Exposing Consciousness ~ Expanding Subconsciousness ~ Entering the Unconscious
Primarily a writing exercise, this dream journal-inspired blog is a quiet introspective sojourn into the process that we traverse in going from private dream to public art. I see our dreaming as an internalized mythmaking. As I philosophize and expressively exhibit dreams, both private and public, I encourage and delight in creative language as a way to practice experiential metaphors through a “public dreaming." Writing Theory: Creative Dream Fiction
James Hillman, an archetypal depth psychologist, whose post-Jungian conception of the human experience is essentially imaginative, and whose amoral fluctuation between endurance and immaturity lies nascent in the temporal grains of salt which gather and line the throat with ever increasing grab as aging commences upon the personality. Written at an old age, the author speaks clearly against any kind of aging therapy, and humanizes the current malaise which treats aging as a virus.
The author unwraps biological naturalism with the psychological bloom of a mind fermented with insightful, though not inundated, research on the literary and aesthetic character of human aging as a welcoming asset to life, in flagrant contrast to the ceremonial traditionalism of preparing for death, a non-issue in the continuous envelopment of life throughout the growing and falling of seasonal lasting. Dreams are referred to for their imagistic plentitude in bringing the holistic human experience towards fruition in the entire round of consciousness.
In short, Hillman's psychology is life-affirming unto the limits of modern knowledge-bearing with regard to the biological strength of humankind to age well and vigorously, as an essential presence in social reflection, as a memory of characterful belonging in the psyche of an unconscious gathering of the old triumphant spirit of age in all its mythic fortitude and human vulnerability.
Strutting down main street, Northampton, the little city atmosphere in a smaller town, brevity of metrosexual burning. Eyehole of gouged recollection, that there is a grayer hiss over the obscure horizon edge. A paranoiac whereabouts, a drinkability churning in the ingrate stomach as cold rice turns to frothy fluid within mellowed bowels. The attuned ear swings in frantic respite as the free march to movie theatre skies nickels and dimes my racy birth rite beginnings in the stingy hollow of American noonday education.
Northampton (Massachusetts) by William Henry Bartlett
Deeper along the edge of the township, towards rougher pasture, the greener grass gives to a brown floor of the barn stead. Outside, a reenactment of the medieval lance posture, only instead of a game between knights, the Anglo matador speaks in a murderous war with the human horse. I try my hand. With two lances upraised, I pierce the flesh of a gorgeous brown horse, mirroring the hue of the dirt circle fenced by a weak wooden ring and an audience steeped in American farmhouse poverty. As other horses, unsaddled and with fierce eyes, carouse into the ring, I jet from the gathering into a blacker city.
The Present by Thomas Cole
The jurist is deliberate, patient and silent. Instead of an easy interpretation by the passive jury of bored, directionless public witnessing, a guitarist lights the court with unfailing melodies, an original spirit of human will, to impose the individual struggle with death outside of foreign deliberation in the mind of an other. Because truly, in listening, the other melds seamlessly with the brain of a decidedly active witness, pardoning all in the sonic flight of metaphysical charm.
_________
Gazing at my Love's face, I see through the apparent reality to a frameless art. A sacred geometry in the flesh. A timeless elision, going beyond spent energy.
To consume a day; imagining with laughter in the midst of family.
“That is the thing that inspired Pasolini the most in
Sophocles, the contrast between total innocence and the quest for knowledge.
Pasolini
“It isn’t so much the cruelty that produces crimes but the
fact that crimes are committed because people don’t understand history, life or
reality…if Oedipus had not been so fatally innocent and unconscious, if he had
been an intellectual and had first sought out the truth, he might have been
able to alter reality. The only hope is a cultural one, to be an intellectual.”
Narrator
“Pasolini wanted the central part, which is the main part of
the film, to resemble a dream. This explains the settings and the choice of
costumes, and in a sense, the general rhythm of the film.”
Immediately, I fall into a field, transformed into a beast
with qualities of a saber-toothed tiger, a large prehistoric dog and massive
reptile. I fly, as with vestigial wings, across the golden, low-lying field on
foot, beside me are other beasts of similar quality. Above us, a helicopter
hovers menacingly. We race towards a cliff side and plummet off its edge.
