trunks up

Fortunately, I obtained more sources to support my thesis. I’ve added some stitching and need to do more of that. Then, there is the resurrection of Ligeia and the conclusion. Busy, busy.

I remember feeling a sense of panic the first evening we met, when you said we had to write down our dreams.  For me to sit down and write memoir style like this is a pleasure.  But I would have had to remember dreams in order to write and remembering my dreams was not something I did often.  I was relieved to have had one dream to write that first week and then one dream the following week, which alleviated that initial fear.  Then, I looked forward to blogging the dreams.

The readings were very interesting with the exception of the Victorian Dream Theories.  I loved Jane Eyre and enjoyed The Unconsoled (what I had time to read of it).  Of the theorists, I’m sticking with Jung and Hartmann as the most engaging.  The presentations although uncomfortable were not unbearable.  The feedback from the group on all the presentations I found to be considerate and informative.  Our little field trip to the world of Dali was also quite interesting.

You are an excellent teacher.  I didn’t come into the course interested in dream theory.  I came to fulfill a requirement.  I left with a more thoughtful mind, appreciative of the collective experience.  I looked forward to class each week and noticed each Wednesday night I had an elevated spirit going home.

Our class was wonderful, thoughtful, and intelligent (what a group of minds).  I will miss sitting around the circle with you all.

I plan to continue writing my dreams.

Professor Tucker had told the class she was going to be absent the next time we were suppose to meet.  I remembered this when I walked into the classroom and she wasn’t there.  Alice Walker was sitting at the teacher’s desk but she looked like Whoopi Goldberg.  To the other students coming in the teacher was simply ‘anyperson’ sitting in the teacher’s chair.  I was the only one who knew this person’s identity and of everyone else who entered the room, she only knew me.

The classroom was set up different in a backward kind of way, with the teacher’s desk in the rear of the room between two doors, facing the blackboard which was at the far end, in the front of the room.  Most of the student’s desks were facing the blackboard although some were turned around to face the teacher.  There was a hand full of other students who came in the classroom.  Less than a dozen students who came in and sat down.  Nothing was being taught.  Someone said, “Oh that right, we don’t have to be here.” as if to himself and left.  One by one the others left too.  As, Ms. Walker, all knowing pulled me aside and said “____, I wanted to talk to you.  Are you okay?”

And I told her I was fine.  I’m not sure either of us believed it.  I felt awkward.  I wanted to talk to her about oppression and feminist issues but it had felt too much like a therapy session, too personal.  I felt vulnerable.  I went back to the desk where I left my backpack and looking through the bag I wondered if she wouldn’t mind using the time to explain some British Literature to me.  But it didn’t seem important enough to me to trouble her with it.  So, I decided against asking her.

Just then, three other students came in the room and sat down.  Ms. Walker was once again sitting at the teacher’s desk.  I told her they weren’t in the Professor Tucker’s class.  “I was wondering,” she said, as she must have surely noticed they were children, not college students.  I had recognized these three special education students from when I worked at the middle school.  It didn’t seem unusual to me that they were sitting in the wrong classroom.  Then, a resource room teacher stuck his head in the room and called for the boys.

Stephen La Berge’s “The World of Lucid Dreaming” seems like it would be an interesting book.  La Berge work steps away from the scholarly sources we have been reading to address the individual seeking to enhance their life experience through dreaming.

While reading, I realized I sometimes have dreams like that, I am aware in my dream that I am dreaming and I acknowledge my purpose in the dream (usually to escape from some dangerous circumstance, abduction, fire, or unsettling encounter producing a sense of fear.)  The idea of condensation being a possibility never occurred to me.  I never thought I want to go to say, Disney World and ride the rollercoaster with Mickey.  I’m always just trying to get myself out of the fearful mess I find myself in.  It usually doesn’t work either, I try and try, then, sometimes I wake up needing to escape the circumstantial maze I found myself in.  I’d like to have more control of my dreams.

It would be nice to try on different careers.  I have spoken to people in my dreams, that are no longer in my life, to settle unresolved conflicts, as a healing process, a sense of closure.  But, I’m not sure if that was lucid dreaming or simply an unresolved conflict that arrived in my sleep that I had no choice but to deal with.  Regardless, having the opportunity to put things in perspective and a speak my piece was enough for me.

