Dream of January 22, 2003
I’m living alone on a large farm in a remote rural area. My sense of isolation has been growing and I feel regretful that I made the commitment to buy this place. Somehow, I was misled into thinking it was a good idea, but it isn’t turning out that way.
At some point early in the dream, I sense that the house is surrounded by large numbers of dangerous wild animals roaming freely about. Darkly colored or black, and somewhat featureless, the animals loom in the background. These ominous creatures frighten me, yet I’m also hoping to befriend them.
Later in the dream, I find myself on the telephone, listening to a long conversation between unidentified individuals, but I am unable or unwilling to talk. I’m grateful though, for this minimal contact….Still later, I see people in front of the house. I now have laryngitis and try to signal to the others that that is why I can’t speak. Smiling apologetically, I point to my throat.
I do want to communicate. My sense of disconnection has grown to the point where I’m desperate to break the silence, break through to the others. When I bought the farm I didn’t realize it would have such a terribly isolating effect on me. There’s a powerless feeling of having less and less of a voice; being less and less able to communicate, as if the silence has gradually taken over and rendered me mute against my will. I have the vague sense that, when I first acquired the property, someone had instructed me on how to work the farm, but I hadn’t understood or heeded the advice.
This dream reflects my own particular experience of isolation now so prevalent in our culture. When I had the dream nine years ago, I was writing Topologies of the Flesh. That was indeed very solitary work, and—sitting in my small study day after day for hours on end – I felt quite cut off from human society. Beyond that, the ideas I was trying to convey were extremely challenging, leaving me constantly concerned with how effectively I was communicating them. But what about the wild animals surrounding my dream farm?
In Topologies, I set myself the task of making contact with the world of animal instinct. It was a matter of bringing to light the “wild animals” within me through a process of self-exploration that scared me at times, and left me feeling further alienated from the familiar world of human affairs. The connection between my work on Topologies and the dream became clear when I recalled an experience I’d had the night before dreaming. I had seen a TV documentary focused on the prehistoric cave drawings of wild animals at Lascaux—drawings I explicitly deal with in Topologies. You will see in the pages that follow that the realm of animal instinct and emotion continues to be of vital concern to me.
