Dear Adrian (from Gillian)
We need to assess these two dreams:
Dream 1: a black cat on the Thames embankment. Full of itself. With admirers. We look at each other, he stands erect and becomes more humanoid. I say to him ‘you want me, dead, don’t you?’ He grins and suspends a busload of schoolchildren above my head. Dream ends.
Dream 2: back in a fantasy landscape of my childhood, climbing on top of a radiator to reach a trap door that leads to some hidden world. It used to be an empty place, full of echoes and evidence and shadows of things that had past, but empty except for the cigarette and damp stained wall paper, scraps of furniture, and crumbling lath and plaster. Now there were welcoming but unfamiliar voices leading me in.
Dear Gillian (from Adrian)
Whilst we are sharing. Yes – I, too – have considered the possibility of taking to smoking a pipe… It could work – but then again – anything could work in theory. Pigs could fly just as cats could evolve into humans (or even humanoids) but is it likely… No, of course not barring a severe nuclear accident and Tiddles caught between a rock and a hard place. And yet it could still possibly happen… This is apt as we often communicate through potentialities – one forces the issue – the other pretends it is not happening (I won’t say whose who). The point is – it works. Unconscious imagery has the tendency of operating as if it is independent of the conditioned mind and all its conditioned certainties – that is what people find unsettling when they experience the conscious mind being visited by this free-flowing psychological content. This imagery cannot be consciously controlled – hence the discomfort. It can be kept at bay through discipline and lifestyle choices to a certain extent – but eventually the ferryman must be paid, as there is only one way across the river. Interesting that the River Thames appears – an old waterway that must be crossed – possibly from Black Friars to St Paul’s. The cat is ‘uncertain’ and laughs it off – why go on a journey not formulated (or even required) by the conscious mind? This indecision is masked by the adoption of ‘blackness’ – a colour that seems to ‘matter’ more and more nowadays. Of course, ‘he’ would hold a bus of school children above the head – how else would it get there? Silly girl, it is all quite straight forward. The conscious mind must ‘ingest’ these images so as to extract all the hidden nourishment from them. Keeping these images at bay is a tiring process. The images require dissolving and not distancing. The cat wants to ‘die’ (transform) into fulfilment but the only way this can happen is through the trapdoor that separates the two worlds which must be opened and the space within revealed – and traversed. How else could a cocky cat stand erect? Metaphor is one thing, but allegory quite another. The unfamiliar is always like this – perversely alienating and intimately welcoming. This is a guide rather than a punishment. If the radiator is ‘hot’ then you cannot climb upon it – if it is ‘cold’ progression is made. The meaning must be imbued like the contents of a cigarette – even if the lessons are seemingly old and unwanted. They are wanted by someone. Neglect of this process leads to stains (obscurations) on the wall. The issues are settled by free-movement. Stagnation delays and draws out the process. Obscurity has its own agenda. Chase me – avoid me – but never stop catching me.
Dear Adrian (from Gillian)
Hot radiators? What is this luxury you talk of?
The cat was plug ugly, but everyone else thought it was cute.
It is just that the cigarette-stained wallpaper and broken bits of furniture through that trap door seem more real than many apartments here in Bucharest
Feline ugliness is not so much of a problem as wanting me dead. I’m not going to respond well to that.
I’ll sprinkle an extra dollop of holy water over my bed this evening. Bizarrely, in retrospect I think I forgot last night…. and just look what happened.
Dear Gillian (from Adrian)
A dead cat may not be what it first appears to be. Hang on a minute – I said the cat wants me dead – not itself! Yes – but if we go down that path – then your cat kills not only yourself – but also my argument – holy water or not! How could a cat kill you? By dropping a bus of schoolchildren on your head. Is it a likely outcome? I doubt the cat could get the children to co-operate or indeed arrange for the bus to be raised into place in a manner that no one would recognise what is happening until it is ‘too late’. Louis wain could be of help here – but let’s face it – he could not do much to help himself past the continuous replication of ever more fragmented depiction of cats, as interested as they most obviously are. As a Physicist, I suspect Schrödinger’s Cat has something to do with a clash of civilisations. Is the cat ‘alive’ or ‘dead’? Does the Black-White cat want you alive-dead? Are you inhabiting a box – or observing a box? Is the box the bus – and more importantly – why is there no indication of appropriate ‘social distancing’? I also find it curious that there is no presence of ‘steps’ or ‘star-wells’. Having walked up and down the Thames Embankment more times than I care to count – no buses (or cats for that matter) frequent the banks upon which the mighty Thames doth lap…
Dear Gillian (from Adrian)
A dead cat may not be what it first appears to be. Hang on a minute – I said the cat wants me dead – not itself! Yes – but if we go down that path – then your cat kills not only yourself – but also my argument – holy water or not! How could a cat kill you? By dropping a bus of schoolchildren on your head. Is it a likely outcome? I doubt the cat could get the children to co-operate or indeed arrange for the bus to be raised into place in a manner that no one would recognise what is happening until it is ‘too late’. Louis wain could be of help here – but let’s face it – he could not do much to help himself past the continuous replication of ever more fragmented depiction of cats, as interested as they most obviously are. As a Physicist, I suspect Schrödinger’s Cat has something to do with a clash of civilisations. Is the cat ‘alive’ or ‘dead’? Does the Black-White cat want you alive-dead? Are you inhabiting a box – or observing a box? Is the box the bus – and more importantly – why is there no indication of appropriate ‘social distancing’? I also find it curious that there is no presence of ‘steps’ or ‘star-wells’. Having walked up and down the Thames Embankment more times than I care to count – no buses (or cats for that matter) frequent the banks upon which the mighty Thames doth lap…
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 