I am dreaming.
“Yes, a dream. It’s all a dream...... Dreams are the realm of the unconscious, of the other self you possess — a rare glimpse at the world inside. Within dreams, your unconscious mind is expressed, and those dreams contain many things about yourself that you aren’t cognizant of. In order to treat the illness of your mind, no, in order to diagnose that unseeable, untouchable mind, there are things we need.”
Something right in front of me is talking about difficult things.
The only judgment I can possibly make is that it might be a male — it has a blurry form, dripping in white. The face is very close to me, and the only assessment I can make is that it’s melted into the white lab coat at the corners of my vision.
It seems that somehow, I’ve woken up again.
This is reality. At the very least, it’s an area that would lead me to believe as much.
It’s like that scenery I saw for a bit after I awoke from that girl with the hat and scarf thrusting me down...... I’ve returned once again to that suffocating place. I was being strangled by that woman with the goggling eyes back in the dream, my consciousness slipping...
Before I realized it, I was met with this sordid face.
I think within the dream... I had been strangled. Death in dreams is more akin to brain death in movies, or what is called a vegetative state. If the mind, or consciousness, were killed, the body would become husk. If the soul were lost, the body would be left behind like refuse.
However, in actuality, dreams about death and being killed are quite common. It would be a big problem if they resulted in brain death, but that’s not the case. Death as it occurs in dreams is like a simple deus ex machina to end the performance of the dream and allow you to begin life anew, so it’s a positive and proactive symbol.
Dreams and the unconscious are the underside of the dualistic personality. They’re like another person. Like Jekyll and Hyde. Even if you die in a dream, it has no effect on reality. Rather, it’s like the feeling of release that comes from letting stored-up pus out of your body.
There are some cases where it can even get rid of anxiety and fear that encircle the heart.
Be that as it may, dying is not a pleasant thing. That hidden personality is still part of you. Actually experiencing death is a terrible burden. The way I died was miserable and cruel. For some time after, you can’t believe that you’re alive, your pulse thunders and you break into a cold sweat, unable to calm down.
In any case, death in my dream afforded me the opportunity to wake up.
It’s a Game Over. Until the moment when power is returned to the dream world, I have no choice but to reside in reality.
I feel so down. The stimuli in reality are too great for me. The heaviness and resonance of the air, the rustling of clothes, other people’s voices......
Even the pressure of the air against my skin is painful.
My body is heavy, and it’s hard to breathe. I’m like a fish dumped on land.
If it’s going to be this depressing, then dreams would be infinitely better.
“Dreams are the most vital tool for curing an illness of the mind. We reach a consensus after analyzing the contents and events of a dream and decide on a diagnosis. That’s a quick starting point. Anyway, it’s difficult to explain the content of your dreams to someone else. So it’s hard to treat an illness of the mind.”
Even as I’m groaning, the blurred doctor is talking nearby.
About something I don’t understand at all.
“Often, stories of other people’s dreams are boring. No matter how exciting the dream might be, it’s unintelligible to the listener. Like words in a foreign language. It’s easy to understand how talking about weather and baseball is infinitely more interesting, because you can understand the rules and join in.”
The doctor-like man seems to be putting on airs, like he knows everything.
It’s like he’s monologuing, and I have no energy to do anything but interject to show that I’m listening.
“Telling someone else about your dreams is a monumental task. Dreams are the unconscious, the underside of your personality, the contents of someone else’s mind. The heads and tails of a coin. They’re connected, and yet you can’t understand another person’s mind. Twins who are raised together or a close married couple would be better, but still no one could truly judge whether what the person said was true or not.”
It’s a one-sided conversation. I’m not ready to take in someone else’s words. The words reach my ears and are sent back out without processing. Still dazed from sleep, I can’t comprehend anything.
“It’s a bit like reading a friend’s novel. There are literature classes about addressing the feelings of the author in a particular work. Anyone would have doubts about the significance of such classes. Someone more sarcastic would think: ‘Like I could know how the author felt. They probably wrote it to meet their deadline and get their royalties.’ But that’s wrong, the novel is a piece of the author’s soul. But the class is training one to read, understand, and make a guess.”
What is he talking about?
I don’t get what he means at all.
“How do you go about getting a good grade in such a class? I have an acquaintance who is a novelist, and he reads with abandon. He writes manuscripts like a fool. When he was in school, he got top grades in that class without even studying.”
The doctor-like man talks on happily.
His manner of speaking is very indirect.
I think this, but my grade in such a class probably wouldn’t be very good.
“Having encountered so many books, and being so used to writing them, one somehow comes to understand them. To understand the feelings of an author. One comes to sympathize with the pieces of the author’s heart. In psychology, there’s a therapy referred to as modeling, where we simulate a set of circumstances.”