In this dream, I’m treading along a cliff about 60 feet above an alpine river. I am being hunted by a triad of men whose faces have been replaced by computer monitors and sport 3 piece suits.. They are lighting the Douglas fir forest behind them on fire, erasing every resource, every piece of evidence they come across in their attempt to convert me. In every dream, I jump into the frigid waters back first. I hit the water and immediately feel the glacial runoff form a membrane of ice around each individual neuron. Simultaneously, I am greeted by the shriveled, calloused hands of a nymph, who raises me by the head and takes me to the river bank. In each dream, she brings two pieces of fruit, the first is a ripe, large fuji apple and the second a half-rotted plum.
The days in which i pick the plum I wake up with a crisp conscience and a reinvigorated sense of humility. The days in which I choose the apple, I wake up in the inferno, a forest of petrified versions of myself that the unconscious has welcomed and the conscious life has put in the attic under lock and key. The unconscious has reminded me of the artist, the architect, the writer, the humanitarian, and the untroubled self.
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They’re back. The men in three piece suits with the computer screens as heads must have followed me down river. This whole area is still gravely unfamiliar and it is unclear who my anima has been working for this entire time.
For when I came up to air after outrunning the computer men, she cradled my concussed, confused head in her arms and slowly veered away from her nurturing, cherubic physique by muttering the words.
Chemicals and materials will rule you as long as you exist here, as long as you continue to have these dreams. The only way to outrun the men is to become their friend.
Notes:
The anima in positive represents — nurturing, loving, comforting, a pacifier. This represents the image of mother and spouse in times of hardship, psychological trauma, distress, and insufficiency in my work and the masculinity in my work.
The anima in negative — The very force that has driven me to a state of abated psychological development as an adult. The force that has driven me to prioritize aesthetics, conveniences, and material belonging over the pursuit of new knowledge and man’s ability to self-actualize and build.
Three men — These men represent the versions of myself that were predestined by my family and the idea of myself created in my early twenties. These are all half baked versions of myself, molded into a particular profession out of convenience, ability to obtain wealth, and stability in the modern sense (9–5, 100k, 401k, mortgage). They have no depth or philosophical foundation, but operate on a transactional, surface-level plane that fails to flex moral, physical, or emotional muscles. in fact, these images suppress those things