Prefix – Poly

I think I’m in danger of taking my life for granted. I’ve been living in Amsterdam for three months now and I worry I’m becoming complacent about my surroundings. There is so much beauty around me, and yet it gets lost amongst the everyday existence, the to and fro-ing. I’m ashamed to say that recently I have only really left the house to go to work, otherwise I just seem to float about the apartment, lost in excerpts of text, I could be anywhere in this high rise. On my 40 minute bicycle ride from work tonight I had the opportunity to give myself a good talking to – I enjoy these cycle rides, (when it’s not raining!), it gives me a chance to really think, away from all the noise of the internet and social media that seems to eternally threaten to swallow me up whole. I see some beautiful sights in my to-ing and fro-ing; the light as it ripples across the water and kind of dances in its own radiance as I cycle past, the huge neon crane puncturing the darkness with its iridescent glow, the dogs with their flashing night-time collars always amuse me as they weave in and out of the park woodland panting after their master, the heron wadding through the lake, the duck-like creatures strolling side by side on the evening grass as I meet their curious gaze – I am going to savour these moments, because they will not be with me forever, as familiarity sets in and they become ordinary and their splendor will no longer touch me. I’ve been waiting for a sunny day, I promised myself that the next bright day I will treat myself to a tour around the city, or at least a cycle around the park, but every day since has been grey, and yet within the grey it was still beautiful when I finally ventured out today. So, perhaps I should stop blaming it on the weather, and get out of this bloody flat and explore this city! So, I have set a day for Saturday, I shall go and spend some time getting lost, cycling, visiting galleries for a few hours before work. I am actually rather fascinated by the tours that Amsterdam offers, I sometimes see a large group accumulate outside the shop that I work in on the cusp of the red light district, and I turn down the music and overhead heater so I can strain to become part of their group, I can hear the odd word from the guide telling them about the ladies of the night. I make a mental note to go on one of these tours, I want to learn the mechanics of a tour, how they work, what they say, where they go. I wonder how tours of the exact same area differ. You can even take a tour with a former prostitute as your guide from the Prostitute Information Centre in Amsterdam. One can also purchase a self-guided tour from the same centre. I definitely intend to do both of these tours with the intention of making some kind of exploration into what it is to be on a ‘tour’. Even tours around art galleries, I don’t think I have ever been on one, I did once have one of those audio guides when I walked around the van Gogh Museum, which I found a complete let down, I thought that it constantly talked you around the exhibition, set to someone else’s pace, and particular direction around a space, it would be as if you are someone else for a while, but instead you had to just select the corresponding number to a picture you stood in front of. I was sorely disappointed.

I think I like idea of being someone else for a moment, as if you are trying them on like a costume, perhaps that is what interests me about the idea of the’tour.’ Will this following, enable me to become a tourist, a visitor to a place in which I live, does it allow me a fresh pair of eyes from which complacency is safe?

[continued from previous post….] Anyway, the other dream I had was last night; huge engulfing, destructive waves – hmmm, there’s a pattern here, my dreams are quite destructive! – well, this time the dream was slightly different, the waves were not so threatening, and I wasn’t running away in terror as I usually do, I was helping people up on to this ledge, I remember being really scared that I had the responsibility to pull these people to safety. My little brother was there again, and my dad and sister, I was worried they wouldn’t make it. I looked up in horror as the next swell increased; it looked like a giant wall of darkness, it just kind of froze there, and then I think I woke up.

Well, I’m not really sure what to make of it, there is definitely some resounding themes. Responsibility seems to be on the forefront. It’s interesting how the water dream has changed, ever so slightly; I will be interested to see how it changes again. I’ve never actually been swept away by it, it is always a threat. Maybe I need to let myself get swept away, perhaps then I will stop being so afraid, or maybe that will start a whole drowning dream reoccurrence.

As puerile fantasy and adult longing grease against one another in their attempt to assimilate, they slip in-between, leaving a gap in which I have come to inhabit. One of the many things that cajole within its confines is the dreaming mind. I find it fascinating that we are unconscious yet we possess the ability to remember, I also find the fact that many people share similar dream experiences rather interesting, especially those dreams/nightmares that make us anxious, for instance, teeth falling out, flying, falling, etc. Why are our fears manifested in such ways, and why are they synonymous with others?

I often remember my dreams, even dreams I had many years ago, they leave a stain, sometimes a Technicolor blemish on my memory. There are a few reoccurring motifs in my ‘anxious’ dreams, they are as follows:

*Teeth falling out – mainly my back teeth (whether that’s important I don’t know)

*Trying to turn on the light switch but it is doing nothing, and in panic I frantically switch it on and off, but to no avail, my efforts are impotent (for some reason this dream really invokes a feeling of terror in me – very odd)

*Water – usually tidal waves, tsunami’s, flooding etc (and it is strange that usually one of my brothers’ is usually present within the dream somewhere when the water occurs…don’t know what that means?) – although the best dream I ever had involved water, but it was calm and glistening, a beautiful azure blue that lapped up at the shore leaving tiny crystals that glittered in the sunlight – water seems to be very important to me in my dreams, and is a regular feature.

In the last few nights, I have had two recurring motif dreams, teeth falling out, and scary waves! In the losing teeth dream, I was taking the puppy of a friend with me to work, it was so cute, and I was really happy skipping along down the road with it. I got to work far too early, so decided to head back home for a bit and return later. With my back to work, I eagerly bounded homeward, not looking behind as sweet little puppy yapped after me, I didn’t look at the road properly and the puppy got run over. I was devastated, and felt so guilty. I didn’t know what to do. (There was something in between involving roller-skating and falling over lots, and feeling that I deserved it for letting the puppy die, but it’s all too hazy to recall – is that important? Is my inability to remember, my desire to keep what the dream is really about away from my grasp?). Then later in the dream one of my back teeth started to crumble, then a big bit of it came away, I remember thinking ‘I can’t afford to go to a dentist here in Holland, I don’t have any health insurance!’. Then the tooth next to it just fell out, along with another one directly adjacent. The other side started to crumble and the same happened to my teeth on that side. Halfway through I remember thinking that perhaps I am dreaming because I often have dreams about my teeth falling out, but then it suddenly felt so real to me, and I was telling myself that it wasn’t a dream and that this was really happening. I was so glad when I woke up to realize in fact it was a dream. As daft as it sounds I can’t stop thinking about the poor puppy. I really felt the loss. What does this puppy mean to me? Is it about responsibility, or perceived responsibility to other people? I always feel guilty and responsible for some reason, in this instance, it was my neglect of this other being that resulted in its death. But is death always really ‘death’? It is a loss, definitely. Perhaps something I needed to let go, or am worried about letting go of.