Thursday, May 28, 2009

chemin étroit,
au bord des larmes,
n'aura
jamais
aucun raccourci

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Guillotine makes a good headline.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Sunday, May 17, 2009



a thieving dream

I was a thief's "girlfriend"--an "honorable thief's"--and was bound to him by respect and a high code of loyalty. Vague scenes of hotel lobbies or shopping mall window displays, with models (not sure whether live women or mannequins [interchangeable in Fr]). The "thief" had no physical presence in the dream. Suddenly, however, I became aware that the police were after him. A state of crisis. Yet I knew exactly what I had to do. I got into a car, a large 1970s vehicle, and told the driver to go as fast as he could. The driver didn't think this was the best idea: we could be stopped by the police, if only for a traffic violation. But he did what he was told. Indeed, a clumsy police van was tailing us: it resembled a boxy old-style ambulance. As we neared a large bank, which for some reason I considered as the least likely, and hence the safest place for a fugitive to hide, I told the driver to rapidly pull over and park. The police passed us in their pursuit. I needed to make a quick money withdrawal and give it to the thief, along with another important item: his leather jacket which I had been holding all that time. A successful escape was guaranteed.

*

I am not too fond of dream interpretation because, most often, I think that the visual qualities trump any psychological interpretation. This dream, however, is banal enough to sustain some analysis. It seems to offer some comfort amidst the uncertainties of daily life; to counter a sense of things being up in the air, undecided, undecidable, by presenting a simple story with a problem and a rational, swiftly implemented solution. The fact that the quick-minded action is in the service of another has nothing unusual about it: it is when faced with other people's problems that one is able to think most rationally and be most effective. The two props--the warm leather jacket and money--pertain perhaps to my own situation: the basic worries of food & shelter. The need to escape--escape the confinement, institutions (banks, police, ambulance)...--is perhaps also mine. And if we are indeed all the characters in our dreams, what kind of a thief am I?