In mid-air, we become human, though prehistoric humans. We
wear rough animal hides. The others become topless women with faces resembling
famous actresses and a friendly girl who used to live on the same property as
me in the Western Massachusetts countryside.
She had spiky dreadlocks and was an inveterate marijuana user, yet a tough
spirit at heart. I watch as she glides effortlessly down the daring tree
trunks, only just evading a branch with spikes sharp enough to impale straight
through the bone. We finally reach the bottom, and this reality transforms to
me running with my golden retriever through the paved neighborhoods in the suburban
coastal woodlands of modern day Massachusetts.
I enter the woods. My dog has since left my side. I find my
way onto the property of another identical suburban home as the rest. I find a
choice between a kayak and a canoe to flee down a nearby stream. At first I
choose the canoe, and then return for the kayak for greater stability and
smaller, lighter body. I begin to flow down the stream, and suddenly it turns
into a great river. I am on this river, which I call ShaganappiRiver.
I feel safe, as this is a great and mighty river, and it will lead me along its
course for days through the gorgeous riverine banks of forest, cliff-side and
freshwater island scenery. This river slightly resembles the St. Lawrence,
where I once kayaked solo for hours under a deafening thunder of sky and empty
spiritual witnessing.
As soon as I sense that I am beyond the sights and feelers
of my past, I enter a mucky, narrow zone that I am unable to penetrate through.
I feel someone has followed me here, and I am at risk of being sent back to my
former life in paved neighborhoods. Yet, I manage to sneak past this murky
undergrowth violating the surface of the river with vegetable muck and mire and
continue on unnoticed.
I continue on the river as before, for days and nights,
sleeping under the floating watery stars, as my subjective eye pierces the veil
of Earth’s atmosphere with a unity of being in tune with the flow of the great
being below my nightly watercraft and bed. Ultimately, I find a small stand,
perched against the unsteady shore. Inside is an on old friend from Calgary, who has since fled this city eagerly for the
brilliance of Brazil.
She is friendly an offers me a cold drink and an ice slush, which she is
selling to passersby. I look ahead and see the river mysteriously turned into
highway, a crooked bend of road packed with cars in rush hour. I tell her that
I think I will turn back and go upstream against the flow of the great river,
back where I came rather than face this void impasse of humanity ahead. She
agrees, however she brings up that it would be easier for my friend, an
ultra-marathon runner than I, however she wishes me good luck and offers me her
plutonic friendship, which, for me, is the greatest gift from her.
I begin upstream, although it may seem difficulty, I see no
challenge, and simply row along swiftly until the beginning road. My dream
cycle fades, and next I am rising up in an elevator. I meet a local Greek
restaurant owner who I’ve been trying to contact and he offers me the funding
to organize an event for Greek Heritage and Culture, highlighting the music of
Roza Eskenazi. I am delighted. There is a man there who’s working for my
betterment, on my behalf, he resembles Poet Tree and I am glad to know his
physical dream presence as he is kind and encouraging in life.
I descend in the elevator and next find myself waiting for
my wife outside a cinema. The movie house lobby is packed with kids who appear
to be nearing the end of their high school, they are a beat group. One walks up
to me, noticing me from a music venue, and begins talking to me about how he
rides waterfalls. He literally uses a board or foot-born craft of some kind and
traverses the verticality of some of the world’s most formidable waterfalls. It
is a death-defying sport, yet he is keen to show me.
I walk along a damp dirt pathway. This is Athabaska
territory. We are at the largest waterfall in the region. I feel the presence
of snakes and other venomous creatures about. They say there is a snake who
dwells here that is especially aggressive. As we near the edge of the waterfall
cliff where the man dips down into the abyss beyond, I see one of these snakes
challenging one guy in our party. The guy is playful, trying to disarm the
snake with his experience, however he is bitten, which in my mind is fatal,
however no one is panicking. Afraid, I dart back, tracing my steps along the
path, meeting many snakes along the way, I manage to avoid their wicked
advances. Coming to an outcrop, I look out and see this new extreme sportsman
riding the waterfall with prowess. It is a sight to behold.
ghost of the stalking whispers of human division blind my inside vision as I stir with personal betrayal over the family history in spirit, the moment's occurrence on this very land, quiet peacemaking, mobility tightly screws the factions of an embittered mind each hour, dying to the painful alcoholic grimace of glum infamy
our brewed, wide, drunken grave stammers, laughing to the holy fix and we are reduced to a liar, crying on man towards a mule
Port-en-Bessin, Entrance to the Harbor by Georges Seurat
Why are waking notions of the word dream a synonym for something to attain…where as in the notion of a subconscious dreaming, the word dream connotes a separate reality. Where is the relationship between these two associations? Is the difference between waking and subconscious perspective or in the idea of dream itself?
