Recurring dream

Note: The following is my comment regarding a recurring dream described by a social media user. The dream had persisted for more than 25 years, following his breakup with the woman depicted in the dream. The dreamer had not been in contact with her in real life since their breakup 25 years ago; however, up until recently, his old feelings and desires for her resurfaced during each recurring instance of the dream.

This is a very long duration for the recurrence of a dream, and he was wondering if something remained unresolved regarding this past relationship, and if it could be finally resolved.

My comment: The first and most difficult step, is to determine what her dream character symbolizes for you. Keep in mind that after 25 years, the real person behind the dream character doesn’t exist anymore, not in the way you knew her 25 years ago. People and circumstances change over time. What remains is the unresolved or unconscious part of you that surfaced during the actual relationship and continues to haunt you, so to speak.

Her dream character is like a shadow or ghost that wants you to recognize “something” catalyzed by your past involvement with the “once” real woman—good or bad—or that symbolizes a wound or need that goes far deeper and older than the relationship itself, but resonates with your memory of it.

I recommend exploring this symbolic ghost through whatever means works for you—art, music, introspection, dream journaling, etc.—to understand what the dream may be depicting or asking of you.

Dystopia #3: Street justice

A well known horror film actress—The Queen of the Scream—whose real name I should not mention here, is dead at 75. She died last week. And now the terror of lawlessness has arrived in my nightmares, played by her, screaming nightly since her demise, merging with my own screams.

My streetwalker pal shakes me at the scream’s climax and says, “Isaac, WAKE UP, it’s almost time for the movie,” and then soothes me without solicitation; a morning affair in exchange for chips and a 6 year old expired med. She tells me, “You can’t afford my fee, not now, Isaac. Chips and the sugar pill are good enough, and I’ll share.”

Continue reading “Dystopia #3: Street justice” →

Defeating insanity

“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.”
~ G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

We avoid insanity through imagination. Reality, with its banal, loveless logic, is too harsh and dry to accept as our one and only experience of the world. To remain sane, we create stories, poetry and art that are full of passion, love, mystery, conflict, surrealism, and even pain.

Dissolution

“You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.”
~ Paul Auster

By middle age, a myriad of wounds had accumulated, one on top of another; the sheer force of their emotional weight clarifying my predicament, that no matter what I do or where I go, the “road of dissolution” is beneath my proverbial feet, poking holes in my existence; an inexorable progression of decline, moving me forward like a conveyor belt, from cradle to grave.

There was and is no turning back, no stop button on this road, no return to the garden of blissful ignorance—AKA childhood—despite my resistance and great protest. The long, painful takedown being an incurable, terminal condition of existence, shared by all of humanity.

Oh yes, the demons of Thanatos are lurking from beginning to end, lining our roads with their pitchforks, poking holes at will; tasked with disassembling and removing the many pieces of human lifetimes.

If I’d avoided my road for a time, then it was only through the wishful illusion of invincibility and immortality, set against the background of my all too human fate: the slow dissolution of body, mind, and spirit.

Intimate connection

Humans are wired to seek intimacy with something or someone: physically, chemically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, and/or instinctively. Call it romance, bonding, relationship, sex, spiritual communion, religion, attachment, obsession, lust, addiction, or whatever you prefer; all of us are seeking it on some level or in some form, but often frustrated, depressed or traumatized by its elusive nature.