Dream Two:
I all ways imagined, whilst I was reading Rilke, that I might
design a level in a point-and-click adventure game. This one would be a
Treasure Trove, dimly illumined by an Amber light, and one of the items would
be God (as a Thing). In my dream from which I just awoke, I wound up in an
elongated walk-in closet. The imagery was evocative of my childhood, not unlike
the entire premise of Rilke’s work and his notion that God cannot be ‘lost’ by
a young man in the way that a toy can.
The walls were cramped, narrow, and not unlike a hallway –
meant to LEAD somewhere, but hardly a place one can occupy comfortably.
(Harry’s cupboard evokes similar associations.) This is certainly evidence for
the Capricorn Fourth House; of all the neuroses that my peers have all ways
brought to my attention, the loss of childhood, manifest in an excess of
seriousness in early youth (attracting the question ‘did your parents beat
you?’ to which an affirmative answer was too embarrassing) as well as a
prolonged and delayed Rebellion in my early twenties (accounting for the
question ‘what are you trying to prove?’ an unjust question considering that I
am trying for once to prove NOTHING.) is the one that can bring tears to my
eyes when explained, and such would probably have been the case even if my
initial reading had been skewed and I had less reason to BELIEVE that Capricorn
had been the ruler of my Childhood.
As I made my way out, for I was being USHERED OUT by my
friends and family, I was trying to use my sister’s Canon Camera to photograph
(and capture!) the opposite ends of the corridor, which were adorned with
clutter (an other parallel to Harry Potter) and posters upon the walls. One end
– what I shall call the ‘Southern End’ – from whence I made my entry was illumined
sufficiently to Capture it in all of its adornments. Yet the opposite end was
Dark. Looking down (the hall) upon it I saw a poster enshrouded in the shadow
of a surrounding bunk-bed. Both doors that flanked the ends of the bed were
shut; it was not until one on my left hand side was opened by my peers that I
could capture a picture in the light; before then the camera would refuse to
even TRY, for it could only take pictures under light. It was therefore a
reassuring ‘click’ when the camera finally registered what I should call the
Western Glow, spilling in like the illumination from IKEA lamps as Mother
arrives I.A.L. telling me it’s Time To Go. I had at this point all but given up
on capturing this moment and that end of the spectrum, and it is hard to say
whether I was clambering through the cardboard boxes that littered the floor to
get up CLOSER to my object at the Northern End, or if in fact I was but giving
up and trying to HIDE from my CRITICS because it was too embarrassing to admit
that I had failed in this quest. The Southern End was apparently decorated by a
hand-drawn picture of what might have been my sister’s hand. The North
displayed a Poster not unlike the Avatar poster I got for her and mentioned
last night after my family concluded watching the series I.A.L.
The prior scene was all so an homage to Avatar. In the
ultimate (if not the penultimate) episode Sokka and Toph are hanging from the
side of a Fire Nation War Balloon, and he fends [the Guards] off with his
boomerang until Suki crashes in and saves the day. What is noteworthy is that
Maria alone of my family compares me to Sokka and not Zuko (I was myself
surprised and disarmed by her comparison) and she compares herself to Toph. In
that scene, Sokka holds Toph by one hand as he lies, belly-up, upon a
wrench-shaped plank protruding from the vessel…
In my dream, I meet a girl not unlike Toph in stature, upon a
BALCONY protruding from the APARTMENT BUILDING where my quest is situated. I
know now what quest this is. Yet first let me speak of this balcony. It
overlooks gray weather not unlike the weather we have had in Actuality of late.
Yet what sets that place apart in Dream is the proliferation of
tightly-compacted Greenery made fresh by the rain, at once a nostalgic Sensory
datum as well as a potent visual metaphor for Spring and Rebirth, drawing
surely on an archetype that transcends, in its Archaic origins, the duality of
phenomenon and symbol.
I was handed the Canon by someone, most probably this very
girl. She compelled me to entertain her. Somehow I was now in the possession of
my old harmonica from Actual Life. May be watching Sunny in Philadelphia
yesterday and being reminded that Bob Dylan was a celebrity had produced this
image. I lay down upon the cramped metal balcony, beside her, cautious but not
untrusting that the camera, pressed between my backside and the metal floor and
sheltered by my rainjacket, would not slip and fall into the gutter beneath us.
At this point I am certain that the camera belonged to her.
I am reminded of a thought that crossed my mind: that I had
spared one precaution in protecting the camera as I entertained her with my
soloing on the mouth-harp.
I had not fastened the camera around my neck. Clearly, I was
not SO confident in its security that I would have allowed such a choking
hazard, and should the unthinkable come to pass, I thought, I would sooner
sacrifice my SISTER’S CANON than I would my OWN LIFE.
g Apparently, individuation has now taken precedence over
a family. I understand now the long corridor at the end of the
dream. The North End represents the North Node; it was no arbitrary label, but
rather Kierkegaard’s Acoustic Illusion, an interjection by the Wisdom Body that
appears to the Arbitrary Ego to be but an estimation of its own device.
This is why I have been visiting the old Apartment Complex in
my dreams:
I BROKE OFF from the Tour Group of my peers to revisit my Childhood.
I was still a KID when I lived at the Bernardo Point Apartments.
But moving to a house with only two neighbours in my age
range (neither of whom I ever had so much in common with that I would talk to
them now) as well as entering the Gifted and Talented Education program (ever
to wonder what the Otherside – the Normal Side – was like) left me in a J.D.
Salingeresque situation, robbed of a childhood and condemned, as was my
Literary Corollary Seymour Glass, to Sainthood, at once a Wise Old Man and a
perpetual adolescent, doomed to age backwards as Merlin does.
My side-quest has been one of Finding My Self.
But now I know, from the closing visual of the light pouring
in upon the bunk beds:
The Future is Bright s And the bunk beds must represent
Partnership of a Romantic Sort: a shared bed but not without an element of both
childlikeness and condescension (in my case, the two go hand-in-hand, and are
inextricable from Adulthood).
Dm.A.A.
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