I am sitting at my grandmother’s couch in coastal Massachusetts. She shows me a pop can with Chinese characters on it, and mentions something about Hawaii. Next, my mother offers my wife and I a trip to the Caribbean. Through a song of my uncle about Montego Bay, I imagine I am in Montego Bay. The hotel resort is as one would typically imagine an upscale hotel resort in the Caribbean to appear. In my hotel room, however, my toes and fingers and parts of my chest and head are being wired to a torture device that my stepfather is operating. I attempt an escape from the hotel resort, but it turns into a kind of Cretan Labyrinth, where the Taurus is my own family.
Benito Juarez, Teotihuacan and the mystery of a figure in red shawl....
- Foreground to the Dream (actually lived-in-waking scene):
It is my second day in Mexico. I had only seen this country once in Tijuana almost a decade before just for the afternoon. It is now December, 2008. I am staying weeks in Mexico City. I find myself within the confines of a Zapatista demonstration. We de-board a small local bus, I let a young mother with her child climb out before me. She is dressed in perfect fashion to the trend of social and cultural resistance that has taken places since before the states of Mexico were founded. The atmosphere is young, vibrant and inclusive as I file past a scattered group of policemen, barred from entering the demonstration grounds as per an agreement with the Zapatista movement. The area attracts a united front of Mexican youth and longstanding social activists with the international community, mostly young travelers like myself in happenstance with a resonant ground of truth-seeking and decolonization. After perusing various photo exhibits, circus acts, a music stage and a gargantuan round of booths and cultural presentations from social activist groups, indigenous peoples and the Zapatista themselves, I find my way to a high-perched bleacher to gather perspective. The landscape is cluttered with the reality of living conditions in the Federal District; over 35 million inhabitants, almost as much as the entire country I had arrived from: Canada. The houses barely top two stories as they create a vast landscape buttressed on hillsides in the myriad colors so peculiar to and likeable about the Mexican cityscape. Two Mexican guys decide on sitting only a few feet away from my high vantage point. Laughing, they start lighting a pipe. Marijuana smoke lifts into my nervous system like a cool breeze. I smile at them. Offering me the pipe, I smoke and there is an immediate realization at how strikingly different we are. The only similarity between us three is slight laughter and comraderie of place in this fleeting instant. A mixed, flowing cacophony of sound travels into our minds, bespeaking the slogan of the demonstration: Digna Rabia/Dignified Rage. I hear the Mexican language. Completely unknown to me at that pont, I am enthralled by its fascinating brevity and speed of intonation. At this point I am very high. I look out towards the mountains. In the foreground is an immense statue. How could I have not seen this before? It is a human head. I point to it and look at one of my new friends. "Benito Juarez!" He says indiscernibly, with a thick accent only spoken to someone ignorant of Anglophone ears. I am bewildered by the voice from a peer of my equal age. He knows I don't understand, "Benito Juarez!" he says again. This time I understand. An early President of Mexico. His face becomes as strange as the thickness of his accent. I am taken by his features, which seem to resemble Aztecan myth in their distinct expression. They step down, leaving me to contemplate my surroundings high up above even the neckless head of one of the country's sculpted, public icons, high above the Zapatista demonstration, high above my own mind.
In Dream: I see from this vantage point. The head of Benito Juarez is changed to my imagination for the ruins of Teotihuacan. When I visited Mexico for the first time (and all subsequent times) I never took the chance to see the ruins of Teotihuacan. The grandiose pyramids depicted in the film, "Frida" and Sergei Eisenstein's "Que Viva Mexico!" still reside in my imagination. I can see only about half of one rising to its summit. The steps are gorgeously erected with frequent cracks. A massive field stands to its side. I'm sure there must be pyramids greater in size. In the field, walking in an easterly direction towards what seems to be greater pyramids, what I sense to be a female figure, wrapped in a scarlet shawl slowly walks into an unforgiving wind out of sight.
