Sunday, December 2, 2007

Assal's Never Ending Meadow

1) "My most recent dream consisted of a meadow. I remember a bright, green, fresh, and vibrant looking meadow. The sun was beaming brightly. I was wearing a light blue dress. I was not wearing shoes and could actually feel the grass. I kept walking and walking and hoping that the meadow would end at some point and that I would eventually reach civilization. I eventually came across an old man and asked him for directions. He remained quite and ignored my presence. I decided to walk some more and hoping that I would reach the end of the meadow. However, this never occurred and as far as I can remember the meadow never ended. I felt lost and hopeless."

My interpretation of this dream is simple. Through the first couple of lines, I get the feeling that Assal feels tranquility by being in this meadow. Personally, I would too...an endless field of green on a bright sunny day, (kind of like that desktop background that already comes with the Windows XP software called Bliss). Assal later writes that she walks continuously, hoping to reach the end of the meadow, in a way contradicting her initial feelings of peace and happiness. If the meadow was such an inviting place, why would she want to reach the end of it? When she encounters the old man who fails to give her any directions, I feel as if Assal begins to feel desperate, anxious to get somewhere productive. Perhaps the old man didn't even see her there, perhaps Assal was invisible to anybody around her. She pretty much sums up her own dream with her last line: "I felt lost and hopeless". This dream might parallel with her life right now; maybe she feels as if she's lost in certain situations and no one cares enough to help her get out of that hole.

2) "..the mirror-image would seem to be the threshold of the visible world, if we go by the mirror disposition that the imago of one's own body presents in hallucinations or dreams, whether it concerns its individual features, or even its infirmities, or its object-projections; or if we observe the role of the mirror apparatus in the appearance of the double, in which psychical realities, however heterogeneous, are manifested" (Lacan 191).

In English, Lacan might be saying that one's mirror-image, in other words one's reflection is thought to be what appears in our dreams, even if the imago's details aren't exact. Later he goes on to say that "pshychical realities are manifested", in other words, the remainder of one's dream is purely created by our brain and these additional thoughts or images are false.

No comments: