This post is related to this entry in my dream journal.
The main images that stuck with me from these dreams are the images of seeing people from behind cracks in walls. In the first dream I saw the security guard from behind a thin, glass structure, which I think was meant to be a gap in the wall of a larger structure. And in the second dream, I see the young man through a gap in a wall as he speaks with my friend.
I think both of these images come from the Church of the Light, which was designed by the architect Tadao Ando. Below is an image of the church from the Wikipedia page on the building.
Light comes through the gaps in the wall. The gaps form a cross shape, to symbolize, I suppose, the cross of Christ. In my dream, figures hide behind the gap. Both of these figures stand for some kind of moral aspect of my psyche. In one case, the figure behind the gap is a security guard. In the other, the figure behind the gap is a diligent student. In both cases I feel like a less worthy person because of the signals I'm receiving from the person behind the gap.
But it's also interesting that in both cases, I'm "called out" as a result of the feelings I receive from the people behind the gaps. In the first dream, the person behind the gap makes me feel so uneasy with where I am, that I decide to leave the place. Upon leaving the place, I expose myself as being a transvestite, wearing nothing but women's clothing in a busy part of town. In the second dream, the person behind the gap is used to spur me on to become a diligent worker.
The figures behind the gaps may stand for something in my own personality that is coming to life, as well. I believe there are representations of the Immaculate Conception, where the Virgin Mary is impregnated with Jesus, where the impregnation is shown as a beam of light.
So the cross of light in the Church of the Light could just as easily be the light beam of the Immaculate Conception, foreseeing Christ's redemption of humanity on the cross. At the same time, it could be the light of the Pentecost, looking back in memory to Christ on the cross. But in both the Immaculate Conception and the Pentecost, there is an element of the birth of a new personality. In the case of the Immaculate Conception, the new personality is Christ. In the Pentecost, the new personality is the changed personalities of the disciples after they've been invested with the personality of the Holy Spirit.
I think architecture plays a big part in my first dream because on Saturday I spent a couple hours in my local library looking at a book (I can't remember the name) of twentieth-century architecture. A lot of work by Tadao Ando was in the book, including the Church of the Light. But another work that was in the book, and that has always impressed me is Phillip Johnson's Glass House. Below is a photo of the Glass House from Wikipedia.
I think this house inspired the imagery of some of the glass buildings in the "NASA museum" of my first dream. I find it interesting that the NASA museum of my first dream is composed of small buildings, all of different styles of architecture -- although all the styles seem to be distorted in some way. It like the NASA history museum is more a museum of the history of architecture.
I think this might be partly because I do think about stations. I think I, like a lot of people, would like to see a lot more people living and working in space a lot sooner than current time frames seem to anticipate. And I think of space stations in terms of homes, in terms of being living spaces. So I think that what I'm seeing in my dream, as a history of NASA, is a history of the space station as a home.
But what I think is also interesting about the first and second dream is that I encounter these figures behind gaps in museums. Both places are museums. Why would these encounters need to occur in museums? I mean, I love museums. And a lot of my spare time, while I was in New York, was spent in museums.
Lately I've found, as I've been back home, I've been going back to the places of my childhood. We lived in a lot of different homes as I was growing up, but almost all in Colorado. So it's not necessarily easy for me to go see every house I've lived in. But I have been able to go see a few of them.
I've been reflecting on my life lately, trying to figure out what I need to change in myself in order to be a little better in the situations where I've kind of screwed up really badly over the past year or so. I'm not sure if I can change myself. But for some reason, I've felt like going and seeing the places where I'd lived growing up, I might be able to get a better idea of how I can change myself. I even thought, while I was out walking around yesterday, that these neighborhoods have become for me something of a museum of myself.
So maybe I've started to see, behind some gaps, some walls in my psyche that may be opening up, gapping open, some new elements of my personality, or some old, neglected elements of my personality. I'm not sure. But that could be a part of it all.
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