My backyard gives way to a mythical Mexican beach
In my family house backyard in Massachusetts, I sit with my friends. There is great emotion rising unto the visible empyrean gazing back at us as a smidgeon of existence in the universe. I am with old childhood friends, we trek through my backyard, and their presence is exchanged with that of my cousins. We walk until a downslope hill flushed with a sludge and grime unknown to us. I feel it half-resemble a part of the Tar Sands in Alberta somehow. The endless sludge gathers and quickens below our feet. One of my cousins slips clumsily and knocks into an evil-looking man who seems to hold an authoritarian position with the environmentally hazardous work about us. He eyes me vociferously, changing to a stern, violent expression of cruel intention. He speaks that he will ruin me if we cause any hindrance to his work. He says that he will make my position in Canada even more tenuous and that I will risk my marriage and rights to immigration if I, or any one I know slip up again and cause more trouble. I simply slide past down an aching earth, bleeding with tar.
Next I find myself walking along an unpaved beach sidewalk in a seaside neighborhood. Broken shells lay scattered on the road. As a group of local residents approach on their way inside a house, a mythical deer shoots past me. The animal bears an impressive mane, looking like a cross between an alpaca, a mountain goat, a deer and gazelle. The animal joins its herd, trekking about nimbly. As I follow the unusual herd of unidentifiable animals beyond the horizon, the land opens up into a huge Mexican beach resort. There are electronic billboards littering the oceanfront, as international commerce is exuberantly exhibited with dominance. I duck past the hill's outcropping before the steep cliff turns into beach and follow the animals in a small grove. I feel submerged in a temporary refuge.
Peasants Playing Cards in a Tavern by Adriaen Brouwer
A dream of two days ago will not escape me. It is ever pertinent, because it lingers still in my memory, and its narrative, symbology and emotional meanings are carried through into my dreams today:
Dream 1
I am running, as a fugitive would run, I run with everything that I am. I seem to be escaping the watch of some unknown authoritative holding. The police, FBI, it could be any of these, or it could be something more abstract. I am unsure, yet I am running.
Next, I find myself busking with a guitar beside a Fire Station in the town of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. This is an odd place to find one's self busking, however I am in the eye of governmental authority. My change bowl clinks with a Canadian loonie and a few pennies. I am enjoying playing the guitar, then I feel as if I am being chased again, the firefighters seem to all glare and approach as if from above, and my whole environment around me seems to do the same.
Dream 2
I at New York University. My step-father is guiding me to sign up for a set of classes with a Master's program as he had always wished for me. I comply with passive-aggressive remarks and actions, thinking in my head one thing while doing another. I sign up for some classes in his presence. Next, he buys me a cheap guitar out on the street. I see him speed off with an unforgivably strange partner, however he is happy, and so I am content.
I visit a friend, we are in a small space, inside what seems to be a bedroom of a trailer. I show the people there the guitar and it seems to be entirely unplayable. It is a cheap piece of trash. We sit awkwardly around the television, wasting time.
I then go down an alleyway which appears similar to the alleyways in and around Cairo, Egypt's downtown midan or squares. In the alleway, I see people busking. They are bringing such authentic vibrations of strength, persistence and genuine enjoyment to an otherwise dull and dreary atmosphere of biological decay and mental stagnance. The street performers are still not well-recognized nor respected well by passerby onlookers. I cheerfully greet these buskers and enjoy their drumming.
Next, I am in what seems to be the inside of a warehouse, it is a filled with the stereotypical busker of the public mind. A recurring dream-character, tall, stout, blonde-haired, bearded with bad complexion. Within the warehouse there is homelessness, deprivation, madness, poverty. I walk through unaffected yet witnessing, somehow removed by unique experience. I have returned to a world filled with inequalities and cheap resolve for a way of life which transforms peoples minds into that of a fugitive.
