So with all of my thinking about a sense of renewal, especially with manuscript 2, I find it odd I happened upon a large padded envelope of my undergrad poetry. It is a good 5 inches thick, threatening to tear at the sides. This caused me to wonder about my poetry journals from like 3 years ago when a lot of personal strife began for me. It is an interesting exercise to go back to the "old stuff," those old emotions and circumstances. I think every writer should enter this somewhat frightening room of the past -- looking at those "old things," rifling through them like bras and panties in a poke shop. I think I could pretty much guarantee at least one pleasant surprise in that old stuff ... a gem ... an oddly fresh outlook on something, something you had been pondering years prior but forgot about. I think a writer should go back at least 2 years ... anything "newer" than that would not pack the same punch, have the same eerie rediscovered aura going.
After going to bed feeling basically alone and slightly depressed and lost in the murky world of wanting renewal and thinking of things in the past more than I should ... I had a dream about that house again. There is a house that often invades my dreams. It is a big, gray, and rather dilapitated house on a beach ... sometimes it seems like the lake, sometimes like the ocean. And a faceless man is always in it (I have my suspicions who it is based on a small amount of "clues") ... and then there is usually another "tangible" person with me in the dream. Often, there is some prehistoric-looking monster chasing me through the sand, the water, up the spiralling stairs of the house. But last night it was just me and this monster, and this house, and me screaming something about remembering the goodbyes.
So am I saying goodbye to something again? Something indiscernable I must rid myself of to move on ... to grow ... to be renewed and happy? The tangible alterations of renewal like cutting half the poems from my manuscript, finding old work to poke through ... in this am I saying goodbye to the sad disappearance of my years-ago dreams? I am always in that house, in one way or another, and I just have to make it through the whole house to make this all whole. If I am remembering correctly Jung believed the image of a house to signify the mind -- the conscious and collective unconscious. Being the Jungian (not Freudian) that I am ... I see the logic and also the reality of this meaning. This recurring house of my nightmare is the recurring dilemma I am feeling often in my mind ... the life in my mind. My brain as the breathing apparatus that tries to keep me moving ... yet keep me from something, a final conclusion.
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