The Dali exhibit on Campus was quite interesting as is the Dali blog on the course website.  The Worlds Fair exhibit in Queens, 1939 must have been a real shock to our society with it’s sexual content; spread legs, and bare breasts, after all this isn’t France or New Orleans.  It’s hard to believe such a provocative display was allowed and not censored.  It makes me believe it must have been somewhat of a surprise.  I am not familiar with surrealism, so my reaction is somewhat shock.  I have enjoyed reading the enthusiastic responses made on other classmates blogs, Tsixetnodsirhc and motiondetector each had an awful lot to say.

I was running on the walkway, along side a brick building, an expansive manicured lawn to the left with many tall trees scattered about. The wind was blowing fiercely as if a storm was coming. Once I was in open view, from the trees, in the sky I saw a tornado coming our way. I was approaching two entrances to the school which were only five or six feet apart, I was planning to enter the farther door, but did not get inside the closer one before I laid down on the ground on top of another person who I needed to keep safe, as the tornado entered the building through the second doorway. Next, I remember being in the school office, from the closer doorway, calmly saying, as the storm had ended “It was a good thing I didn’t go in through the other door.”

I was visiting Jill a (befriended, heavily medicated schizophrenic, 56 years of age) resident where I used to work. She becomes quite bizarre at times although she seems in the dream at one of her more stable states. I was in her room and she offered me some wine seeing as I wasn’t working. I didn’t drink any. Then, my 17-year-old son, Matthew, who is somewhat awkward and immature, is kissing Jill. It concerns me that he’s intimate with this woman. Later, he tells me it didn’t work out. (Last week, I noticed his status on facebook, “relationship: its complicated”, the next day his status had returned to “single”).

The Renaissance Dream as seen in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is full of a lot of playful grasping at dream content, speculating at times that their reality seems like a dream or should be remembered as such.  The only actual dream in the play is when Hermia has the dream of the serpent, Lysander.   Oh, did I say that, it must have been a Freudian slip.  This reminds me of a patient of Freud’s in “Dream Work”, who was engaged to a very nice lady whom he trusted yet had reoccurring bad dreams about until finally he broke the engagement.  Yes, it is Lysander who leaves Hermia for Helena but perhaps unconsciously, she sees him eating her heart away as we sometimes interchange subjects in dreams, or there he “sat smiling at his, (the serpents) cruel prey”, watching the serpent as he “ate my (her) heart away.”  I must have had a dream just like this or it felt like… it should have been a dream.   Now, getting back to the play, I believe Shakespeare uses this particular element of dream to foreshadow Lysander leaving Hermia, with the metaphor of the serpent.

I was alone, at night, driving through the mountain.  I didn’t know what was wrong; why I couldn’t see?  Were my eyes closed, I opened them and still it was pitch black.  The car was moving along on its own, I didn’t have control of the speed.  I was so afraid that I was going to crash as the on coming car sped towards me with his bright lights shining, although, I could then see till he passed.  Then, once again in the blackness, I need to zig-zag the same way he did, remember, remember, turning, turning.  Why can’t I see?  Why is it so dark?  Where are the headlights?  Am I drunk?  Why am I in this car?  Shouldn’t I be sleeping?  Slow down! Slow down!  But I can’t or I won’t.  It’s so dark.  Where’s the road?  I know this mountain.  I can do this.  Why are there no headlights?  I fumble for switches.  I find none.  Is this where it curves this way or that?  I can’t see.  I made it through that curve guessing where the road was.  I can’t see the road.  I’m scared.  Trying to remember the curves and what’s ahead.  The cliff is coming.  The cliff is coming, but I don’t know where.  I’m scared.  Why is it so dark?  Why aren’t the headlights on?  Why won’t I stop?  Where’s the cliff?  I’m terrified.  I can’t breathe.  I’m going to die.

Sometimes when life is difficult we search and search for answers, but none come.  Its not till we settle our minds in sleep that the answers find us.  When Jane Eyre’s time at Lowood had been exhausted, this being her first venture from her adopted nest, she was lost as to what to do.

“I could not tell: nothing answered me; I then ordered my brain to find a response, and quickly.”  Jane tried and tried.  Finally, having given up she went to bed.  This is when “A kind fairy, in my absence, had surely dropped the required suggestion on my pillow; for as I lay down it came quietly and naturally to my mind; – ‘Those who want situations advertise; you must advertise in the —-shire Herald.’”(P.73).

James Sully in “The Dream as a revelation” states: “The complicated web of thought and feeling of waking hours becomes simplified” when we are asleep. (P.116).