Notebook 8, as you will see, is called Last Night's Dreams. Notebook 9 is called New Dreams. I actually was planning to call Notebook 8 Last Dreams. There were a lot of reasons for this. But probably the biggest reason is that I thought I was going to die. In particular, I thought I was going to kill myself. And obviously I didn't end up killing myself.
So I called notebook 9 New Dreams. This was partly because they were new dreams, after the last dreams. But it was also because I felt like I was beginning a new chapter in my life. For me, this meant that I was actually beginning to have a professional life. I thought my life was beginning to stabilize. I was having hope for my future. I felt, in this way, that I was developing a new personality. Because of this, I thought, I would have new dreams.
These dreams are ruled, more than the later dreams, by my sense of mysticism. Jung's influence on my intellectual life spans all the way through to the end of these journals. But I think his influence is particularly colorful and strong in the dreams of this notebook. There are also stronger and more colorful examples of the influence of other mystical studies I was doing at that time, such as studies into the work of Carlos Castaneda and works about lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, etc.
But I think these dreams also have a freer, more colorful, more open and boisterous sense of sexuality. My transvestism and genderqueer sensibilities are very colorfully stated in some of these dreams. I seem to have less of a sense of guilt around this stuff than I do in notebook 10. I also seem to have less of a sense of guilt around homoeroticism in this notebook than I do in future notebooks. I would also say that there is some very direct incest in this notebook, as I end up making out with one of my female cousins. There are other examples of incest in my other dream notebooks. But I don't think it's ever as blatant and open and guilt-free as it is here. But I may be wrong.
These dreams occur a little more than half a year into my work on Wall Street. I can see a lot of the effect of my learning about my work in these dreams. In waking life, I was helping with research on stocks, in particular stocks in the beverage industry and some small-cap companies.
I was being asked to write some early reports, as well as to travel to places to get insight into things like regulations about the industries I was researching. The reports I wrote at this time were remembered, not just internally, but by some big investors for big hedge funds, all the way through the time I was laid off from the company. My first big report preceded a huge international trip one of my bosses took. You will see the echoes of this international trip in some of the dreams of this notebook.
It was during this time that I, for the first time in my career, learned some things happening in these industries before any other stock researchers in the world knew about them. The stuff I learned ended up helping some of the people I was working for build their careers. It was the first time I learned my value.
But there's a really fun aspect to this stuff, as well. Working so much on researching the beverage industry, I got to thinking a lot about commercialism, consumerism, etc. And so there really are some campy, absurd, humorous images and situations in my dreams that relate to all of this.
I think at this time in my career I was excited, I was learning new things, and I was trying to fit the stuff I was learning into the philosophy I had built for my life over the previous eleven years, i.e. since I'd started college. But I think there's an emotional aspect of trying to fit in with the people at work and trying to figure out what my role really was supposed to be at work. There was also a conflict between trying to let myself be disciplined, to accept discipline and training, and trying to hold some integrity with whatever ideals I'd built for life up until this point. There are also very clear opinions I had about my different bosses at work -- the nice, supportive, EB, and the blunt, perfectionist BS.
I think it's also interesting to see how my previous work, the work I'd done with Americorps with the New York City Parks, plays into these dreams. Sometimes the landscapes of the Americorps job play into my dreams as something that I'm essentially still a part of. At other times, they seem like elements of my psyche that are slowly sinking into a swamp, a filthy swamp, of the unconscious. It's also interesting to see how a lot of the people from that job play more present roles than they do in later dreams. Those people, as personalities that vividly affected my psyche, are much livelier in this notebook -- I think -- than they are in future notebooks.
I think my attitude toward my best friend R is much different than my attitude toward him in later notebooks. In notebooks 10 and 11, I can see my relationship with my friend R deteriorating pretty rapidly. I can see myself trying really hard to rebel against him and create a life for myself. In these dreams, R is someone I'm trying to impress. His house is, like it was in waking life, more of a center for my life than my own places were. And there are even dreams where I'm thinking about possibly trying to have a love relationship with his girlfriend's sister. I don't think that would ever really have happened. So it's kind of nice to remember a time when I had at least somewhat positive feelings about my friend R.
As this notebook begins, I've been at my residence in Crown Heights for about two months. Almost from the beginning of this notebook, you'll see, I have dreams about my house being broken into. This, in fact, happened in January of 2007. After my house was broken into, I moved into another place, where I stayed until I left New York for good (never even to go back, until this day, even for a visit) in January of 2012.
But there's also an interesting dream where I am seen outside my place and hope not to be seen, because I know it will draw trouble. In fact, in March of 2007, I'd gone about two months without drawing the attention of anybody in my neighborhood. Then I got completely drunk one night in Boston and lost, among a lot of other things, my keys. I had to wait outside my apartment the next day for the locksmith. Almost everybody in the neighborhood saw me, dressed up in clothes my boss EB and his wife GB had bought me. Everybody paid a lot of attention to me. And from that day on, I was basically terrorized in my apartment almost every hour that I was there.
I'll probably talk about this in more depth as time goes on. But from about mid-2000, when I first went out in public dressed as a girl, I was being stalked by people in my various neighborhoods. But right about the same time that I began my dedicated dream books, in 2004, I was targeted really heavily by people. There were a few months here and there when it wasn't bad. One of those times was from January to March of 2007. But as soon as the people in my neighborhood saw me in March of 2007, I was done for. It seems that a dream in this notebook foreshadows that, just like a lot of the dreams in this notebook foreshadow my house getting broken into in January of 2007.
No comments:
Post a Comment