Johann Heinrich Füssli (1781) Der Nachtmahr (meisterdrucke.at)
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Dream |
| I just woke up from a long and very detailed dream. Most of the details that I remember seem to be of the rules and regulations of a place at which I had been left. In that place, there was a head mistress, a maternal figure, who was in charge of everybody. The people brought there had no idea to where they were being brought: in fact, they always thought or were told that they were being brought to a good place, such as drug rehab, criminal rehab, a boarding school; and they always found out the real character of the place when it was too late to leave. There was one way to leave, they just didn't tell you what it was like until you actually had to go through it. Most people preferred (sp: prefered?) to stay there in the end than to endure the difficult process of being released. | |
| I had wanted to be released. I already knew most of the process. I knew that the head mistress was bad. I knew that the place was satanic. I knew that you got to take only your most precious things out with you -- essentially what you could take out in one armload. I knew that they tormented you -- even your loved ones -- if you had any in the same place -- in a way that made a life of slow torture better than going through the release process. And I knew you were allowed to choose one thing out of your remaining possessions to give to a schoolmate. | |
| Every once in a while, perhaps every day, there was a gathering in a living-room type of situation, where things would happen. To each person it was a continuation of his own process (such as criminal rehab). It was the place where you found out what this place was actually about. For example, if you were supposed to be released, you would go through the torment there. You would not find out anything about the tormenting until you were experiencing it. | |
| The process of being released involved choosing which of your things you were going to take. The torment began in the (daily?) gathering. You would at some point get to choose one person to whom to give one object that you had had to leave behind. | |
| I had asked to leave, knowing that this was going to be difficult. I had some foreknowledge. But to each person it was simply the most tormenting thing _to_them_ -- it was not anything that could be described to them beforehand. I had been in the place where you were supposed to choose what you were taking with you. My only belongings (since I had not been there that long) were a modest-sized pile of papers. I realised that the way others increased their store was when they received something from someone who left. I chose a few things, such as old school reports. I found that the process was not even difficult (yet?). I gave my sister (not my real life sister, but a made up dream sister) one or two things. The head mistress was not even there -- there was no danger(?). As I was letting go of the rest, I saw the folder that actually would have been the most important to me had I remembered it was there: a small portfolio of family pictures and greeting cards. Even that did not really pain me: I would simply leave it to my sister. Then it started to dawn on me that this was perhaps a booby trap: they would torment your loved one as a way to get you to stay there with them. As soon as they knew the most important colleague to you, this person would be singled out for torment as a condition for you to leave. Most people could not stand this. | |
| None of my colleagues seemed to know that we were in a bad place; and there was no way I could tell them, since it would be forbidden; or I didn't have any proof; or they wouldn't believe me; or something. | |
| We were getting ready for the (daily?) gathering. The young man on parole had taken his seat. It was the day I was to go through the process of release; and I felt strong enough to see anything -- but at the same time could not really fathom what kind of torment I or my loved one was to go through. | |
| I woke up. Carefully recited Our Father in English (I mean... silently, not with spoken words). And got up without feeling too threatened. | |
| I think this dream is reminiscent of my talk with a friend in the park yesterday afternoon... an evil dance teacher ruining small girls' outlook in life; living in this society and dying from its poisons... I wish I could frame this dream and put it on my wall somewhere. | |
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H 7/14 |