This is a dream I had recently.
A young woman has died and I am tasked with getting her home to her parents on a barge. It is not clear who has tasked me with this or why it has to be through water. It's me, a boatman and the young woman on the barge. The boatman is a grizzled bearded man past middle age. We are traveling along a narrow straight canal.
The problem is that the corpse won't shut up. She is running all around the boat causing a ruckus and babbling incessantly. It is not clear what she is saying and I am getting annoyed because she keeps getting in my face constantly. So I tell her angrily "Go, sit over there girl. We have to get you home". She doesn't listen. The boatman is least concerned by all this. He says "She was always a talker, that one". Am I the only sane one on this boat? Being trapped in space one cannot leave with an undead corpse should be scary, but I only feel annoyance.
Then the boatman starts explaining to me the three things one should know about corpses They have a need to babble non-stop They are immune (not clear from what) And in typical dream fashion, I wake up before he can tell me the third thing about one should know about corpses.
There appeared to be no direct connection to anything going on in my life at that time. The tableau of the barge and the boatman and the canal is not too difficult to interpret - this is the flow of life itself. But what does the corpse mean and why is it still animated? I spent a couple of weeks thinking about what this could mean. Surely a dream would not use such an elaborate setup unless it was trying to tell me something?
It is possible that there is a complex that I should have honoured and come to terms with by now, but I haven't. So it is still running around "the barge" interfering and disrupting things. In fact, it is not the complex itself one has to honor but the archetype that is embodied within in it. Did the dream choose a young woman to represent the Anima? Is that the one I have not paid sufficient attention to?