Rejuvenation

April 25 2014

Dream:
S was sad as we walked down the shopping street in Ostend. It turned into an US road, where there was a funeral in a house organized by friends and relatives. It was open to all, but I couldn’t peek in, as you had to stay the whole duration if you went in. Instead, I moved into an unfurnished bungalow on the same street to sleep through the winter, to hibernate.

We arranged to meet an underclass couple at the Watersportbaan (“water sports track”) in Gent, which had frozen over. I didn’t see the woman of the couple, but the man was shaven bald. He threw some sandals on the ground and said those were the only skates they dispensed. “At least you can’t fall with these,” he said.

I am at the same track with my father, or I am a father with a son. The viewpoint shifts from the father’s to the son’s. There are bushes on the edge of the track now. The father is on the pavement, the son on the ice. I shift to the viewpoint of the son. The father tells me to watch out for gaps in the ice. They’re semicircles at the edge of the ice.

When I was at the end of the track I argued with my father, who for some reason wanted me to get out of there as quickly as possible, but I had to do so on the ice for some reason.

There was a tiny, shallow metal boat, black on the inside and red on the outside. I’m not sure if the inside was paint or ash or tar. It was just large enough for me, as a child, to stand on, but I used my sleeping pad to slide across the track on my belly instead, so as to not have to step on it and so keep from falling through.

I was suddenly on the other side of the track. Suddenly there was a long hillock of snow ice on the track, which became an enclosed swimming pool. I had swum enough and went out of the swimming pool. Someone offered me a red apple, which I ate. I tried to finish it before I went into the showers and locker rooms, since they smelled funky. I saw other children there from my school, though I didn’t recognize them. On the way I saw L’s face with a strange faraway look, from very close.

Interpretation:

The man from the couple looked like me after my recent shave. My mother noted the day before that I looked like a different person. I didn’t identify with myself at all at this point, but he was very open towards me, in a way that reminds me M, someone else with very short hair. In the dream, I am two different people and my old self is just getting to know my new self. I didn’t see the woman of the couple, so that it may be a woman I haven’t met yet, representing the possibility of a future relationship.

I noted the day before that I look much younger when shaven. Since I become my father later in the dream, I associate my old self with old age and my father. S, with I often felt old, stood next to my old self. With S I sometimes felt fatherly and also felt like my father, who listens without speaking out.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about rejuvenation and its requirement to longevity. I’ve also had some pain in my achilles tendon, and thought about what M said about tendons becoming frail past the age of thirty. M is recovering from tendon injury, and therefore a symbol of regeneration. He’s also very open, like the kind of person I want to become. When my viewpoint shifted from the father’s to the son’s, this represents a process of rejuvenation taking place. This reminds me of Nietzsche’s interpretation of the Father and the Son in the Antichrist, which I read relatively recently.

The funeral earlier represents the self I was up until my journey to the Appalachian trail in the US. The duration in which my new self incubated last winter represents the time I had to spend at the funeral if I was to attend. The funeral probably symbolized the depression that occurred in the meantime. Having had enough of trying to do anything about depression any longer, I instead kept myself distracted while I waited for it to end: I hibernated.

The hillock of snow and ice looks like the hillock of dirt outside my parents house, which was extended right after I came back home during a demolition, possibly referring to the hibernation taking place while I was there. This could explain why the father wanted me to go to the other side of the track as quickly as possible, as I wanted the process of renewal to come to its conclusion. I came to the other side without him, implying that the old self is gone. The boat looks like a telepad from Minecraft, symbolizing sudden transition.

On the other side of the pool, I feel young but no longer little as I did on the one side of the pool, implying that my child and adult self have become one. I remember thinking the day before that I never had an adolescence, instead having turned from a child right into an adult when the machismo of my classmates repelled me and made me act as an adult. There was no transition between the two. I always felt either small or old. The only time I’ve ever felt as an adolescent was in the spring of 2008, age 18, when I lived in Ghent and often jogged around the Watersportbaan.

The last time I ate the kind of red apple I ate in the dream was in Damascus, where I stayed a few weeks in the middle of my thru hike in the US, possibly symbolizing its central role in my metamorphosis. I never knew L, and the only relevance I can see is that my character in an RP has the same name. Since I ate the apple at the same moment I saw L, and Lucas undergoes a transition from evil to good, the apple may be a symbol of the knowledge of good and evil. While I was in Damascus, I felt guilty for spending money: I felt like a spoiled child, much like L.

My not entering the locker rooms with the other children on account of the apple and turned back probably means that I thought better of actually regressing towards childhood, a counterbalancing to the process of rejuvenation. The dream expresses a desire for renewal, symbolized by the growth of adolescence.