Wind of Self-Hate
Dreamed 1976/4/4 by Wayan
I'm in Santa Cruz, biking east across the University of California campus. Halfway, by the bookstore, the road suddenly dead-ends; it's been turned into a parking lot with tire-slashers and ropes and guards. I walk in, past several people at the entrance; head to a far corner and squeeze through a narrow gate, tangling some ropes as I do; straighten them guiltily. Beyond, I can bike again; I coast fast down a hill toward a pond by Stevenson College.
All the while, I'm wearing only a T-shirt, a brown sock, a blue sock, and a fuzzy hat. I don't feel indecently exposed. The gate watchers did notice me, as I barged through them, but I attribute that to my mismatched socks and silly hat, not being half-naked.
So I coast down the hill wondering why I feel a bit odd... and then realize my cap covers my eyes! I'm blind! Think I'm gliding along the lakeshore; raise my cap to peek. Wrong! I'm sliding through... bedsheets.
My friend Dave Self is watching me across the dorm room. I hear the wind, my haunter, faint in my ears. "You hear that?" I ask him.
"Hear what?"
I turn into the wind and shout. "You're my critic and torturer. You mock all my actions and make me feel hollow. But I'll go on doing what I choose--I defy you!"
The wind-voice rises to a roar, a hollow voice like a movie blizzard, and the curtains, papers, sheets all flutter in the stiff wind in the room. And still Dave sits wondering, as I yell at the wind "Stop this! Leave me alone!"
Sudden silence. The room stills, the papers settle. The wind is gone.
I ask Dave what he felt and heard; he says "Only you yelling defiance; no wind."
I feel sorry that Dave couldn't hear or feel it, but don't doubt for a moment the wind was real. Papers blown all over...
DREAM NOTES
And I wake up again. She was a dream too. I muse "She came all the way here just to tell me this; I must honor this judgment and obey it."
Then I wake up AGAIN. That thought, too, was part of the dream.
NOTE FORTY YEARS LATER
For good or ill, I DID soon leave college; I didn't return to finish my degree for thirty years--years of dreamwork, bodywork and therapy that slowly stilled the relentess wind of self-putdowns I'd been taught.
World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites