The Nightmare: Invitation,
Disorder, Transformation
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| (Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781) |
The woman’s slightly transparent
white dress strongly contrasts the dark background. The position of her arms
and neck seems to almost fall off the bed. She looks unstable and vulnerable.
On her stomach, an incubus is sitting, facing front with his big eyes. His
weight presses on the woman, suffocating her. A dark horse is peeking from behind
the curtain in the background. This painting gives me the impression of invasion
and violation. Clearly, the incubus and the dark horse do not belong in her
bedroom. They are self-imposed guests in the deep dark night. However, her
dropped arms and hair, her slightly opened mouth and rosy cheeks make me wonder
if she is experiencing ecstasy.
Again, I woke up from another
nightmare. A gigantic snake tightly wraps my entire body, suffocating me. It
doesn’t look like the snake has any intensions to kill me. It is just
suffocating me, watching me lose my breath and slowly become unconscious. It is
just impossible for me to even try to escape.
Dealing with my “nightmare
hangover”, I looked up snake in The Book
of Symbols: “The snake has always conveyed power over life and death,
making it a form of the ancestral spirit, guide to the Land of the Dead and
mediator of hidden processes of transformation and return.” Its interpretation
of symbol somewhat lifted my spirit.
This week I could not get one image
out of my mind: a dead womb where life can no longer grow or survive. After the
snake nightmare, I have performed a kind of ceremony of releasing the dead in
me. It was a ceremony of the dead. I realized why we need funerals. It is a
ceremony of releasing unbearable pain and the dead so that they would not be buried
in my mind but be unchained from my unconscious obsession. Saying a proper
good-bye is an important exercise in life.
I did not call you
But you found me
You found your way to
reach me
I did not hear you
But you called me
through the crack
I tried to ignore you
But you did not go
away
I followed you
You led me to the west
where I met the dead
Now I unchain them
It’s our funeral day
I gently lay them down
in my tears
Shalom…
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