Sunday, May 23, 2010

There's no Sun in the Subconscious, so whence the Shadow?

I'll break an unwritten law I had for myself - not to admit when I'm describing a dream sequence, but to allow the surreality to take care of that statement. I originally wanted not to be all "this is reality, this is not" on your asses.

Like a recent Doctor Who episode, I've been having bad dreams recently. Mine are less focused sati-driven themes, though - more on the bit where our own minds are able to pick up on exactly what would scare us the most, and toy with the places that scare us, and not in the good way.

The Shadow Icarus of one dream (to use the Jungian archetype) had a blog, like mine, also with crazy nicknames, like mine, and included links to people's blogs, which counteracts the whole question of pretending to write the stories with anonymity.

So when he talked about a character named "Athenian" (because this dude was so pretentiously philosophical, as I gathered), and linked to this blog as he's systematically writing every failing I've ever had: "Athenian is one of those guys who..." etc., etc, I felt the upset.

Dream!Icarus wrote an email: "I'm not trying to deny your freedom of speech, but could you at least take down the links that directly identify me in your comments?"

Le sigh. Joseph Campbell wrote about how we see The Shadow in myths as these fantastic villains - like Percival's half-brother, whom he fights for the right to enter the Grail Castle. My Shadow is nowhere near as cool.

Then I was punished for quoting Dmitriev earlier. I was walking downtown through one of those thunderstorms, but this one wasn't stopping. This one kept raging and the wind was all up in my grill and there were puddles bound by jersey barriers that retained water rising up to your thigh.

My subconscious is systematically destroying me, the man and the environment, the pelagic depths swirling in the wake of the fall. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned...

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