____________
One day, while reflecting on the act of street performing/busking, I was taken with the notion that busking is in many respects like gambling. And from a crude perspective, the art of pure improvisation is in a way a form of gambling, wherein you anticipate, based on one's knowledge of the variables at hand, the outcome of a certain action. The fact that my experience as a street performer/busker has been through performing completely improvised music further emphasizes my notion that improvised street performing is a kind of gambling, however with the due sophistication of musicianship and the wealth of experiential confidence in playing one's instrument. For further understanding seek: myspace.com/vian and youtube.com/nivsha
The Miracle of the Relic of the Holy Cross, detail by Vittore Carpaccio
With my older brother, we take off within what seems as a deep opened chasm within a cave, into a body of water, as if endless. The water extends dream-like with opaque energy into a vast fear. We are on a small raft, a canoe of sorts, with all of our paternal cousins. The raft edges out onto the water and its depth begins to fall under us as a tremendous anxiety takes hold, and suddenly it's as if we are all alone, although together. One of our cousins holds a light out at the front edge of the vessel. Then, I begin to fall into the treacherous dark, depth of cavernous liquid. My brother reaches out to me as I fall overboard, though his arm reaches out too short. His palm opens up with fingers outstretched with a genuine attempt full with the strength of his being unto the ends of his fingertips. Still, in the water, full of fear, I feel a great abandonment. (I remember the time when in a small bay in Massachusetts, I was left to swim for over a half hour while he and friends did watersports, completely forsaken to the water and its full, unforgiving depth of life, I swam, as it were endlessly facing my most shallow of fears.) I begin to swim, however immediately I see a shark's fin. I call out to my brother, yet he is nowhere to be found, the vessel has left without me. The shark fin passes by me and I feel a brief moment of relief, however it then turns around and heads straight for me. I experience the full great depth of fear as the whole vibration of the body of water shakes with my fear unto the ends of the finality in our human mysterium. I grasp hold of a rocky edge. (Suddenly I feel the safety of swimming in one of the sonotes in Yucatan, Mexico.) The rock seems as resin, a sharp and hard-edge crystalline foment similar to the floors of the Chauvet caves in France. I climb atop the cavernous rock, it is as tall as the side of a mountain, yet I edge into its porous underlying texture and finally ascend to the top. I reach a pile-on similar to the Inukshuk in Inuit country, however it is as constructed with the street trash of urban Cairo, Egypt. I observe this pile-on as a marker that I have reached the summit of the cave's own tallest mountain and I seem to be again in the solitude of the fantastical cliffs and mountains of Petra, Jordan, with its piles and collections of small trinkets still bundled up and set on display in the after-hours of tourist visitation. This marker reminds me that I am somewhere, although foreign, that has been visited by human hands prior to my arrival and suddenly I am in the safety of human existence. I continue to forge on, in the absolute opacity of an endless night.
Next, I am driving with my older brother and our father through to a mythic resemblance of Falmouth, Massachusetts, the end of the bay into the open Atlantic ocean. We are driving him to be sent off by ship to the other shore; Europe. He is holding a concert ticket, as if he is going there for music. We are so glad to be seeing him off, and inside I am a little jealous! The sun is bright and it is a green day in what seems like the heart of Spring. In the backseat of the car, I imagine a bird's eye view of us driving through the open roads to carry my brother off to a glorious and resounding destiny filled with music and the brightness of a future fulfilled with mutual Love.
Taking off, looking into front view of plane, seeing a man not so experienced in flying take off into a snowstorm, feel of the engine burning as we land in two different cities, and I appear in my driveway of coastal suburbia, Massachusetts, USA and find in a large cab car, friends from high school who I greet, and we drive off into the night
A Thicket of Deer at the Stream of Plaisir-Fontaine
I have a body running through pure jungle, a light body, toned and fair, the jungle is thick, bright and full of movement, shadows begin to appear, the jungle thickness becomes bent over to obscure holes and open spaces leading not to light but to darkness, the structure of the environment becomes more and more concave, threateningly stern with an almost mechanistic tinge, I can not see myself nor any movement and the first shaft of metal appears replacing the sunlit openings with industry, next I am driving a convertible down route 6 in Massachusetts, USA, I am instead a thin blonde lady, I get to the Quaker church across from the motel and enter, the silvery gray light fills the antique wooden house of worship, there is a sculpture of the wounded Jesus lying on a table, I murder him, stabbing into his wound, and get away, the police are out looking for who murdered the man, especially the reverend, however no one can find me, except my own self
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