on conscious forgetting:

So here are a few things about me:

1. My memory is fascinating. As a teacher, I remember names, faces, and everything my students write, almost immediately. I remember historical dates, seamstresses in films, every single song lyric, most poems. All of it.

2. I am absolutely haunted by my dreams. This can't be understated. My lucid dreams alter my conscious experience.

3. I consciously forget everything.

But let's just talk about right now, specifically, and how all these things become related, ultimately equaling the same thing (which probably is that I'm a little ridiculous and probably let the stars dictate how remarkably close I hold my hand to my chest).

We have traveled to Tampa. 

We have traveled to my parents' home, the one with the big gate, and all the acres, and gardens, the animals and the golden sun, the two houses.

We have traveled back in time. 

We have traveled to the miniature house I used to live in, off and on for ten years, between the times when life delivered blow after life-altering blow,

we have traveled to the place I used to stay when everything fell apart. My nest, cocoon, the greatest hiding place behind the big gate.

Everything is the same; it's no mirage, no mirror. The space is absolute: the trees are sturdy, and there is the constant sound of falling water everywhere. 

But I'm not the woman I was before.

I'm not a woman that clawls at the walls anymore. At least not right now, not for the last (almost) three years. You know: I figured out what to do to not to be that old ghost anymore. 

I mean, I got rid of the ghouls. 

No: I mean, I have forgotten what the ghouls did to me. 

No. I mean. I left. I mean I never spent the night again. I mean.

I mean I stopped throwing gigantic parties. I stopped talking.

I mean. I built a house. A small one. And I put myself in it. I put myself in it, and I only made a door when necessary.

I know that doors are not permanent things anymore. 

That is, my conscious mind knows the score. It knows the game of forgetting, and it's good. But. 

My unconscious mind, my lucid dreams--  the ones that stack on top of each other to show the big picture-- the ones that, no matter how many times I wake up and fall back to sleep, are still there. All night. 

Maybe it's the miniature house and that stark contrast between what it is now and how it used to be. 

I dream about people I don't even know.

That's a lie. 

I dream about people who used to be around, who showed up and did something stupid or outrageous, something worth remembering, before they disappeared. 

I knew this girl who was a stripper in high school. I knew this girl who made a sex tape, spontaneously, on one of those buses. I knew a girl who blew every single dude at every single party. I knew a girl who slept with a lot of dudes, one after the other after the other, all in a line, all in the room, all in my apartment. I knew a girl who dropped acid and showed up at my house, freaked out, and disappeared into the woods, crying.

I don't know any of these girls. 

I don't know their names. 

If I walked by them, if I met them at an art gallery, and we talked about something great, I wouldn't know it. It doesn't matter.

Those moments and myths are burned into my brain. 

They're knocking at the door I didnt know was there. Pulling down the walls, setting fire to my storeroom.

I don't know who they want. I dream of them in dialogue, on videos. I dream of sneaking into my house, hiding behind my walls, to learn the truth.

I can't believe it. But I do. I put those images away, like truth. And I wait for the voodoo. 

The Role of Dreams and the Dream Sequence Within Our Social Reality

The role of dreams and dream sequences has maintained relevance to man throughout history. Initially, dreams were associated with:

1.      The pursuit of Nirvana.

2.    Entering another’s conscious, waking world.

3.    Omens.

However, it is modern man that puts psychological weight on the role that dreams play within our lives. We write books on the symbols of dreams, and worry over the results, looking for the most positive emblem we can find. We pay psychiatrists and psychologists and dream analysts to listen to us ramble on about the disassociations and associations we construct within our minds, looking for reassurance that we are right about the significance of our dreams. We are piecemeal. Our understanding of our dreams is on the level of construction paper art and glue and glitter: we believe in their creation; we use them as an ultimate symbol, but when we attempt to recreate these roles in the waking world, we cannot measure up to the glamour and grace that a dream world creates.

 For some, this is devastating. For others, the waking world far supersedes the world of the dream, which is why modern man has learned to fear the dream sequence and the dream symbol. This fear not only stems from the roles that Omens play, but it is also developed from the psychological weight that we press onto the dimensions of reality that we desperately want to exist in our positive dreams, which must also extend to the dimensions of reality within our nightmares.

I have focused on my dreams since I was at least seven years old, and I started writing in my first journal. Between the parts about friends and dinner and parents’ fighting, I focused on my dreams, and despite the shifting conditions of the world outside of my dreams, I have written journal after journal, since I was seven, about this dream world.

When I was nineteen and my best friend died, it became impossible for me to find God in my waking life, and every night, I would dream about walking out of my little house, and seeing my best friend, in that blue early morning light, sitting on our old swing, next to his skateboard, where he used to wait for me. I found him waiting there every night, and every night we would talk. When this dream started to become static and faded and infrequent, I started to study lucid dreaming because losing these conversations was truly losing him completely, which is ultimately what happened; however, lucid dreaming is something that stayed with me,

which is why I intuit things so frequently. However, intuition is equal to the relevance of associating symbols to dreams—we can easily see something as true and linear after that which occurred in the dream world has also occurred in waking life. Intuition is stronger and more emotional than déjà vu because unlike déjà vu, intuition is not a flash in the pan; it’s a pull and a search.

This pull and search is characteristic of modern man’s absolute need for social and personal progress, which is why, despite the innovation of the world around us, we still seek the mystical and unknown parts of being that relate us all and develop the world of the universal subconscious.