oil, and I was trying to make dough for dumplings, but there was obviously way too much oil, and I thought there wasn't enough oil. 

Then I was cuddling with my husband in a warm, red sweater with a cup of tea. We were both young, but inside, I felt middle aged. 

INTERPRETATION

I kinda feel as though labeling the antagonist in a piece of fiction "the dark side" is cheating. In real life, the dark side manifests subtly (unless we're talking about an extreme, like a serial killer). "The dark side" is usually more like "the gray area." It's someone who loves you making inappropriate demands that aren't in your best interest. It's someone asking for test after test of someone's affection and never being satisfied. It's an increasing need for power and control in a relationship. Stuff like that. Stuff that one person feels they need but causes the other person pain or fear.

With the restaurant dream, I talked a lot with someone yesterday about how some people have an insane amount of money. I took numbers given to me by Google Gemini and calculated that an annual, 2% wealth tax on the top 1% of wealthiest Americans would pay for all of SNAP, Medicare, and Medicaid. That's insane. Think of how much money they would still have after a 2% annual tax. "You want every single table, don't you?" I think the racial divide in the dream reflects how you hear about the privileges some people have. In the dream, the privileges are associated with race. In real life, the privileges are associated with money.